Team Health: Is This a Culture Problem or a Leadership Problem?

Culture is easy to talk about and much harder to live. In this episode of Unlocked, Kristyn Drennen is joined by Sara Myers and Kelli Oberndorf, co-founders of Ekatā Group, for a grounded conversation about team health, leadership, accountability, and what it really takes to build a connected, high-performing company.

Sara and Kelli explain the meaning behind Ekatā, a Sanskrit word connected to unity, and how that idea shapes their work with leadership teams. Through their VIBE framework, which stands for Value, Integrity, Belonging, and Empowerment, they help teams move from vague culture language to real conversations, practical behaviors, and shared agreements that can actually be practiced inside the business.

Kristyn connects their work directly to TransformCXO’s mission of building sound businesses, steady leaders, and strong families. When a company has structure, clarity, and accountability, leaders are more stable. When leaders are stable and teams are healthy, people are able to do better work and go home with more capacity for the people they love. That is where operational transformation becomes deeply human.

This conversation is especially valuable for business owners and leadership teams who sense that something feels off inside the business, even if performance looks fine from the outside. The episode explores the warning signs of unhealthy teams, including burnout, role confusion, duplicated work, low trust, lack of candor, silence in meetings, and turnover. It also offers practical language for building accountability without fear, encouraging innovation without chaos, and creating a culture where people are willing to raise their hands before small issues become expensive problems.

Key Highlights

• Why team health is more than employee engagement, team culture, or another leadership buzzword.
• How Ekatā’s VIBE framework brings Value, Integrity, Belonging, and Empowerment into practical team conversations.
•  Why accountability must be clearly defined in action, not just used as a word leaders repeat.
• How psychological safety supports candor, ownership, problem solving, and better leadership decisions.
• Why healthy risk-taking requires clear boundaries, standards, and defined spaces for experimentation.
• The warning signs that a team may be less healthy than the owner or leadership team believes.
• How operational clarity and team health work together to create steadier leaders and more scalable companies.

Links and Resources

Learn more about Ekatā Group: https://www.ekatagroup.com

Contact Ekatā Group: Connections@ekatagroup.com

Explore TransformCXO: https://transformcxo.com

If this episode resonates, share it with a fellow leader who needs to hear it. And if you’re ready to unlock your capacity and lead from your zone of genius, book a conversation with Kristyn and the TCXO team.

🎧  👉 Subscribe to Unlocked with Kristyn Drennen on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube — and share this episode with a visionary leader who needs to hear it.

Learn more about TransformCXO: https://transformcxo.com

Connect with Kristyn Drennen on LinkedIn: Kristyn’s LinkedIn 

Follow Kristyn on Instagram: @kristyndrennencxo

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to Unlocked, the podcast for leaders who choose less grind, more growth, and real freedom. Today I am excited to interview Sarah Myers and Kelly Oberndorf, and they are my friends over at the Akata Group. So the work that they do is all about helping teams build trust and strengthen communication. They really care about building teams that are connected, high-performing, the kind that every owner hopes to have on their leadership team and throughout their businesses. Now, I have been working in the organizational development and employee engagement space for, gosh, like over 15 years now. And I understand when people say things about company culture, your brain goes into this zone where you just feel like this is very subjective, it's very theoretical. Culture is one of those things that feels like it's hard to grasp, it's hard to wrap your arms around and even tougher to hang on to. But you're in for a different kind of conversation today because Sarah and Kelly take some of that mystery out of culture initiatives and they bring real tangible language and tools to teams just like yours and mine. We're gonna talk about team health in a way that's practical and honest, and we are gonna eliminate all of the like corporate buzzword stuff. I want to answer questions about what it actually means, how to know if your team is healthy and what warning signs leaders might be missing. You know, how do we build companies where people can like show up as themselves, do really excellent work, and enjoy the experience of working for your business? So let's get into it. Awesome. All right, well, welcome to Unlock, the podcast for leaders who choose Let's Grind, More Growth, and Real Freedom. And today I'm joined by Sarah Myers and Kelly Oberndorf, co-founders of Akata Group, which I'm excited for you to share a little bit about the cool name of your company. They help leadership teams build trust, strengthen communication, and operate as like truly connected, high-performing units. And their work goes so beyond just the traditional training and the things that you've probably seen out there. It's really immersive, it's experiential, and it's designed to transform how teams actually show up together. We want people being normal humans, like in their natural habitat, right? Out in the wild, like being their full selves. So welcome to both of you. We're super excited to have you today. Thank you. Thanks, Kristen. So let's start with Akata Group. So tell me where the name came from. It's really unique.

SPEAKER_00 2:33

Yeah, the name Akata is a Sanskrit word. I actually had a dream. And when I woke up from the dream, I knew that I had just dreamed of this company. And I heard a voice say, look up the word, the Sanskrit word for unity. And akata is the Sanskrit word for unity. And I feel like you just did a great job describing kind of the work that we do. We really do build community and connection to build really high-performing teams. And we believe that true authentic connection and respectful relationship is the key to doing that. And so Akada really sums it up. It's like how we unify together. You know, how do we how do we connect? How can how can we build teamwork together so that we're one unit producing something great?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

That's really beautiful. Our proven process came to me in a fever dream when I had COVID. So I can totally relate to what you're talking about. So uh I love that. And it's amazing inspiration, and uh, you know, it comes from so many different places, you know, our muses, if you will, in our lives. Very, very cool. Yeah. So when we originally connected, which is kind of a funny story. So the lore behind how we got here, Kelly and I, um, our sons are on the same lacrosse team, and I saw in her email signature like a link to something called the vibe game. And I was like, I'm a curious person, hi fact finder. So I was like, what is this? Like, what does this mean? So I'm, you know, forget all the information about what's actually going on with the kids' team dinner. I think I missed most of that, but I was super intrigued. I'm like, what is this? So I click on the hyperlink and her signature and and we start talking. And it's really incredible because you know, you never know where your next great connection is going to come from if you're just like open to letting new people uh kind of into your life. So it transformed CXO, as you all know. We build sound businesses through systems and structure. We care very much about steady leaders because when you take that sound business that enables leadership to be more steady, right? You still need to work on the skill, which is what we're gonna talk about with you today, because they need the team health. They need those human dynamics dealt with so that they can pull the sound business and the steady leadership together and ultimately go home and be better for their families, their spouses, their communities, all the people that they're impacting, um, you know, people in the gross in the line at the grocery store, people in traffic, all of it. So this is how not only do companies you know scale and sustain, but we have that, you know, that lasting impact on the world, ideally. So I would love to talk a little bit more about, or have you guys talk a little bit more about team health and it's such a buzzy thing. Employee engagement, team culture, team health, transparency, all of these buzzwords, they make me nuts. So, what does it actually mean for you? How do you explain team health when you go into a business and start working with a new team?

SPEAKER_02 5:32

What we feel like is both the leaders have to be stabilized in the workforce, and then that has to get translated into the team. And I'm glad that you brought up the Vibe game because it is our answer to team culture and team health. And Vibe is an acronym that stands for value, integrity, belonging, and empowerment. And when Sarah and I built this company, we had a really strong leadership development arm of our organization right off the bat. I had built leadership development programs uh prior to Sarah and I being in business together. And so we came in super strong with this people uh leader program. And we truly feel like stabilizing your people leaders stabilizes your workforce, thus stabilizing your company, right? It's this very direct line to creating a great company that will retain its employees, that build relationships, not just the the product line or or the technology or whatever, whatever the company does. And we had this culture program that we were really inspired about. We're both community building facilitators. We really feel that, as Sarah mentioned, that unity, bringing people together is is a key to creating longevity, both inside the workplace and and also outside of the workplace as well. And our mission is to elevate the human experience in the workplace and beyond. So we had we had this program and we thought, you know, as you kind of mentioned, Kristen, it can be kind of like ambiguous. Like, what do these things actually mean in practice? How do we do them? What is the action behind these things? And the vibe game actually came out. We thought, let's gamify our culture program so that we can give it legs and the people can actually go, oh, that's how you create a good, healthy, thriving team. And it's really a program based on sourcing the community because you know it's not just leaders that have this information and wisdom, it's all of us that have it. The game and the program is really built on how to bring every voice into the room and ask, well, how do we value each other? What does that even mean? How do we take the values that we say we believe in and bring them into practice and actually say, these are the things that we actually live and breathe by? Integrity is all about accountability. How are we holding people accountable? And it can't be from just a punitive, you didn't do what you said you were gonna do, therefore you're getting written up. It's really about how do I hold myself accountable? How do we hold each other accountable as a group? How does the leader hold themselves accountable in the face of their um employees when things don't go well, right? And it's like what Brene Brown says is like rumbling with vulnerability, is what she says. And that's really kind of the key of saying, hey, I messed up, or hey, I'm nervous about this new product launcher, or hey, whatever it is that that a leader can show that they're also accountable is is incredibly important. And belonging is how we are inner, it's actually that unity part in action is is how do I know that I'm belong on this team, that who I am actually matters, not just what I do, not just my my job title or the tasks that I do every day. It's how we how we are together, how do we create that camaraderie and the community and all of that? And what that leads to is empowerment. If I feel empowered to do the job, that I feel respected on my team and that I'm actually lifted and I'm lifting other people, I matter, I know that. Then I'm gonna be like all in. And so that's really how this whole how our vibe program at least got created.

SPEAKER_01 9:26

That's a great explanation. And I I appreciate you breaking down the acronym, and there were a few things in there that stood out to me as you were as you were going through that explanation. So one of the things we have in common that we work on with clients is that establishment of core values. And without those, I'm really curious if you've ever walked into a client where they didn't have core values documented in some fashion. How do you handle that to check that the V, like the values box in the game? What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

It looks like exploration. So the playing of the game is um it's it's it's communication games. They're really fun to do, but and it draws out, like Kelly said, every voice in the room so that you can start to build on collective wisdom. But through dialogue and playing these communication games, you inquire. So what are the values? You know, if they haven't been established, if they're not, or if they're in an employee handbook hidden and people don't really know what they are, they don't, they didn't read the handbook, you know, they they're not living in the organization. They're just, you know, kind of were created once upon a time and kind of discarded, not integrated. You know, we'll pull out questions and games and communication games that will draw out what those are in real living form. Like, how does this look? What are the values and how do they show up in my job? How do they show up in this community? How do they show up in this organization? And start to really, like Kelly said, you know, rumble with these ideas. And it's it's through dialogue and relationship building that they actually come to life. And so things come to life in the vibe game.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

That's really, that's really fun. There's something about that difference when you walk into a company between like the core values even being like on the wall somewhere, right? Behind glass or in a frame or stickers or whatever it is, there's such a difference between that and that living, breathing embodiment of them. And it is also interesting because if we if we don't get a little bit prescriptive as to what the values are, it's amazing how the culture can take on a life of its own. And through things like one person being in charge of the hiring process, right? And all of a sudden their values become very evidentiary in the in the values of the new people coming into the company, or strong uh voices inside of the team, right? Behavioral like norms and cultural norms that start to establish themselves. And then all of a sudden, our definitions of not only our core values, but things like accountability are changing in the business. So that was one of the other words that you used quite a few times in talking. And I couldn't agree with you more. There's a place for accountability, obviously in every organization. And I have found there's some businesses that like they beat you over the head with a bat, you know, with the word accountability on it. And it's like, do you know what it means? Like, and what does it mean here more than anything? Because it is interestingly a very subjective word, highly open to interpretation, depending on if it's coming from the owner of the company or the guy in the sales seat or someone on the front lines. Yeah. That definition of what that means can be quite varied in my experience. Let's talk a little bit about that. Give us some examples of what you've seen accountability look like in some of the different companies that you've worked in.

SPEAKER_02 13:05

Yeah, I appreciate what you said, Kristen, about it being subjective. And I think that's why that definition, well, it has to be defined, but in action. And accountability and integrity. Integrity too can be kind of a it can be a prickly word sometimes. Yeah. Oh, integrity, you know, and and it, and again, it's kind of subjective sometimes. Um, one person's integrity is maybe not another person's integrity. It's this agreement around how we'll behave, what we'll do, and when that doesn't happen, what happens next, right? And when you were talking, I thought about accountability as it relates to things like psychological safety, for instance. Psychological safety is another one of those buzzwords. So, you know, I'm can you define it real quick for us if we're not familiar with that? Absolutely. Psychological safety is not being afraid to speak up. You feel like you can bring your whole self to work, that you're not having to shift and put on this other mask to go to work because you think that's the way in which you're supposed to be and behave. So there's like an ex it's kind of a belonging thing too. You can kind of pull that in a little bit. But as psychological safety relates to something like accountability, I actually know that if I make a mistake, I can show up and say, Hey, I dropped the ball here. I apologize, and this is what I'm gonna do to fix it, or hey, I'm not sure how to fix it and I need my team to show up for me in this moment to help me figure out how to fix it. And then on the other side, it's candor is rewarded, right? It's it's like not just compliance, right? Because a lot of times we'll just go with like compliance is the one thing that's being rewarded. But when candor is rewarded and the leader steps up and is like, hey, I really appreciate you bringing this to our attention, yeah, that's tricky. We're gonna have to figure this out. This isn't gonna be easy, but hey, let's make sure that we're all rallying around this problem so that we can come up with a solution. It's the sense of it being okay to make a mistake, right? To fail and make a mistake and feel safe enough to actually bring it up. It's not only about like being like nice or or you know, even just kind of like liking each other. That's not really what psychological safety is. It's actually being able to show up in the face of things like mistakes, conflict, knowing that what you're you're not gonna get just totally punitively sidelined immediately because you've made one mistake. And so then, okay, I'm never gonna make another mistake, right? I'm never gonna bring it up again. It's not safe for me to do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

So I'm just gonna like well, that's the other side of it, right? So I think you've got leaders out there that are like, I want people to come forward and just admit when they screw up and we'll figure it out together. And then when you're actually in the business and you're working with that person, yeah, their talk track doesn't always match their walk track, right? And so I think there's something that people desire there. They want to feel like, man, if I screw up, I just want to be able to go to my boss and be like, my bad, I won't let it happen again. Here's what I'm gonna do to make sure it doesn't happen again. Because we're human, perfection is an impossible goal line. So if that's the goal, everyone's perfect and never screws up, that's not gonna work. There is a segment of the leadership population that says that they will be that cool leader who accepts that person and helps them move forward from it. And I think the reality is in many cases, there's so much going on. I can't believe this person dropped the ball. And there's still a level of judgment that's happening. So when I think about putting these tools in place, my encouragement to leaders is it's one thing to preach this stuff and get our people even playing with these tools, but our level of self-awareness just has to get dialed so far up from where it is. So that concept of crummy first draft, is it Kim Scott? Is that in radical candor as well? I'm trying to remember where that, or if that's a Brene Brown thing. Anyway, it doesn't matter. We're allowed to have the crummy first draft as a manager and be like, oh, that's really frustrating. I wish that that person hadn't dropped the ball in that way. But how we then like lead with love and circle our arms around them and actually be like, okay, yes, that sucks. I agree with you. But the most important thing is that you did come to me and let's figure it out together. Like the let's figure it out figure it out together and the willingness to like take a beat and be that person for your team member. That's that little moment where how you respond first is just going to make or break that relationship because those can be flashbold moments. And I say that as being on the other side of it. And I'm sure you ladies have stories too of companies you worked at where something happened and that just slice of feedback that you got, that initial reaction and then the gut punch of it.

unknown 18:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

I mean, those things hit me like it was yesterday. I still recall them. Um, and they're formative, and it impacts how I remember that leader that I worked for, how I treated them and interacted with them from that point forward in our relationship. Unless you have a process in place or tools in place to be able to work through some of that, I think those can be really formative for people in how they're led and managed and how they relate to their managers. So I don't know, that's those are some things that were standing out to me because I'm always looking at like, yes, we can tell our people to do these things, but then as leaders, like, what do we need to do differently? So I don't know if there's a question in there, but I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Well, I think what you're pointing to is also leading through role modeling. And, you know, Kelly mentioned it a little bit, like um recog like pointing out or speaking to your own vulnerabilities or your own mistakes. And, you know, a lot of innovation comes through happy mistakes. And so, you know, people aren't taking calculated risks, and sometimes, yes, making mistakes, they aren't going to find those new innovations. And so there is a certain level of risk taking that needs to be allowed or approved of, and that's where the leader can really um lead the way by modeling that type of behavior or acknowledging their own mistakes and hey, this is what we did about it, and it the outcome ended up better. You know, those types of stories exist all the time. I mean, Thomas Edison said he made uh over a thousand attempts at the light bulb, right? He doesn't talk about it like mistakes. He says, he says that that was just a thousand plus ways not to make a light bulb. Um yeah, what a great perspective, huh? But he would never have gotten there if he wasn't willing to experiment, you know, takes take risks and try. And I think, you know, in a lot of organizations, they want the innovation, but they have to encourage that calculated risk taking and also, like Kelly said, how to own it if it didn't work, but also not to not to have a punitive um relationship with that, so that we can we can grow and and learn and learn what not to do, but also potentially find new innovations in that process because that often is how innovation is made. It's not through being perfect. Being perfect means you're repeating the same thing over and over again without mistakes. It's not doing anything new. It's not, you know, it's not growing and learning and developing.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Can we play with this like in a really specific way? Because I think there's many listeners who are like, yes, I want to trust people, I want them to take risk, I want them to innovate, I want them to try and fail. But again, the subjectivity of where is the line? Where, like, where's that edge of the envelope that we can't have people pushing past? So, can you give us some really good practical guidance on how you establish risk tolerance, risk thresholds, and permission, you know, to play in those ways inside of teams? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 21:27

I think it starts with the leadership team and getting real clear about what it is that is a safe exploration, safe fails, all of that, and what's not. And what do we do prior to the what's not? Every organization has to have a line, right? You can't just be like, yeah, it's totally fine to fail and not do your job, or it's it's totally fine to repeat these things. It's it's actually not at all about that, right? We have to understand. Well, what is it before? Like you mentioned. So how do we get to that line? And I think that the organization is who gets to answer that. The leadership has to understand where that line is. And then this, and then the leaders have to be trained in how to coach so that nobody is going over the line, that the our number one expectations are clearly stated, that employees know exactly where the line is, if possible, right? And sometimes that line changes, right? There's variables and we can't just engineer every single thing. That's we're humans, and so that's kind of impossible. But if we have a general understanding of that, but then tools and ways that a leader can help that employee navigate that either it's accountability or work integrity or product or whatever the whatever that is that's happening that maybe isn't working or hasn't worked in the past, or they drop the ball, that there is a way that they can come to the table and say, all right, we're gonna bring some curiosity here, we're gonna see what what actually is the problem. You know, here's here's what happened, but how did we get there? So that we're not only addressing the person who maybe made the mistake or maybe failed, but we're potentially under also uncovering maybe systemic issues that we're not aware of, right? So if the leader can start to mine those through questions and curiosity and coaching, then what can happen is we can address, or the leader can address, or the team can address the the ways in which to avoid that same problem from happening in the future. And so we feel like that that's a curiosity is actually a way that we can solve a lot of problems in in our organization. It's a pretty underutilized skill. And if the if leaders are are trained on cultivating that understanding when something doesn't happen rather than saying you are wrong and bad, don't do it again. Okay, well, that we might need more context, right? We might not actually know why they failed at that. And it could be a systemic problem, you know, not necessarily a personality one, which I think sometimes leaders and when I was a leader, I certainly, as especially a new leader, I would just sort of make a judgment and I just pass the judgment on the person and later on realize, oh shoot, that wasn't the problem. This the system is the problem.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, we talk a lot about attack the problem, not the person. Right. I'm sure you ladies have used similar language inside of the companies that you've worked with. And when you talk about setting those expectations, you know, up to that line that we don't want to cross, you know, to protect the company and the culture and the product and the service, etc., what are some of the variables people should be thinking about as they're trying to wrap their head around, like, where is my risk tolerance with my team? What are the variables that you encourage them to look at?

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Yeah, I mean, I think every company is different in that, you know, there might be there might be standards that have to be absolutely duplicated, and those are the non-negotiables, right? I think that that's where what Kelly was saying is the leadership has to define, like, where do we get to be innovative? Where could we be expanding? Where could we be thinking outside the box or pushing, you know, the envelope and being able to define that where it doesn't cost too much money or the mistakes are, you know, they're they're they're in the play box. They're not necessarily out in the world yet. You know, these are these are the trial and error arenas. And I think that has to be defined, and it's it's not going to be the same for every company. Some companies are gonna have very strict standards that just don't have wiggle room. Um, and then there's other areas, you know, and it depends on the team that you're on. It could be a creative team. That's an area. Yes, let's start thinking outside the box. You know, let's let's try on, like, because we end up as humans, just like our brain, we end up in these neurological highways, these pathways that we've been doing the same thing or thinking the same way we've always thought, and that can become groupthink. So it's not just me that thinks in these same highways, and I can't even think differently. You know, I've been doing it for so long, but you can have an entire team doing that. So sometimes, you know, you need to find the areas where could we break out of our thinking patterns into a new way, a new concept. You know, where where are we allowed to be innovative and then focus there on, okay, this is the play box for experimentation. And yes, you can make mistakes because some of those mistakes are going to lead to innovations. It might not be the exact path we use, but there was something in there, something about that that we now have access to that we couldn't see before, a new perspective.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

That's really insightful. I think the point about compliance and standards is really important because you know, we work with a lot of companies and like professional services and trades, where yeah, you can wiggle in some areas, but sometimes it's pretty, it's a pretty fine line there. So yeah, I'm thinking even like, you know, to your point, playing in a sandbox where it's safe, where there's not impact to financial or customer experience or safety, right? And uh putting some of those parameters on it, really, really useful. So your approach is different from traditional team building because you bring in more of this experiential work. So, um, can you walk us through a little bit more of kind of how your approach is uniquely different from traditional team building?

SPEAKER_02 27:59

So, when we do our lead program and our leadership program, our goal is for the the leaders to walk away with practical, usable, and practiced processes, strategies, and techniques so that they can literally go into their job and use today or tomorrow when they're back with their team. And we believe strongly in learning by doing, especially for adult learners. We we need to practice those skills, right? So that all of our leadership program is it's like learn something and do it. Learn it, do it, learn it, do it. So that's how it is through the throughout all of our trainings. We are heavily experiential. And the same goes for our vibe culture program. We made this program so it has an experiential groundedness to it, so that we actually know what we're doing when we take it out into our organizations, right? And the vibe game is kind of what we call like a little tap on the shoulder. It's us getting us in this conversation, right? It's questions that of things that actually matter that we don't talk about. We're not talking about necessarily how to create a good sense of belonging in our organization, right? We just don't, it's just not something that we think about or or talk about all of the time. And so we use this questions, we use different pair share and group processing, storytelling to start to uncover some of these uh ways that we can um operate and and and actually do things in action. We take that a step farther in our vibe workshop, which is like a really customized uh service. So we start with the assessment. We got to know where we're starting from here. You know, we have to actually know what the lay of the land is, how are we interacting? What's happening here? And then through the course of us discovering with the leadership what they really want to accomplish, at the very end of that set, we we what we call it is at the first part we check the vibe. So we're really just kind of seeing what is what is so? What how are we interacting? What are the things that are um working well, what are what's not working well? And then the second part of that workshop is creating the vibe. What do we want to do? What how are we going to behave behave or interact with each other? What are the gaps maybe that we have that we need to fill? Maybe it's through leadership, maybe it's through more targeted efforts around who we hire, things like that that you know become a lot more practical. And then they walk away with the vibe that they created. And that that way they can either have us or someone else come in and help them integrate that vibe, or they can take it and figure out how that works with them. So it's really this let's do it together process that we really feel is help sustain something. So it's not just like, oh, we had a nice workshop. It's like, oh, well, these are the steps that we could take in order to make this vibe actually possible. Sarah, do you want to expand on that a little?

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yeah, I would. I'd like to just touch a little bit also on our integrate the vibe program. So, you know, a lot of people might just want a workshop. They want to take the roadmap we created together as a as a as a team with them and try to implement that themselves. But we do have an integration program, and that looks like meeting with each of the teams and actually doing the integration so that those are somewhat like living values, you know. So now it's not just the words on the wall or this is the vibe we created. They become living, and it does take integration, it does take awareness, self-awareness, and team awareness to do that. And and we have a process for how that happens, but it's also customized because it's based on the vibe that has been created from that workshop.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

So that makes a ton of sense because even core values can look different at the leadership team level. There's nuance, right? Even if they're the same set of core values defined the same at a department level versus a leadership level, can require a bit of like creativity and different language, just slightly, right? Not departing from the essence of it, but it can mean something a little different to a frontline position versus an executive level position. So I love the integration piece. I think that's so important. And I appreciate your comment about you know, we don't want it to be a flash in the pan. We want it to be sustainable, right? Um and I think that that's where you get the buy-in is when you're deeply investing at the department level, just as much as you're investing at the leadership level. I think companies are accustomed to seeing their leadership teams go off site, do a team building thing, right? Take a weekend, you know, dinners with spouses, all the things. And the companies that actually take the time to do more of that at the department level, and I'm sure in your experience too, right? It just gets stickier and it's really threaded all the way through. And even though we have slight microcosms and nuance to culture in those departments, there's still that through point that like that thread that pulls through all of the departments, all of the teams together, which is super powerful. So let's talk a little bit about when you go into teams that maybe they're not quite as healthy as they think. So as a leader of a team, I want to think my team is awesome. They all care about each other, they know each other, they understand why their work matters, they know what success looks like. Like, I want to say all of those things with confidence. But I think there are also some warning signs that a team may not be as healthy as the leadership even thinks or the owner may think. So, what are some of those warning signs that leaders should be looking out for and go, oh, I may have a problem here?

SPEAKER_02 33:58

There's a few, actually, that that would be really good to for leaders to start tuning their listening to. One is burnout. It kind of can come in all these different flavors because it could be burnout, just one person could be burnout because they're having like personal and professional things kind of collecting. But really, when you start listening for things like, I just can't get my job done, or I don't understand the workflows, or am I doing that, or is you know, Sarah doing that? I thought I was doing that. These things kind of create this like confusion, frustration, and they're not necessarily being communicated directly in a direct way to a leader. Is I'm burnt out is not typically what yeah, that's not the talk track. That's not the language that they use, right? It's it's like this maybe it's even like lack of autonomy. Like, I don't feel like I can do the job that I was hired to do. These things that might help understand a leader to understand I wonder if my team is actually getting burned out. I wonder if we don't have enough resources, or maybe we we aren't auditing our workflows properly and often enough to make sure that things are actually running as efficiently as possible. Because Sarah mentioned, and you too, is like we get into this rut of like, oh, it's always done this way, and we don't want to go outside the box, but we don't we kind of see some of the stuff happening, but it's it's like hard to kind of what is it? What's actually happening?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

Yeah, almost too close to it, right?

SPEAKER_02 35:37

Yeah. And that burnout can then lead to either the disengagement that we were talking about earlier, or potentially even retention issues, right? Of just losing employees and not totally understanding the reason why we're losing them. And burnout could absolutely be a problem with that. Disengagement can be a problem.

SPEAKER_00 35:58

I'd like to um highlight lack of clarity. It shows up a lot. We were in a training last month, and you know, we were we were training on a different topic. As we were having discussions with the participants, one lady mentioned that there was a strong lack of clarity, role clarity going on because she thought she was given a project. She was full force in, you know, probably a third of the way into the project. She comes to a new meeting with uh new people come to the meeting that hadn't been in the original meeting and finds out that another person, another employee was also given the project. She didn't even know. Oh gosh. Yeah. They're both unaware of each other doing the same project. So then she throws her arms up in the air and she says, Well, I guess he's doing it. I, you know.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

By the way, that would be a great company to refer our team to shameless plug for Transform CXO. I don't even care. Because that's exactly the kind of stuff that we deal with. So we think about that complement of sound businesses and steady leaders. So we exist to like eliminate those types of problems completely in the organization. So sorry, that's my commercial. I won't put one at the end of the episode. That's that's what it is. So that's too funny. Yeah, such a common, common thing. And I think about can you like put yourself in that person's shoes for a second? How devalued do you feel and frustrated? And like, is my time not worth anything? Is my expertise not valued here? Like, what am I doing? Right? That is not fertile ground for employee engagement or even just general job satisfaction and like treating humans like humans. So, and and again, is it malicious? No. Like we always assume positive intent. We got there because someone probably pulled the trigger too quick or thought they were doing the right thing. And I've been there too, right? You think that you're doing the right thing and pointing someone in the right direction, and there's a misstep. And notice how we're coming full circle back to the accountability of just like, oops, my bad, let's fix it. Walk alongside me and let's do it better. So that's a really good call out. Just those types of um mismanagement of um our people and helping them understand like where they're sitting, what they should be working on, um, some of those basics. What are some other things? I'm curious if there's anything extreme you've seen. I'll share a personal example and then I want to hear your crazy stories. We won't name any companies, of course. We will protect um, you know, the names of the alleged innocent. But there was a company that I was working with, and we were doing some strengths-based leadership and employee engagement work using Gallup products, which is something that I'm trained in. This was years ago. There's always fence sitters, right? So there's the skeptics, and you've probably seen it too. You go into a business, you were brought in by either the owner or the leadership team, but you don't, you weren't necessarily the choice of the entire staff that's now involved in this process of what you're working on, right? And so um, you've got your fence sitters, you've got your skeptics, you've got your people who are all in, like super eager to, you know, be good participants in the process. You have this wide spectrum. And I had one guy who like refused to accurately take the Gallup Strengths Finder assessment. It's now called Clifton Strengths, but back then it was called Strengths Finder. He refused to take it. So he took the whole assessment and he just put right down the middle on every single item. So the first time he took it, we got a notification like, hey, we didn't get a really accurate sampling of what you did. So I had to reach out to him. I'm like, hey there, so and so. Like, would you mind taking this again? Here's another code. Um, it looks like me, you know, here's some recommendations, you know, make sure you're in a quiet environment, distraction-free, whatever. And uh took it again, same thing. So we're getting like these basically BS responses for him. And so in the workshop, we're going around and talking about what you know felt accurate and relatable inside of our results. And he's like, absolutely nothing. And I'm like, wow, that's really interesting. Like, that's actually the first time I've ever heard that. So um, he ended up, he ended up being very combative and ended up walking out of the session at one point. And then he quit the next day, which I have to say was probably not my fault. Like that was a storm that was brewing well in advance of Kristen showing up on the scene. But it was a little fun to just kind of know, like, oh, this person is going to basically just be, you know, crummy about the entire process. And I guess we're going toe-to-toe today. It was a bit interesting. And everyone else is in the room, like, wow, yeah, he's gotta go. So, and he did of his own volition, although he probably should have been gone much sooner than that. Anyway, that's my crazy story of someone like basically trying to fight me over Strength Finder. But I would love to hear like, have you had experiences like that where your involvement actually further highlighted maybe an underlying issue, and a company did have to take drastic action or someone took their own, you know, drastic action?

SPEAKER_02 41:05

Yeah, I was working with a company that it was we were working with the VP group, and these are obviously very highly talented, very smart people. It was an engineering company. They had been there for a really, really long time. Most of them had been for years and some have decades, and they've been acquired and you know, all this stuff that they were just like, you know. And so all these behaviors really were pretty ingrained in the way that they were acting. And we were doing a conflict resolution council because there were companies like most people, we just don't get conflict resolution skill sets in our, you know, in education or any other.

SPEAKER_01 41:49

No, it's usually school hard knocks, right?

SPEAKER_02 41:51

Unless you're going through it, you don't get trained on it. Yeah, and so like bad behavior, resentments, like all this stuff. And he brings up an issue and gets really heated about it. And it was this moment for actually, it pushed me personally to become a better facilitator in the moment because he was directing a lot of the energy towards me because I was the one that was like holding this, I was holding this base, I was holding this opportunity for this stuff to come out. And so, you know, on some level I'm asking for it, you know. And he really I was able to just hold that space for him because clearly he had been holding on to this stuff for a really long time, and he was pretty frustrated about it. And I think he probably expected me to just back off and back down from that and just like let him be in his his behavior and walk out or whatever. But I really stayed with him in the moment, and I allowed through questions to really start to get to the heart of what it was he was actually upset about. And what happened, I guess the drastic thing that happened, and of course, I don't see necessarily past where I'm I'm out because we're consultants, so we show up and then we leave, right? So it's it's a little hard to know like exactly what happened to him personally. But what I saw was is that he went from like really pointing his finger physically at me, even though it wasn't about me, and I got that, but he started to like actually decrease his energy, his aggression, as I was sharing the questions and asking him to engage in these techniques that we were um learning in the moment. And what was really cool about that was is that it wasn't as if he just resigned and pulled back and like you know, shut down. He actually Calmed his nervous system down and was able to address what it was he was actually upset about. Right. Now, what that team did with that, and all you know, I'm not I'm not entirely sure to be honest with you, but it is like not running from that is really hard because when somebody is like super intensely like you know, having an intense reaction, that sometimes makes us retreat because we don't want to be the reciprocant of that. Um and I think that you know, showing up or leaders showing up or senior leaders showing up to understand like how to hold that big energy is actually really important. And it's also really not that easy. It's it's actually hard. Like in that moment, I would say we had to like really hard skills to be like, all right, this is what's happening right now.

SPEAKER_01 44:54

I you know, and to your point, that person was holding on to it for so long, and because you're neutral, you're Switzerland, they can't let it out and let it like tumble upon the people that they have to work with day to day. So I'm just gonna like you know, vomit all of it on this person who is not part of my team, who's leaving later, and that's what makes it. I mean, it's it's a crappy thing, but they that's what makes you the safe place. Like you're just gonna take it and leave with it, right? Like, no, that's not how it works necessarily. So I really admire you for um facilitating it the way that you did. Now I'm thinking back 10 years ago to working with that guy, and I'm like, should I have let him? Although I did give him an opportunity to share, and he just like he literally, he was a little guy too. He sat behind a very big person and like wouldn't make eye contact with me. It was so strange. Anyhow, silly things that employees do. But I admire the way that you handled that, especially in a room of VPs where you do have people who are dealing with very high stakes, you know, deeper pressures and stresses and all of those things. Good stories and um just really illustrates the value of what you do to provide that space for people to get the stuff out that's been sitting below the surface. That's really what it is, right? Because we all have that stuff. Every company, you know, we joke, every company has issues, like issues aren't bad, they're just issues, they're just things that have to get dealt with. So when we think about, you know, kind of putting a bow on this and thinking about business owners out there who are reflecting on their own companies and what the culture might look like. What's one like either conversation you would encourage them to go have this week? Or, you know, how would they maybe broach the idea of this with their fellow team members? Like, what's a good next step? If people are thinking, like, gosh, this might be something I need to look into, be curious about, deal with, what's the first step for them to take?

SPEAKER_00 46:48

I mean, they're absolutely welcome to reach out to us. We absolutely love this, these topics. We love to talk about, you know, we design everything from a custom perspective. So, you know, we might have an entire leadership program, but we also customize everything for the clients that approach us, and that that really comes through conversation. So reach out if you're interested in this, but also check in with your team. I mean, one of those other warning signs that we didn't talk about was if people aren't willing to talk in a meeting, if you're like, hey, I'm gonna get every voice in the room and we're gonna go around and you hear that people are not opening up or they're giving the shortest answer that they can give, you know you have an issue on your team. And that's where some maybe a vibe game, or um if you have a manager that has high turnover, that's a leadership, you know, there's some leadership training needed there. So there are places to look in your organization where there's turnover, where there's large disengagement, or low psychological safety. All of that can be addressed through essential people leader training skills, and then also that the culture, building that the culture so that people do feel psychologically safe to speak up and give their voice, you know, share their perspective. There's a lot of collective wisdom in all organizations, and and you're really missing the boat if you're not collecting that that collective wisdom and really like creating a culture that that draws that out from each other.

SPEAKER_01 48:26

Really well said, Sarah, and we'll wrap things up there. Kelly and Sarah, thank you both so much for being here today and sharing your wisdom with us, and we'll make sure that all of your contact information is in the show notes. For anyone who's interested in learning more. Thank you for all of the leaders and business owners listening today. This is your invitation to pay closer attention. If your team is quiet in meetings, if work is being duplicated, if people seem burned out, or if accountability feels heavy instead of healthy, those are the signals. They're not failures, they're just issues that deserve a little time and attention. So we'll include Sarah and Kelly's information in the show notes so that you can learn more about Ekata Group and the work they do with leadership teams. And if this episode made you realize that your business needs more clarity, structure, or operating rhythm, you can learn more about Transform CXO in the show notes as well. Thanks for listening to Unlock. Here's to Let's Grind, More Growth, and Real Freedom for You know, you can't get a little bit of a