Toxic Culture? Check Out Your Culture Advantage Instead

From hidden messages to everyday interactions to structures and policies, culture has a significant impact on how people feel, collaborate, and perform. 

In this inaugural episode, Dr. Michael Baran shares about his background and his motivation for starting this podcast to help you build a culture that supports all people, catalyzes effective collaboration, and leads to thriving organizations.

Transcript

Toxic Culture? Check Out Your Culture Advantage Instead

Is your company struggling, navigating through high turnover, toxic leadership, or a culture that's holding your team back from reaching its full potential? Well, you're not alone. So here's your host and guide, Michael Baran.

Michael Baran: Hello everyone, and welcome to the inaugural episode of the Culture Advantage Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Baran. Now you might be thinking, what do you know about culture Michael Baran? I'm gonna get there. But first I wanna tell you a story about culture. When I was doing my cultural anthropology field work, I lived for about two years in a small town in Brazil, in Baia State.

The very first thing that happened when I got there was that I got Dengue fever that was not Von, but that is not this story. After recovering from Dengue Fever, some people I met [00:01:00] invited me to a party. Great. I showed up early, probably around 9:00 PM Super fun. Great to meet people into this town. Great to get into the swing of things with my Portuguese speaking, which was really good at this point, but not perfect as you'll see.

So probably around midnight. I was getting tired. Remember still recovering from Dengue fever. So I told my new friend who had invited me that I was gonna leave, and she said in Portuguese, the literal translation of Don't go, it's early. Right? Don't go. It's early. Okay, I thought I can do this. So I stayed still fun, but around probably 2:00 AM it seemed like everyone was leaving.

And again, I told my new friend, I'm gonna go. Thanks for having me. And again, she said. Don't go, it's early. Well, if there's one thing about cultural anthropologists is that they really wanna be [00:02:00] respectful and appropriate. So again, I stayed now probably around 3:30 AM I really couldn't, I could barely stand up anymore.

And this time when she said, don't go, it's early. She was yawning too. And it sure seemed like that family wanted to go to bed. I said. No thank you very much for the party and I laughed. Now of course, as I got to learn more about the subtlety of the way Portuguese was spoken in this town, I realized don't go.

It's early, is not to be taken. Literally don't go. What it really means is, I appreciate you coming. Right. So I was a total jerk way overstaying my welcome. And the worst part is before I even realized this, I had a party. And when people said they were gonna go, I just said, okay. So kind of a total jerk on both ends.

Now think about a [00:03:00] workplace context and think about how many times we run into conflicts or resentments or people thinking someone is a jerk because of subtle things like this. Whether it's because of cultural differences like this. Or because it's differences in life experience. Think about a man who's blind walking down a hall at work and people silently flattening themselves up against the wall to get out of his way, and they think they're being helpful and nice, but it makes him feel bad, like he's not normal or like he's a burden.

And what would feel better to him would be that person saying hi, because then he could navigate the hall better or ask them a question about work, right? Or consider a black woman who told me she feels bad when people so often tell her that she's so professional. They think they're giving a compliment, but she's left [00:04:00] wondering professional as opposed to what?

As opposed to who, and even these subtle interactions are impacting the culture at your organization. Right, what gets spoken up about what gets left unsaid, and that's just one tiny piece of it. Culture impacts a lot. Whether people are feeling engaged or disengaged, valued or not. Whether you can keep your best people or not, how much you can be innovative and efficient and high performing.

We'll talk a lot more about what culture is in the next episode, but for now, I wanna tell you more about me and this podcast. Overall, I've been thinking and working with cultural issues for about 30 years now. I got my doctorate in cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I taught on cultural topics at the University of Michigan and [00:05:00] also at Harvard University.

I've conducted rigorous and applied cultural research with two different think tanks in a lot of different countries, and I've partnered slash consulted with organizations of all types and sizes, all industries, for almost two decades. I've thought a lot about culture. As a social scientist. I tried to understand how it all works, what culture actually is, how it works with human minds, where it goes wrong and how to make it better.

And then as someone in the thick of it, working with hundreds of organizations. I'm not just talking abstractly. I'm gonna tell you about strategies and tactics that are actually gonna work with your colleagues, with your teams, with your collaboration, with your leadership, with your own wellness and mental health, with your performance, maybe even with your friendships and relationships outside of [00:06:00] work.

Certainly. Not everyone's coming to this podcast from the same place. You'll come from different levels in an organization. You'll be looking to solve different problems. You'll have had different lives and different experiences with work. No matter who you are. If you listen regularly, you're gonna build a deep understanding.

And the practical skills to improve the culture in your workplace? To be a more culturally humble person, I would say, to make everyone around you feel more valued, to think more deeply about society and our complicated world, and to improve your business or organization and its actual results. It sounds like a big promise.

I know. But I've seen it happen, and that's why I feel confident in making those claims. It's, it sounds sappy, but I see the light bulbs going off in people's faces. [00:07:00] From the stage where I speak, I see the tears of recognition and pain from people who have been feeling exclusion. Cons. Ly in their workplaces and maybe felt like they haven't known how to address it or that anyone was listening.

I see the relief and the excitement on people's faces when I can provide a structure and a clarity to something that was felt, and people knew it was really important, but it felt kind of muddled or unclear, or seemed unsolvable. So why start a podcast then? I will admit to you, it was not something I necessarily saw myself doing.

But recently I was giving a keynote talk at a conference for dental professionals, you know, dentists, hygienists, office staff, and it was one of those talks that I love. Because I see the boredom and the tiredness and the disinterest in people's eyes when they first enter the [00:08:00] room. I mean, you know how conferences are probably, they can be exhausting, right?

You're going to talks all day, your networking, your brain is fried. Then you have to go out to dinner, which is itself kind of work too. Maybe you drink a bit, maybe you stay out too late. Then you wake up the next day and do it all again. And then at this particular conference, you show up at Michael Baran's talk, looking a little exhausted.

But that honestly is what gets me fired up. That's my challenge. And by the end of the talk, when I see those people inspired, engaged, committed, that's what fuels me to keep doing this work. Now, at the end of this particular talk, an older woman came up to me. She took my hands. She looked me dead in the eyes and said, this work is so important.

This message is so important, and you seem like the right one to deliver it. Please [00:09:00] don't stop. And when I tell you. I teared up that that made my day, my week and my year. I'm not exaggerating. And it got me thinking about sharing the message more widely. And basically that's how I landed on a podcast, to share the insights as widely as possible to engage even more people and to scale the impact because.

Let's face it, we're living in a tricky world right now. If you're in the United States, the political divisions are causing a lot of stress, a lot of fear, a lot of hardship, a lot of confusion, a lot of difficulty connecting or talking across difference, and it's not just the US of course, going through this turmoil.

And the technologies made it so we know about things happening all over the world like we never have before. Technology's never been advancing faster, has [00:10:00] never pushed the boundaries of human interaction like AI and social media are doing, and tailored algorithms and tailored advertising. There's a lot of uncertainty.

Often the lack of knowing how to handle it all, especially for those of you who are leaders and managers of people, are you really equipped to deal with all that and the different ways it affects people's emotions, the collaboration of all those people together? People's mental and physical health, their performance of all these different people reporting to you.

It's sort of a rhetorical question. It's really hard to do. So if you're coming along on this journey with me, I commit to providing as much value for you as I can. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode, because I promise I will bring you everything I can in each and every episode.

Episodes will start short. Just me diving into specific topics that are gonna [00:11:00] fit together, kind of like puzzle pieces I may bring on guests later, but for now it's just you and me and I'm really excited to hear from you about how you're able to put some of this into practice, how it makes a difference for you, for your team, for your organization, for your life.

So be sure to check out culture advantage podcast.com. Again, culture Advantage podcast.com. On that site, you can get more information. You can download a free gift resource. You can see how to enter an exciting ultimate inclusion bundle that we're offering with a private VIP one-on-one session with me and some other incredible resources.

All of it valued around $25,000. I guess I can just tell you how to enter that now. You just do it by subscribing and leaving a review that will get you entered into the contest. Always feel free to reach out to me by asking a a question on that website or emailing me directly, [00:12:00] michael@cultureadvantagepodcast.com.

All right, see you next time for the first episode. 

So that's it for today's episode and the Culture Advantage Podcast. Head on over Apple Podcasts, iTunes, or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Michael.

Be sure to head on over to culture advantage podcast.com and pick up a free copy of Michael's gift and join us on the next episode.