In this impactful episode, Jenni Catron, Founder & CEO of The 4Sight Group, shares key insights from her new book “Culture Matters: A Framework for Helping Your Team Grow, Thrive, and be Unstoppable”. If you know what you want your culture to be, but you aren’t quite sure how to get there, you won’t want to miss this incredible episode.
You will discover:
– The relationship between transparency, clarity and trust in leadership
– Why you need to assess your culture before defining it
– What the Culture Hierarchy is and how you can use it to evolve your culture through each growth stage
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And here with us today is, I think, the high demand coach of high demand coaches, I’m a little partial because she’s also a scale architect, but she is the one and only Jenni Catron, who’s a leadership coach, author and speaker. Her passion is to cultivate healthy leaders, to lead thriving organizations. She speaks at conferences and events nationwide, seeking to help leaders develop the right clarity and confidence to lead. Well as founder and CEO of the foresight group, she consults organizations on leadership, team culture and organizational help, and with over 20 years of experience in corporate and nonprofit organizations, Jenni is passionate about helping leaders put their feet to their vision. Jenni is also the author of her brand new books, fantastic book called culture matters, a framework for helping your team grow and be unstoppable. She’s here with us today, Jenni, thanks for taking the time out of your ridiculously busy schedule. I think out of anybody I know, like you’re the busiest of busy, but, and it’s all, like, really effective. I don’t know how you do it.
Jenni Catron
I was gonna say I don’t know the I don’t know if busy is always the best, best litmus test, but yes, it’s been a full season for sure.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s unbelievably productive. Let me say it this way. The amount of things that you get done make me think that you’re really, really busy. So we’ll put it that way. But I want to dive in. There’s a couple of just amazing insights in your book that I want to explore here today, before we let folks know how they can get a copy themselves. But the first thing out of the gate that jumped out, you lay out this five part framework, and we’ll talk about that a little bit. But the first step in that process was assessing, assessing your culture. And so the question that I have for you is who, who defines what your culture actually is like. Is it what the founder thinks it is, what they think it should be? Is it the five things that are true of everyone on your leadership team? Is it what people say in exit interviews, like, who actually gets to define what the real culture of your organization is?
Jenni Catron
Gosh, Scott, that’s such a great starting point. Because I think, you know, culture kind of became an accidental passion point for me in that I think as leaders, we all aspire to a great culture, and we all assume our culture is great, or it’s at least better than we think it’s better than it actually is, because, as a leader, we hold control over it, right? Like the the experience we have, we have influence over but the reality of our culture is often quite different. And you know, we’ve all been there. We’ve been in organizations where, you know, we knew senior leadership didn’t quite know what the experience felt like throughout the organization, and then we’ve grown into the positions of leadership where you’re like, somebody shares something with you, and you’re like, what I had no idea that was how you were feeling, or that’s what’s going on, or whatever the case might be. And so one of my kind of accidental discoveries as I moved up into leadership was that getting the truth of your culture is so incredibly hard the more senior you are in the organization. And to answer your question, culture is being shaped by everybody who’s a part of the team, like everybody on the team is, is is shaping the experience of the organization. So everybody’s influencing culture. Senior leaders have a little more influence on it, you know, just because we hold a lot more decision making power and so forth, but everybody on the team is shaping the culture, and therefore they have the best understanding and clarity of what it actually is. And so when we talk about assessing our culture, it requires a humility from us as leaders to say, I really need to hear from everyone what they’re experiencing, what’s true about our culture, and that’s why that’s the first phase of our process, the assessment phase of our framework, is saying, Hey, we’ve got to assess just what’s true, what’s what’s our current reality, and the only way to do that is to make sure that everybody who’s a part of the Team is actually speaking into that and giving us perspective and understanding of what the culture feels like throughout the organization.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. Folks who’ve who’ve heard me share some of my story will know my you are here moment was a really big one, but I’m a firm believer in the fact that we have over index on our destination, right? We everyone talks about where we’re going, but very few talk. People take the time to figure out where you are, right? And so it gets crazy when you, like, start to, like, lay out the metaphor, right? So it’s like, if I want to get to Kansas City, right? And, and I’m in Atlanta, and I ask you how you get to Kansas City, and you say, you go south, right? And I start going south. I’m not going anywhere close to Kansas City, right? But organizations all the time. And so there’s an excerpt in your book. Actually pulled it out because I just captured it so well, all right. So it says you can’t map the route to your destination if you don’t know where you are. Your dream as a leader is to have a team of people on a mission with you. There’s not. Thing better than winning with great people, but you wake up every morning worrying about the hard conversation you need to have the challenging personality that keeps testing your patients, or the wonderfully sweet person who is grossly incompetent. You have a vague idea of what great culture looks like, but you’re at a loss at how to get there. Jenni, especially for folks that are in that like stage three, stage four of what we call the founders evolution that that, you know, reluctant manager, disillusioned leader. I can’t think of a more accurate description and and so again, how do we really get to the bottom of assessing, how do we get to the bottom of understanding where we are so we really can start to make progress toward the destination.
Jenni Catron
Yeah, I love that. You mapped that out like that, because it is true. It’s like, if you don’t know where you are, how can you get to where you want to go? And most leaders will have this kind of idea of what great culture looks like. But the thing that I found was none of us know how, like we will hear the ideas of great cultures, and we’ll, but we, but we kind of put it to the back burner because we’re like, Well, I don’t know exactly what to do with that, outside of do a staff fun day or add a few perks. And you know, hope that makes everything better. But the the reality is culture. My definition of culture is clarity of who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission. And so that’s our starting place. Is we’ve got to bring clarity to who we are, what’s unique, what’s distinct about us as an organization now that includes your mission, that includes your vision of that, that idea of where you want to go, and it’s the distinctiveness about your business. What makes you different from the business similar business across town, or similar organization across town. What are those distinctives? And the challenge for us, especially at those those stages of the founders evolution, is it’s mostly intuitive, right? Like at up to this point of our leadership journey as a founder, we kind of instinctively know what’s true. We know who we are, and we know how we want to work together to achieve that mission. And so we’re going off of instinct. Every decision we’re make, we’re making, every how we’re interacting with our team. It’s usually quite relational, and it’s very intuitive. The problem is that you’re expecting everybody on your team to interpret that you’re expecting everybody to kind of just catch it and kind of understand right, who we are and how we work together. So when we talk about, how do we, how do we assess, first of all, we’ve got to be really clear. Bring that clarity to who we are and how we work together. So making sure that you’re saying, Hey, this is this, you know, you’re starting to give that North Star, and then from there, you, you’re, you’re, then you’re assessing, okay, are we actually living into that? Like, are we actually, the more clarity I bring to who we are and how we work together, the more that’s my starting point then for going, Okay, how close are we to that, right? Like, that’s, you know, that’s our that’s our litmus test for, how do we are we actually living into the culture we want?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, so good. So I’m very interested to hear what you had to say to this, because one of the things that I’ve seen is folks will use employee churn as a proxy for for health, right? Sure, and and so you’ll have folks that have very little churn, you know, single digit percentages and nothing, because no one leaves, right? We’ve got a great culture. Is that true?
Jenni Catron
Great question. I wish it were true. It might be telling of you have a culture that the people who have been there a long time are completely comfortable with. So then my question would be, are you actually living into that mission? Right? Like, how on mission? Are you, you know, if you’ve got people who are not leaving and they’re staying, is it because they are really rallied around. Like, are you? Are you seeing the results you want? That would be my question to you, is a little we don’t want an excessive amount of churn, but no no movement at all, no turnover. Also is another like, raises another like, red flag for me, of like, well, why is that? Is it that we’ve made it so comfortable that people don’t want to leave because they don’t want to be disrupted, and so I, you know, I think there’s a there’s a balance in there somewhere of too much turn, and there’s something churn going and there’s something going on that’s making people leave, not enough, not some churn, and you’re starting to go, Well, why is it that everybody’s staying and not wanting to leave? Like, what is it about that? So it’s telling you something about your culture. That’s where I would say Scott is I would put if I were, let’s say I were going into that organization and helping them assess their culture. That lack of turnover would make just make me curious. I’d say. Yeah, Okay, time to put my curiosity hat on and go, What? What’s that about? Like, why are why do people never leave? Is it that the perks are just so good? Is it that it’s just super comfortable? Is it that they actually have really remarkable leaders and they’re feeling really challenged and really motivated, but oftentimes, when I see that level of of people just hunkering down, it tells me we’re playing it safe, and we’re probably not on mission, yeah, but I’d be curious. You probably have some insights on that as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
I think it’s so true. I think there’s a whole conversation there about treadmill and how, how, how all those things fit together. But I really couldn’t agree more, and I love the insight of that question, like, how are your results? And as I was thinking about it, thinking about the handful of clients that I’ve had that have kind of been in that trap, every single one of them brought me in because they weren’t getting the results that they wanted, right, and every single one of them had some kind of culture dysfunction that was going on. So I want to make this a little bit more kind of granular practical for folks, because in your book, you laid out, I remember the first time I saw you teach this. This blew my mind, but the hierarchy of culture needs, right? Yeah. And so I want to overlay this idea of churn and in this culture of needs, because I think it’s a really helpful diagnostic tool. I want to see what you have to think about it. So level one, if I’m not mistaken, basic needs. And maybe you can explain that for us a little bit here in a second. But what I was thinking is, if your best people, not the ones that you want to leave, but like the ones you wish didn’t leave, right or at least kind of middle up if they’re leaving or disengaging because of compensation, you can do whatever you want north of that and it’s not going to matter. Is that true?
Jenni Catron
That’s right, that’s right. Yeah, that’s exactly right. So the hierarchy of the culture, hierarchy of needs, that’s in the book, was really built on this idea that there are things we need to provide as leaders in order for team members to fully flourish or thrive inside the organization and as leaders, we want them all thriving like we want everybody thriving, fully engaged, living out their personal passions alongside the mission, et cetera. And what I found over and over is that there were often just core needs that team members had. And the thing that was really fascinating to me, as I was kind of parsing all this out, was the relationship between when leaders provide a level of clarity and basic needs. And I’ll unpack that a little bit more in a minute, the level of trust it creates that leads to some of the upper levels of the hierarchy. And much like Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs, right? It’s like you have the basics of food, water, shelter, and before you can have connection and belonging. And the same thing is true in organizations, and most of the time we we aspire towards the top of the pyramid. We want the connection, we want the fulfillment. We want the psychological safety, which is kind of a fancy phrase for trust. We want all of those things inside of our teams. But the first two levels of that hierarchy are the responsibility of the leader, and like you mentioned, basic needs. Basic Needs meaning, have we clearly given them an understanding of our mission, our vision, our purpose as an organization? Are we hyper clear about who we are? Have we are we compensating them appropriately? I was working with a nonprofit recently that, you know, the inflation has, you know, taken its toll on every organization. Everybody’s had to make adjustments and salaries and things. But what they were finding is that some of their more entry level team members were struggling so much because those were the salary ranges that were feeling the pinch of the economic dynamics, and they were just having a churn at, like, you know, this more entry level parts of the organization, and some of these were really, really good hires, but they were getting poached by other companies because they were, they were stuck on basic needs, like they couldn’t more fully engage in the organization, because it was like, Can I pay my bills? Can I provide for my family, like they were just stuck at basic needs. And so those are the things that employ, or employers need to be really conscious of, is, am I hindering some of my best talent because they just need five grand more a year? Like a lot of times, this is not like, you know, budget breaking decisions for us, or they have a computer that we haven’t replaced because we’re trying to tighten up our IT budgets, yeah, and all of a sudden, their computers take in 10 minutes to boot up every morning, and they’re, you know, we’re slowing them down and frustrating them. Well, those are basic needs that we can actually help solve the broken office chair, or, you know, fill in the blank. But there’s so many things that sometimes we will have systems that, you know, create a deficit of basic needs, yeah, and we don’t know that it’s creating such a level of frustration that it’s keeping employees, you know, kind of stuck in those, you know, just those very fundamental things that help them do their job. And that was a big aha. For me, I had a organization that I was working with, and literally, it was the computer issue. And you know, the computer for this employee wasn’t supposed to be replaced for another six months, but it was, it was not working, like she was doing gymnastics to try to just get it to work every day. And you’re like, okay, at some point, like, it is not worth a $1,500 computer to watch this employee walk out the door out of frustration, right? And so that’s the kind of stuff that I think the more senior we are, the bigger our organization is, the more those things can be off our radar, and those things become, become culture busters. And so that’s a big, big thing for us to be conscious of. Is, what are our systems? How are our systems reinforcing or eroding the culture we’re aspiring to?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so good. And again, being able to just layer that on. Say, Hey, why do our people leave? And then looking at where you are in that hierarchy so powerful you mentioned several times, and you bring it up in the book, the kind of necessity around trust and the relationship between clarity and trust. But my question for you is, what’s the role of transparency in all this? Because a lot of people, especially when it comes to culture transparency, transparency, what is the relationship between clarity, trust and transparency?
Jenni Catron
That’s a great one. That’s a great one. Scott, so I think the there are certain things. There’s a there’s a discernment required from us as leaders about what to be transparent about, right? I’ll use an example that might spark another question from you. But one of the organizations that I was working with this past year, when I did the initial assessment with their organization, we had this really confusing feedback in the data, in that the data said that employees didn’t trust senior leadership, but then in the comments, the employees spoke really highly of senior Leadership, you know, from like, their level of relationship and connection with senior leaders. And I was really confused by this. I was like, what like? What is like this? Like, these things feel at odds. Well, what I found is I dug in because then I, you know, dug in deeper to kind of make sense of, okay, what, what am I seeing here? What do I need to do with this? What I found is that they, in my mind, in organizations, there are really two sides of the trust piece. There’s the competency piece and there’s the character piece. And what was happening in that organization is that the individuals had high trusted the character of their leaders, which sometimes is not always the case. And if I had to pick the two, I’d probably want that one high trust of their leader’s character so they they appreciated them as humans. They felt valued by them, you know, and they had the relational connection. They didn’t trust their competency. They didn’t trust their decision making. And then, as I dug deeper, this will get to the transparency. Piece is that they had had significant turnover in this organization over the past, like, 18 months, and the leaders had not given much reason for all the turnover, and so the the staff that were still there were feeling very fearful because they didn’t know what was leading to some of the departures, and they were they trust was eroding with their leaders because they didn’t understand the decisions that were being made particularly related to transitions within the team. Well, here’s what turned out is that the the leaders felt like they couldn’t be completely transparent about all those departures for various reasons, you know, employee confidentiality and all kinds of things, but the opportunity was for them to get clear and pride provide clarity around. Well, what is our process for? Like, if you leave staff, here’s what you can count on. And in order to kind of rebuild that trust, we said we need to provide clarity around you’re not going to be able to be transparent about every detail of key decisions. That doesn’t whether it’s whether it’s team members leaving or other key decisions. You can’t be transparent around all of them, because it’s not always appropriate for everybody to know that information at the same time. But here’s what you can count on, and this is where we pushed for here’s the process. And giving clarity of the process rebuilt the trust so that then they could be transparent in the things. They could be transparent on, but they were clear about there are going to be places where we can’t give you all the details, because it’s not appropriate. If you were the employee in that in, you know, in that scenario, you wouldn’t want everybody to know all the details of your departure. And so what I would say to you is, the more clarity we provide around what we will or won’t be transparent around, then that helps to actually lead to trust. Yes, is that? Is that kind of,
Scott Ritzheimer
No, I love that, because I think what you’re getting at there is a huge element in trust, is our ability to predict actions, right, right? I trust you if I can predict your actions. And there are various levels of that, some healthy and some not healthy, but what you’re you’re really bringing to. Light there’s is the consistency that comes right about what we will be consistent on in and of itself, even if you don’t agree with the actions, you can trust, the process you can trust the That’s right, the what’s going to happen and and then better predict its effect on you, right? Yeah. And fundamentally, like, I forget who it says, but who says this was, like, we’re all narcissists, you know, myself included and and anytime there’s organizational change, the one question everyone is asking is, what does it mean for me? That’s right. And so if you can, especially ahead of time, lay out some of the ground rules for what you can be transparent on, what you can be clear on, and you do that consistently, it’s so much easier to navigate those watchers. Yeah, you love that.
Jenni Catron
You hit it on the nail on the head. The consistency piece is, like, we want to show up as consistently as we can as leaders, and that’s why, if we can proactively say, Hey, here’s what you can expect, here’s the process, that clarity of like, Hey, here’s how we handle these scenarios, and this is what you can expect. Here’s where we’ll be as transparent as we can here’s where you know we will, we will be appropriately transparent for the situation. But the more that you can anticipate that, just like you said, and then consistently live into that. Because then I had the argument from that team was, well, every situation is different. I was like, Well, every person is different, but most of the situations we could boil down to departures. You know, there were two or three different scenarios for most of the departures in the organization. And so I said, we can create a system for here’s what to expect, you know? And and as soon as we communicated that and gave that clarity, you’re right. Everybody’s saying, you know, what does this mean for me? Well, now I know what to expect, and as I see the leader consistently play that out in, you know, the next few examples, we start to build trust, and they start to feel more comfortable and confident in the organization and the leaders.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so true. Jenni, this conversation could go on for another six hours, but I want to before I let you go. I want to, I want to tackle one more question here. You’ve actually answered it before, but one of the things I know about great leaders is that they have great ideas, and those ideas change over time as we improve. So I’d love to hear from you current context, everything that’s going on, working all this work that you’ve done in the book and helping people to implement what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
Jenni Catron
Here’s the learning that I think I’m in right now, is that the phrase I keep coming back to is that people are the point, right? That as a leader, we’re so driven, we’re so goal oriented, we want to accomplish so much, myself included. But the thing that I keep finding myself coming back to is that any great vision, any grand goal, is really irrelevant without a great team of people helping me make that happen, right, that are unified, aligned in it, and there’s so much more joy in doing good work with good people. And I think the the the growth edge for me over the years has been the more I’ve become aware of that, and I’ve lived into that reality that people are the point like that, the actual work I get to do as a leader is really to steward the talent of the people assembled to help me achieve this goal together, and it’s always in support of a mission, like we’re a team on a mission. We’re not just a social club, right? But the more that I can grasp the value of waking up every day, going people are the point, the people that are on my team, the people that we’re serving, when that’s my motivation and that’s my goal. I think that unlocks something unique in me that makes the purpose of my work so much more meaningful.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yes, I love that. A big thing that I’ve built scale architects to do is to help restore the nobility of work. And I think such a huge element of that is yes, purpose and yes, all the stuff around it, but doing good work with good people, I can’t think of a better point to end on. Is brilliant. Absolutely love it. We have just scratched the surface of one of the five big concepts that you lay out in the book. Where can folks find the book and and dive more into culture matters?
Jenni Catron
Yeah. Well, Scott, thanks so much for caring about this topic and for the work that you do to help us thrive as leaders. You know, just all the work you’re doing with scale architects and with the founders evolution is just so valuable because I’m, you know, I’m in the founders journey myself, trying to figure out, okay, what do I need next? And you’re such a resource for that. So first of all, thank you for that. The book is culture matters. You can find it anywhere books are sold. You can also go to culturemattersbook.com find all kinds of additional resources and support there. So love for you all to check it out.
Scott Ritzheimer
Excellent. We’ll get those links in the show notes so everyone can grab them. I highly, highly recommend it. And the only problem is, once you read one. Jenni’s books, you’ll want to read all of them, and there’s some good ones out there, but Jenni, thanks for being on the show. Just a privilege and honor having you back with us. Loved loved this conversation, loved the book. It’s fantastic for those of you watching listening today, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much of this out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Jenni Catron
Jenni Catron is a leadership coach, author, and speaker. Her passion is to cultivate healthy leaders to lead thriving organizations. She speaks at conferences and events nationwide, seeking to help leaders develop the clarity and confidence to lead well. As Founder and CEO of The 4Sight Group, she consults organizations on leadership, team culture, and organizational health. With over 20 years of experience in corporate and non-profit organizations, Jenni is passionate about helping leaders “put their feet to their vision.” Jenni is the author of several books, including Clout: Discover and Unleash Your God-Given Influence and The 4 Dimensions of Extraordinary Leadership.
Want to learn more about Jenni Catron’s work at The 4Sight Group? Check out her website at https://www.get4sight.com/ and get a copy of her book Culture Matters: A Framework for Helping Your Team Grow, Thrive, and Be Unstoppable on Amazon at https://amzn.to/3Qzgf6T
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