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Sure. Welcome back.

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this episode, if you haven’t listened to some of the previous ones that we were we’ve talked about culture, we encourage you to go back and take a listen to those.

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It’ll help with where we’re heading in today’s conversation.

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So, Erin,

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we’ve had a few now conversations about culture. We have. One about really looking at your culture. And then we’ve had a conversation with the next step of look and listen, watch for behaviors.

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Then we continued that conversation by talking about now, how do you define your culture and really getting into those values, finding those themes.

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Then what?

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So you’ve gone through those steps.

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How do you make it come to life? Kristen, don’t you just put together really fancy posters and then hang them up?

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Yes, you add it to the book.

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You put it on your website.

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I think this is right. This is where it comes to

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life. This is where it can actually do something meaningful within your organization. It is something, what’s really funny about this is that as we are working with clients to try to bring it to life and start working through it, you start to sound like a broken record and you start to feel, especially when you’re in that business owner, that general manager, when you’re the CEO, when you’re trying to bring it to life because you are speaking about it so much. You are just going to keep weaving it into the things that you’re doing

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working with clients specifically around how to communicate this out with their business, we encourage them to speak about why they’re even going through this exercise in the first place. So in many cases when we’re working with clients, something has been happening within the business. So they may have been going through a lot of growth recently and

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They may have just finished going through an acquisition or a merger and they need some sort of reset. They might be embarking on a lot of things happening or changing within their business that this is a good opportunity for them

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to have that North Star and to have that compass for what they want to do in the business. I want to add a third one because you talked about things that are changing in the business, leadership changes. Absolutely. Somebody coming in as a new leader, the example that we gave in our previous conversation about wanting to solidify the culture before the leader left so that the business had a culture that wasn’t dependent on a person, but leadership changes we see so much.

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Absolutely. Please continue. In many instances with Ag businesses that we see, they have multiple locations. And so it is very common to have one location look and feel a little bit different from another. And it isn’t to say that we are trying to get everything to be

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all exactly the same from one location to the next. Each place is going to have a nuance.

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What we’re looking for though is communicating to them that, “Hey, you know what? This is a great opportunity for us to really talk about

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it means to be a part of this team. Here’s what it means to be a part of our organization.” And we’ve worked through these particular values. And I want to share with you what these mean, both what they look like when they’re happening and

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it looks like when they aren’t happening. So what the behaviors are that are not consistent with it. So making sure we’re sharing the why. Why is it important that we’re talking about this right now? And then to be able to speak to what about these behaviors is going to help me within my job. What within these behaviors do I need to know? Do I need to know as a team member so that I am making sure that I’m staying consistent within them? What would you add?

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I even think the example of the discussion that we had with the leadership teams

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about how well do you think we do this or not is a fascinating way to roll that out to team members. Yes. That there’s already structure. They’re going to see things in a little bit different way. So having them really think through it. And I think about all of the goodness. Now, that depends on the size of the team,

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the groups, how that would work together, or it could be even locations of how does this show up for us.

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So again, it creates that consistency knowing that there are nuances or it’ll show up in different ways.

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The engagement of employees when they’re asked is amazing. It’s that sense of ownership because then you can come back and say, here’s what we’re talking about.

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help to define them and the kind of buy-in that you get. And there’s such goodness in the sharing of how they see the value show up. I remember

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being in one group where we had this conversation and somebody was describing one of the values and they actually, the current employee said, “Your worst day here is better than your best day anywhere else.”

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And I looked at the person and I said, “I don’t know who writes your job postings for recruiting, but somebody write that down and include that in your next job posting.” And I mean, that wasn’t related to the culture, but you’re creating this engagement and ownership and buy-in from your employees when you include them in that process. You’ve built the foundation. You’re getting the added

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information from them as they go through. Exactly. Well, and you’re sharing with them what it looks like to be successful too. So letting somebody know that, “Hey, from a customer service perspective, here’s what living this out means. This is what it looks like. This is what it doesn’t look like.” And I think this becomes part of, especially if you’re starting to, and we’ll talk about this in a future episode,

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as you’re starting to define roles within your organization, it is so much easier now to be able to say, “Okay,

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we’re going to exercise all of these particular values from our organization. And in particular, here are the ones that are really going to show up in the role that you play and in the work that you do here.” So we’re connecting that in. And

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I think is so fun about this work is that it helps to communicate to the outside. So we know that there is such a small percentage of the population that has any connection into agriculture whatsoever, right?

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Such a small percentage that to be able to speak to what it means allows for them to be able to share to the outside world what we do here. And to your point, when you’re talking about recruiting marketing, when you’re talking about any

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sort of job postings and even onboarding, we’re helping to

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that an easier bridge for somebody to cross when they may not have a background in Ag, to know what

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going to be like for them to show up, for them to be successful in their role, and for them to make a meaningful contribution into the industry.

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It sounds like we’re adding clarity.

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Oh, nice work.

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subtitle of the podcast, it’s about how you lead with confidence and clarity. And this provides a level of clarity for you. I think people as they go through the first two sparks that we talked about relating to culture,

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creates so much clarity for

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business leaders and owners that this next step is providing that clarity to employees. Well, and I also want to take a moment too, because right now I think the last couple of episodes, we’ve spent a lot of time focusing on what does the business owner, what does the CEO, what does the GM need to do. When it comes to communicating and communicating those values out to your business,

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this is where the role of your people leaders, the role of your supervisors really is

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going to be critical. So before we’re rolling this out to the broader employee population, this is where we absolutely need to get those people leaders and supervisors involved so that they know not just what do these values mean, it’s here’s what we stand for, here’s what we don’t stand for, and here’s the role that you as a people leader play in this, that we’re recognizing people when they’re exhibiting these behaviors, when they’re honoring these values, and that you as a people leader, you as a supervisor are addressing things when they’re out of alignment with that. So again, it doesn’t mean that you’re walking somebody out the first mistake that they make, it’s that we’re using these as coaching

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opportunities and now I’m giving you the compass to use to be able to address that behavior with someone.

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I am so glad that you mentioned that. I think about, so as we talk to leaders in businesses and we ask about their role around

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culture and the values and those behaviors, the most common response that we hear back is I need to role model them. I

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as a leader, my job is to role model them because if I role model them, people will follow. To which that answer is yes and, and you’re the protector of the culture

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actually I’m surprised we haven’t pulled this out yet, one of our favorite statistics is 70% of the variance between a lousy culture and a strong culture is the knowledge, skills, and talent of the team lead. 70%. I know I get excited when I share that as well, I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to talk about it. So people leaders really are kind of the holder of the culture, the protector

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of the culture, the keeper of the culture. That’s a good one. That is a good one. Nicely done. Keeper of the culture. And I don’t want, I don’t think they realize that in many cases because they feel like the culture is owned by business owners.

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I just have to be in that executive level of leadership role to demonstrate it. When it’s the people leaders that have the biggest impact on that and now they have the, you used the word compass earlier, this is what’s okay and what’s not.

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culture is not what you say, it’s what you allow. I also like the culture is the worst behavior that a leader is willing to tolerate. That one gets you in the gut a little bit more. Well and that’s even the, as we think about how many times leaders of all levels walk by behaviors and think, I just don’t have the energy to deal with this right now or I don’t know what to say.

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feel like I’m a broken record. I don’t want to get into this right now. All of that is that they’re choosing to walk. That’s a culture defining moment. Choosing to walk by something is a culture defining moment. And when you put it in that terms, it’s ooh, ooh, it’s a different level. When

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it comes to communicating values out and communicating those behaviors too, I think one spark I

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would add for this episode, because I’m going to go early on this one.

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spark would be having specific talking points, having specific expectations for those people, leaders and supervisors. So what is it that I expect to see from you? So

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am I saying, and in most cases I’m assuming that this would be a yes, that if in your location or your department or in your area that somebody is acting in accordance with these values, I am expecting that my leaders

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recognizing that person. And that when they are recognizing them, they are making sure that they’re speaking to this is exactly what it means to be living this particular value. Thank you. I appreciate you.

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And when they’re seeing something that isn’t in alignment with their values, that they’re using this as part of that feedback. That again, it’s not, Kristen really just can’t get the hang of this and I’m getting really annoyed with her. It’s not a personal thing, right? That it’s

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particular behavior is not in alignment with our values and what it means. And it needs to be corrected. It needs to be fixed. This can’t happen any longer. So we’re using these in our everyday language and I’m expecting to see that from my leaders. So I think that part would be one of my sparks.

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So maybe it’s two things per episode.

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We could. I mean, I think it could be episode by episode. Okay.

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Well, because this this one I would love to have.

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That’s why I said the first. The first spark. This is going to be the second spark is even defining that as leadership expectations. That this is what it means. This is the behavior we need to see from employees to live this value. This is the behavior we need to see from people leaders to live this value. One of my, one of my favorites. We mentioned early on we’d come back to integrity. There’s so much goodness around the value of integrity and so much miscommunication.

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had

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one leader

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we’ve worked with and one of the leadership expectations that people leaders needed to demonstrate to be good people leaders was to have the difficult conversations with their employees. So if you have an employee who is not meeting performance expectations, whether or not they were doing so by choice or not ability or motivation didn’t matter that if a leader was not addressing that performance issue that was not acting with integrity. Right. And that’s how they define that. And that’s powerful. Right. To put it into that level specifically for leaders. So even if we want our our employees to model these behaviors, what do we expect from leaders to do that? Right. And it is about accountability, recognition,

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addressing things that being the keeper of the culture. And knowing that

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as a CEO, as a GM, as a business owner, it’s not all on your shoulders. You may have defined it. You may have kind of gone through the legwork to define it down to the level of behaviors you want to see. You don’t want to see. Now is your opportunity to engage those leaders to be able to be the keepers. And you’re allowing for them to what you’re starting to do in that is to provide them with some of the the boundaries within which they can be coaching their teams. So saying that as part of your role, here is what I expect.

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I feel like there was the culture definers. Culture defining the culture keepers and then the culture livers. I don’t really like that because it’s like an organ. It does sound like an organ culture.

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Culture. I don’t know. We’re going to the culture club. But then, you know, then I totally date myself with that reference. Yeah.

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Yeah. Each person has a very specific everybody owns the culture in a different way. Exactly. And has a different responsibility for it. Absolutely.

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Bottom line, communicate it out.

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And continue to communicate it.

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Yes. It’s going to be something that comes up as you write job postings. It’s going to be something that comes up as you define your put together job descriptions. It will you’ll use this same language in your employee handbook. You’ll use it as you onboard employees. So you may feel like you are a broken record and it may take 16 times of saying the same thing for people to say, huh, they must be really serious about this. And then the minute that you see somebody do that and say, hey, that’s a great example of service. We celebrate it. You celebrate it and that you’re not walking past those situations where you see something that has happened that needs to be addressed. Right. It’s not,

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addressing and giving constructive feedback in front of an audience of people, not

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by saying that by any stretch. It’s having the courage to step in, even if it’s not perfect to say this is not what it means to be living that.

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I love it. So here’s what I anticipate as we go forward. Okay. We

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will continue to have other conversations. I think we will continue to come back to what does this mean now for the culture for sure. So it’s not it’s

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the last time we will be talking about culture. Oh, you won’t be able to stop us from talking about culture because right because it shows up in so many of the other other ways in which employee situations are handled or crises emerge or when your business strategy changes. We need to account for the type of culture that you have or make adjustments to some of those values possibly as you begin to see them in the real world out in the wild.

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I’m also

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forward to having more conversations with some of these business leaders about their culture. So I anticipate some fabulous guests coming on.

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You

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Well, we will continue this conversation about culture and other exciting topics where we can be dorks.

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And we look

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