Inside JLC: Language and Culture

Foreign.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us at JLC Media. This is actually a new podcast series that we've started that many of our associates, but also clients have said. We'd like to learn what it's like to live inside the minds of the JLC associates. So we're going to do a series called Inside jlc. This is what we think about. Sometimes they may be offering a problem, an experience that they would like to talk with each of the JLC team members about how to respond effectively. That will be one of the options. And sometimes we'll have a topic to talk about. And the wonderful thing is you're going to hear from certified coaches, facilitators, consultants on how they think about supporting their clients, supporting themselves, and enabling people to really get good at noticing how their language is important. We just talked in a webinar about for the longest time. People used to say, you know, how you say it doesn't matter? It's what you say, right? How you say it doesn't matter, it's what you say. What we've learned as colleagues is how you say it and what you say are equally as important. How I say something to Joe or to Colleen or to Julie really matters as much as what I want to share with them. So today we're going to talk a little bit about that connection between language and culture. But before I do, let me do a quick intro with the gang. I think you know some of them. If you've been a podcast person for a while, you do know them. This is the holiday season, although you may not be listening to it during the holiday season, but I'm going to get them checked in around that. What's one thing that you're really grateful for as this holiday season unfolds? Who'd like to start?

So, I'm Julie B. Wise. I am a coach and consultant for jlc. And the one thing that I'm really looking forward to this holiday season is vaccines that we can get together and be in a big group because, you know, for the past couple of years, we have not been able to get together or we've met family members standing outside, and so it feels a little bit back to normal. So I'm grateful for that. And I'm in.

Thank you.

And I'll add to that, yes, thankful for health that people have not been sick or have been able to avoid the pandemic and for the vaccines that allow us a little more freedom together at this special time of the year. And I'm in.

Welcome.

I Love the theme of health and just being able to connect with people and it's cooling. Colleen Sullivan and I've been working with the Jorgensen Learning center for over 12 years. And I would say right now I'm sitting here thinking about. I'm most grateful for my family and friends because whether or not I get to connect with them personally or not, I feel like that I am very blessed in having a great, supportive family as well as my family right here with jlc. And I'm in.

Yeah, this is definitely a family, isn't it? Yeah. So I am grateful for the fact that I get to travel to Maine to see a wedd. My granddaughter is getting married and on the 22nd or 23rd, I'm not sure the date, but I'm going to be there to enjoy the wedding and to see outlaws and in laws that I haven't seen in some time. And my three boys will be there, which is really nice. So I look forward to seeing all them and enjoying the opportunity to celebrate a very special event. And I'm in. So today we're going to talk a little bit about the connection between language and culture. The literature is pretty clear that language and culture are intimately connected. And they talk about the fact that if you change one, you change the other. If I change the culture, I change the language about how I talk about it, if I change my language and I change the culture in which I live. So the gang will probably give us some examples of that in places where they are working now or places they have worked in the past. But I'll tell you a story that gets us started. So my wife is a Native American and what she has taught me and other Native American elders have taught me over the years because I got to study with Native American folks as part of my MIT experience. And for many of the Western Native American tribes in the United States area, North America, they had two senses of time. Their sense of time is what is and what could be. What is and what could be. Well, over time, our country became dominated by another set of individuals. And they actually believed in all with all their heart and mind that Native Americans needed to learn to speak American English. So they sent them to schools. And then when they went to schools, they learned about the emerging American culture and certainly Western European culture and the emerging American culture. When they think about time, they thought about past, present and future. Well, Native Americans didn't think that way. But as soon as they learned American English and went to school, all of a sudden that sensibility that they did have about time as being what is and what might be in the future went away, and they learned about living in the present with reference to the past and the future. I found that an interesting entree into my own thinking about how language and culture are so intimately connected. How does that little story land on you guys? Colleen, start us off.

Well, I think it's interesting how, you know, here they had their own way of thinking, and it wasn't until someone introduced this new way that they started to shift and change. And so just really thinking about how just exposure to that impacted their culture, it shifted their thinking, got some new ideas, and then it really kind of perhaps changed and shifted the culture in some way.

That's beautiful. So they introduced new words, right? New phrases, new idioms, so to speak, new ways of thinking about time. And it changed the way they interacted with one another. Change the culture by introducing a change in the language. That's beautiful, Colleen. Thank you. Joe, what are you thinking?

I'm thinking about how the Native Americans, and again, full disclosure, I am one eighth Cherokee Indian, but I think the idea that they're focused on the present and what can be in the future, that's the view that we are struggling to support and to increase in the world. Is that an overemphasis or an overstudying on the past or a commitment to. Well, that's the way we've always done it, is not healthy and doesn't lead organizations down a path that is vibrant around change and being ready for the future.

That's a magnificent set of sentences. We are focused on the past. We have so much out there in movies and architecture. And if you listen to conversations, everybody wants to talk about how it used to be. And it was always much harder for me when I was a boy, much harder boy. I had to walk uphill twice, going to school, going and coming in the snow. And I have all these stories that if I'm not careful, I could get. And I love that joke. I could get trapped in that space. And this is an opportunity in my mind for us to help those that we serve could be our own families, but those that we serve to think differently about time and think differently about possibilities. That's great. Thank you both. Julie, what's landed on you? What are you thinking?

When I go to different places and do a cultural scan, that is one thing that I look at and I write down phrases that are stated and then look for themes and patterns. So I have been to places where they talk about the past and how nothing changes. And, you know, we don't get this and that and blah, blah, blah. I mean, what their conversation is about is the past. And then I've been to other places where they've, you know, talked about, well, we're excited for this and this is really interesting. And, you know, we have the resources we need and we're really looking forward to. And they are in that realm where everyone's talking about the future and where we're going. And so those artifacts of culture tend to be. Language is one of them anyway. And as you're wondering, what does your culture focus on? Just simply do that, just sit around the lunch table or the meeting or something and just start to jot down what are the phrases that people continue to use and then see if there are themes and patterns. Are they in the past, are they in the present, are they in the future? And that will really start to give you a definition of what your culture is focused on.

So it's really cool. So what you hear and see are artifacts of the culture. See, the interesting thing about culture and all the work that the three of us, four of us have done learning about culture is deeply embedded in the fact that there are some espoused operating principles. And sometimes that's not what we see emerging. You know, like we want to make sure that everybody is heard in every meeting, for example. Right. That's a nice sentence. It does not always happen. So sometimes we need to be able to say, I understand your operating principle, I believe in your operating principle. And I'd like to reveal to you what I've noticed over the last set of observations. I'm wondering if you see it the same way or not. It's almost like offering, inviting a potential shift in the way we are moving forward. What are you guys thinking right now? Anybody can go, no, I love that.

And I think that that is critical because people say, I am really intentionally developing the relationships with my team. I want a high performing team where we are focused on meeting the needs of our clients. We're client focused and we're really ensuring that we are all aligned towards the strategic priorities. And I go right on. What does that look like? What does that look like in their meetings and their everyday language? And then to Julie's point, we go and we just scan the culture and see is that really happening? And with some of the larger organizations, whether it's in the team, which we can, as Julie mentioned, take notes and look for that, but also they think it's going on in the organization. Oh, well, those priorities Everybody understands them. They know at the director level, they know at the department level. They know at the frontline worker level, all of the managers in between. And so it's another. That's another way is if you believe that your culture, there's quality communication practices going on throughout the organization. That's another good piece that we look for what language is being used at each of the levels to stay focused on the priorities.

I hear that a lot. Here's our value. Here's our number one value. Here's our number one priority. And then. And I believe their intention is heartful. I think they really believe that is the case. When you get outbound slightly, just slightly away from the epicenter of where that particular headshot is working or that group of C Suite folks are working, it doesn't seem to always translate into that space. So it's almost like, what can we do? And I think this is really a great question for you guys to respond to a little bit. What can we do to help people recognize how intention. The espoused theories are not always the theories in practice. Joe, what are you thinking?

I'm thinking about how I think because much of our organizational discussion and the need for change and the way forward happens around meetings. I'm thinking that meetings are frequently undervalued and not understood well as a vehicle for what's occurring. So, you know, no one would think that if they put on their workout clothes and went down to the gym and. And built up a heavy barbell and then pushed it around the gym with their foot, that that would constitute a workout or would make them more fit. Right. But they would think about doing no preparation for a meeting. They would. Or they don't think about it. They do no preparation for meeting. They never close the loop in the meeting to see if people understand what is being discussed. They don't validate when they hear people talk because they think that people are communicating. Precisely. I think the ignoring of those basic principles, as I said in a coaching call that I had this morning, anybody can run a meeting. The newest in the Navy, where I have done a lot of work, the newest recruit coming out of basic school last week could run a meeting perfectly fine. If you're running meetings, okay. But if you're having disciplined conversations that are attempting to move your organization forward to goals and objectives, then that's a skill. And that's where you have to lay down on the bench and lift the bar over your head in order to have improvement.

I love that. It's almost like I can get dressed up nice. But that doesn't mean I'm going to accomplish anything as a result of getting dressed. I love your analogy. That was really good. Julie, what are you thinking?

I'm going to take sort of what Colleen said and what Joe said and put it together. So Colleen said, what does that look like? And so that's the one thing that we need to have in our head. What is it that we're looking for? And then for Jo, that evaluation piece is what I'm doing really moving me toward that goal. And I want to put those two together in evaluation conversations that we tend to have with people. And if we say, this is a safe place, this is a learning environment, and then somebody makes a mistake and somebody goes, hey, that's okay, like, you're learning. What did you learn from that? You know, the first time I did this, it didn't work out for me either. Or if you say, what, like, I already showed that to you twice. I can't believe you don't know what you're doing. I'm going to have to do it now. So in the way that you are either looking for and then validating that you're seeing what you want, or you validate what you don't want that then influences the culture.

Well, you just did it. That was beautiful. So does the person that's supervising show up and enter a space of what's wrong with you? What, What. What were you thinking? You know, all that phraseology that was really part of American business for a very, very long time. And rather than that, say, help me understand what you were thinking and how you actually made these decisions, because this is really a hard one to grab onto culturally. Unless the person's a psychotic human being, they don't show up to screw up the system. They show up to have a good day and do some good work on behalf of intention. And if we're not careful, we will use language that creates a culture of blame and unsafe environments. And that's the. That's the work. The work that we do. How do we expand the space so that it is exceedingly safe to say what's aren't? And to admit a mistake, is it okay to admit now, that's culture. That's language. You know, I've. I've worked for people when my colleagues said to me, don't ever tell them you did something wrong. You'll be out the door tomorrow. I've been in jobs like that, and I pretty much just shut up. So the language that they taught me created A culture of silence. So I would never tell anybody what was going on. Never. I stopped telling my colleagues what was going on, and I started to defend myself. Whenever somebody said, hey, how's it going? I created a defensive posture. How fast? That was great, Julie. Thank you, Colleen.

Oh, just really, what resonated with me is the way you connected language, behavior, and culture. Because if there is an environment where if I do speak up, if something went wrong or I don't understand and I'm asking a clarifying question, and you're shooting me down, making the space unsafe, that goes countercultural to what a lot of our clients are doing. You hear about them talking about, let's optimize our operations, our current operations. Great. Sounds good. But if you want to do that, how are you creating a space for people to say, I'm not sure what I'm doing is correct. I'm not sure I'm producing the desired results. And wait a minute. I have a couple of questions here. So if they can't look for continuous improvement efforts, how do you optimize every day if you don't have that space to. To ask questions, to clarify, and to look at things as opportunities to learn?

Back to Joe's sentences. Anybody can show up and run a meeting. Not everybody can show up and produce a set of disciplined conversations to help a group of men and women reach a desired end state. That is a whole different thing, and they are two different cultural artifacts. How long is the meeting today? About an hour. That's it. What's it on? Well, they'll get an agenda, and that's it. So those are the artifacts, time and agenda, rather than disciplined conversation. Desired output of this common understanding as a desired output. Joe, what are you thinking about this?

Yeah. So I had another point I wanted to add in which I think speaks to the things that Julie and Colleen have been talking about, which is recognized, I think, is an important executive function, and that's reflection, because the things that happen. Well, someone said not too long ago that experience is good, but the truth is that experience only means you were present for an event. It doesn't mean that you actually learned something. But isn't it interesting that we're very anxious to fill up our resumes with our experience? And so then when you go past the experience to say, okay, well, I understand you've done this multiple times, but what are your learnings? What have you actually understand about this kind of process? That then you get to some very interesting material, I think. And many times, I think, in defense of Everyone, because everybody is busy. Every organization is busy. It's not like they're sitting around idle. They're typically going from event to event to event to event. And so I think it's an important role for the leader to reflect upon what has happened to his organization recently, but also to introduce a time for the organization to reflect. I mean, maybe it's 10 minutes in a meeting. Maybe it's just, okay, I want to call a timeout, stop whatever it is that you're thinking about, and let's focus on what happened last week in this major event. And I would like to know, what did you all learn out of that? And so you draw that reflection out of the group and that possession. It positions the senior leader to then add to that reflection and increase their experience and their depth. So I think this is. Again, we talk about closing the loop. I think this is kind of a larger closing the loop and learning that is important in any organization.

So that's really cool. So all of us are identifying artifacts of a culture. And I think there's two cultures. One culture is the experiential culture. We all can have meetings, we all can go to events. We all can have a retirement plan party. Then there is a culture of learning. And we have been tasked by multiple organizations to help them design right, and then put in place a culture, language. Language. A culture whose language embraces learning, not just the experience. I mean, this is almost something that we need to steward, constantly design, teach, and steward a culture of learning. How do we get that in place? Let it go. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we've actually just about run out of time, so I'm going to stop here. But let me say this to you that are listening. What you just heard was very powerful insights from people that are constantly working with human beings that are attempting to make their world better through disciplined conversation. That's what we work on. Conversation is the result. And this idea of reflection. If people say, yes, learning matters, but I never put anything in space for us to reflect on what's going on. Where's no learning? We do not increase our PPK one iota. It stays the same. If I don't change my personal practical knowledge to, I cannot change my results. So we end up in a very odd space. A very odd space. There are languages where we're all into learning. There just isn't any time because we have so much shite to do. So there's no time to learn. Well, let's just move forward. When's our next meeting? Who's Got the agenda? Who's running this one? A responsible 10th grader or a brand new sailor who's running it. You know, and I love that connection. The distinction between anybody can run a meeting. Only people that are interested in the work that we are inviting people into can create a culture that loves, loves, loves, internalizes disciplined conversation. We're going to do a checkout, but before I ask them to check out and we say goodbye to you, I'm going to ask for our next one. Go to another one on language and culture and I'm going to tee the next one up with Joe, who's going to tell you a magnificent story about a very large effort to put aircraft back in service and the distinction between doing what somebody else did and not actually understanding it at their core. I think you're going to love that one. It's going to be great. Let's do a quick checkout. Take what particular piece of this comment. It could be something you said yourself. I don't care who said it. What's one thing that really resonated with you? And please tell your listeners why, what resonated most and why? Who'd like to start?

I'll go ahead and jump in. I think it's something that Jo just shared. This experience versus learning piece I think is just hits the nail on the head because you can experience something. However, unless you are developing personal practical knowledge and internalizing how to produce the desired results. Right. I can read a book or I can take a course. Perhaps I'm riding, flying a plane, but I don't know how to actually do it until I have the practical, personal practical knowledge. So I like this experience is good. But how can we really think about everything in a way that what am I learning from from it and how can I get better? How am I developing my personal practical knowledge so I can really produce the desired results I'm looking to achieve and I'm out.

So let me just say this here, Colleen, right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you knowledge. Here's some knowledge for you. The if you want the airplane to go down, push in, you want it to go up, pull back, you want it to turn left, do that and press the left rudder or right rudder, do this put. I can tell you all that and then I am not going to give you the keys to the airplane and say go fly because you won't come home.

Exactly.

You're not coming home. Who'd like to go next resonated most and why?

I think our conversation about the Past, the present, and the future. I think it reminds me that putting the past into perspective is always a struggle, both I think, for people and for organizations, because. And we're not advocating, you know, forgetting past or ignoring the past, but doing the appropriate, respectful thing and not dwelling on it or to be so bound by it, we can't see a better way forward. And I'm a.

That is just so beautiful because we'll get stuck focusing on something we really can't change. And if we focus on it too much, we keep repeating it, which I think is so powerful. Joe, thank you. Well, Jules, what you got?

I like what Colleen said about making sure that everyone has a common understanding of what the success conditions are. What does that look like? What does it feel like? We may talk about it, but we really need to define it explicitly so that everyone has the same common understanding, because what it looks like for someone might look completely different for someone else. And so we really need to make sure that we have a common understanding. And then we focus on that, because what you focus on grows. So by focusing on the things that we want and finding that evidence versus always looking for the things that we don't want.

Are you out?

And I'm out.

So the sensibility that you give us about seeing, envisioning a possibility. In the previous webinar we just did, I talked about myself. If I don't like somebody, let's say I'm really sideways with Colleen for some reason, and I want the relationship to be way better than it currently is. I gave three steps to do. I'm going to state them again. I visualized the relationship with Colleen the way it ought to be, the way I truly want it to be. I actually write it down as though it's already occurred. And here's the hard part. I behave as though it is already that way. Joe and I are working with some people right now that if they could just hear that and internalize it, it would change their language and it would change their culture. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for visiting with us today and being with us on what I think was one of the more fascinating podcasts and how this kind of thinking with us, it's like you get a chance to think with us. And I urge you, urge you to take some time in reflection when we're done here and write down the same kind of provocation. What idea resonated with you most and why and how might you turn that into personal action? Remember, any of you can contact us through the website gojlc.com and you will get an immediate response for a 30 minute absolutely free on us or Joe will pay for it. One or the other absolutely free discovery conversation. And we would love you to do that because you all are working in a culture that uses language to define itself. Thank you for being with us. Take care and if you are listening during the holidays, Happy holiday season to you all.

Thanks.

Sincerest thanks for listening to this episode of the Everyday Leadership Conversations podcast. The Jorgensen Learning center offers a variety of programs for individuals and organizations to enhance their communication and leadership skills. To find out more about programs and upcoming webinars, check out our events page@gojlc.com.