95 | From Data to Action: Unlock the Power of Surveys for High-Performance Cultures | Karen Jones

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

I can't bear it when people call culture the soft stuff. It's business, and it's business with heart and mind and soul. For me, you know, it's about clarity and alignment. Are we all clear where we're going, why we're going there, and what we can expect of each other along the way.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Lovely to have you again. And before we get into today's guest, my usual thank you to our friend and supporter Workvivo. If you are looking to really, really kind of rev up your employee comms and how you engage with people, particularly as they start to work in a more hybrid environment, then Workvivo is definitely worth a look. Their online engagement platform has been rolled out to loads of companies all around the world. You'll find more on them and some case studies and other bits and bobs on their website at workvivo.com, and you'll hear a little bit more about them later on. Now, I was on LinkedIn the other day, as I am off doing, as many of you will know if you follow me, and I saw a bit of one of those annoying polls. It seems to be like polls galore at the moment on LinkedIn, but this one was, what's 'What do you think is going to be the biggest challenge for organizations as we head into 2022?' And the thing that came up as being most likely to be a challenge was organizational culture. How do we maintain or build what we had in the face of hybrid working, of perhaps more upset, of perhaps more lockdowns, of perhaps all these things that might go on? And it's not the first time I've heard that. And of course, we have had conversations with other people like Camilla Boyer from Hoppin about culture and remote cultures. But I wanted to take take just a bit of a bigger picture view on culture. And that's what I'm hoping to do with today's guest, because it is one of those things I think that people see as being a little bit difficult to get your arms around, a little bit difficult to work out what you've got and where you want to get to and how you're going to get there. And that's why I wanted to chat to, um, Karen today. Karen Jones is the Managing Director of UK, Ireland, and Nordics at Denison Consulting. They're a company that we're doing some work with here in Inspiring Change with a couple of our clients using their diagnostic tool to work out what people's cultures are today in their organizations and the path that they need to go on to get to a place. And actually, we're going to talk about this in a second. A better culture, a stronger culture, a higher performing culture. What is it that people should be striving for? So we're going to talk about that over the next 35 minutes or so. So Karen, you are very welcome to the podcast.

Good morning, Scott. It's really good to be here. And welcome to anybody who's listening to this right now.

Great. Thanks, Karen. So listen, what we always do is we kick off by just letting listeners get to know guests a little bit. So why don't you give us just a few minutes on your background, where you've come from, and, and what you do at Denison?

I started my career, actually, I did my nurse training, ended up in plastic surgery, got really fascinated by the whole psychological side of care. So I took myself off to do a psychology degree, stayed in the— went back to the NHS, but this time more on a preventative aspect as a health visitor. So really understanding what caused some of the illnesses that we were having to treat. And then in my time, got really frustrated about evidence-based practice and why we weren't doing more evidence-based practice. So I went and had 8 years of research experience at King's College in London to really learn about the impact of evidence and how we can build that into some of our professional decisions that we make. Then came back, back into the NHS as a public health specialist, so really wanted to understand the whole preventative aspect again. And then in public health got really frustrated that we weren't able to make the changes that we could really make, so I got more and more interested in organisational development, coaching, in my emotional intelligence, explored some aspects of our organisational culture, and then moved into the OD role really, which is where I met Denison in my role as Associate Director of Corporate Development in the NHS. Started working with Denison, started exploring the difference between organisational culture and leadership climate. Went and worked for a group of occupational psychologists to get my head around the climate piece, and then came back to Denison. So I think we could say I've had a portfolio career, Scott, which I think is the short term. Yes, that sounds fair.

But today, obviously, now you're at Denison, so just give us the quick 30 seconds on what Denison is and what Denison does.

Denison basically has, I think, the best organisational culture diagnostic. We focus very tightly on transforming organizational cultures and the leadership development required to do that.

Okay, brilliant. That was a wonderful synopsis. Thank you. So, as we're thinking about culture, for me, the million-dollar question is, because I think everybody's got a different definition of what organizational culture is, what do you define it as?

Well, Before I discovered Dennison, I couldn't, quite frankly. And I know we all say it's what we do around here, it's what we do when nobody's looking. That definition didn't help me. So my honest answer to that is I cannot define it quickly for you because it isn't something that should be defined quickly. But now I can measure it and I can describe the model that holds the complexity whilst giving feasible first steps to do something about it. So for me, it's about managing two fundamental dynamic tensions between our mission and have we got people involved with that. So are our people aligned to strategy? And between how we are in our market and our systems and processes that help us deliver our promises to that market. And then We have a very clear definition of the 12 aspects that you need to be— you need to know where you start from in order to move to where you need to get to.

Okay. So that idea of measuring particular things that you've identified through research, having had a look at your website, through 30 years of research, you've measured the things that you believe make a fundamental difference when it comes to shaping culture, within organizations, they're the things you measure, and they're the things then the organizations would look at and say, well, what do we want to get better at?

Yeah. Well, and those things are what people do. You know, we often, you know, our diagnostic tries to get, you know, what's really important is to understand the beliefs and assumptions that people are making in their organizational context. Those beliefs and assumptions are made from our own personal experiences, but also what what we see our leaders, our managers, our colleagues, and our peers doing. So in order to really understand your current state of culture, you have to have a mechanism that starts to elevate those beliefs and assumptions that are driving people's perceptions of the business. And that's around the behaviors. I mean, you know, our measure is about, you know, it's what people do that creates the perception of the culture that we have.

And I love that idea when you're thinking about culture. And I think it was perhaps you that I heard say it, that your culture is defined by the worst behavior that you're willing to accept as an organization. I think that's— if you take— in fact, listeners, if you take nothing else away from this podcast, write that down, because I think that's such a useful compass.

Well, as an optimist, that's a very deficit definition. But I always put that up on screen to my clients, because it kind of, it's an invitation to leaders to say, you have, if you're gonna do this work, you have to be serious about it because it will expose the behaviors that shouldn't be accepted, but are being accepted. And as anything, as you create a definition of something, you give people a language, but you also invite them to start holding people to account.

Yeah, I think what's really interesting is that probably those poor behaviors are probably not only poor behaviors, but they're probably also, if you've got organizational values like many organizations have, they're probably anti-values. They probably fly in the face of your values. And of course, that's another very dangerous place to go because there's no point having the words up on the wall if nobody in the organization is actually living them.

It's an extremely dangerous place to go, you know, and I think it is probably best not to have them up on the wall if you're not going to hold everybody to account for— A, if you've got words up on a wall, people need to know what you mean by that. So it needs to have some description to, okay, here's what we expect and here's what we're not going to tolerate from both our leaders and from everybody. But if you're not going to live them and implement them and put the work around them, it's probably best not to have them.

At all.

Yeah, in my experience, it breeds cynicism. You know, it's the sexy strapline that people go, oh yeah, okay. I mean, people are good at picking up whether things are authentic and taken seriously.

Yeah, for sure.

Or whether it's just management speak. I mean, it does more harm than good in my experience.

Yeah, agreed. I remember doing a bit of work about 18 months ago for a client and they wanted new values and a new purpose. And we were working with them on that. And I said, look, if you're not gonna use your values as the basis on which you hire, you fire, you promote, you recognize, you motivate your people, then don't bother. Save the money. Don't give us the money. Just save the money. Spend it on something else. Because if you don't do that, there's no point in doing this because it becomes just, as you say, just the words on the wall and company speak that people see through very, very quickly.

And that's another good point. I would love— I want to get to the point where I go for a job interview and I actually get given the diagnostic of the current culture. To ask, you know, to be asked whether I— what can I contribute to how this culture needs to change? You know, if we recruit for fit, you know, we can top up on skills, you know. And I know for us, the core values piece, which is one of, you know, 12 of our key indicators, it's the most sensitive, I think, on the model, because I will commit to something I see value in, I will comply to something that doesn't connect with my values. It's a very emotive part of our model.

And I don't think that regardless of how clever the person is, either joining or in your organization, how experienced they are, how much they know, if they don't sense that fit, if they don't feel that fit, regardless of what you're paying them or what their benefits are, you're just not going to get the most from them. So, it almost becomes a barrier to getting their best self at work, I guess, doesn't it?

It's always, you know, where the rubber hits the road. You know, if your best salesperson is pretty toxic, what do you do? You know, I worked with a small company, they were 50, SME growing, you know, they'd spent a lot on, they'd invested, everybody did some culture workshops, everybody did emotional intelligence. They had really invested a lot for the whole company. They had a sales director that continued to go back and scream at the support services. Now, at some point they had to choose, does he stay or does he go? And then how do we deal with it when we ask him to leave? Do we fudge it and say, actually, you know, he's moving on for personal reasons, or do we actually make a respectful and graceful story, but say values really matter here. And actually, you know, if you don't live the values, doesn't matter how good you are at the job, it's not acceptable. Now, that motivated the staff once they did that much more than actually their fear of losing this sales rep. Yeah, definitely.

It's such an opportunity, I think, that, you know, we— I think often senior teams maybe see the short term of, well, if he or she gets the bullet, then our revenue is going to go down by 50%. Well, okay, yes, it might do for a few months. But then think of the upside when that person, when that personality, when the impact they're having on the business is gone. Think about the upside there. Think about the slightly medium to longer-term direction and performance of the company. And I think you'd see a different thing then, wouldn't you?

Well, they had 49 people absolutely engaged and out there for the business rather than just one, you know, but that is the crunch points, you know, and I think that's why I would say, you know, we are not a badge. We are a really solid journey for real change, but you know, I can't bear it when people call culture the soft stuff. It's business and it's business with heart and mind and soul. But it, you know, for me, you know, it's about clarity and alignment. Are we all clear where we're going, why we're going there, and what we can expect of each other along the way? Yeah. Yeah. You know, and it should create, you know, if you define something and you make it more tangible, I think in a sense it makes it much easier to have a very coherent conversation about what really matters in making progress and what might be stopping us.

Yeah, and gives people a chance and an opportunity to have their say, because we often talk about the fact that, you know, senior management or even people leaders don't have all the answers. So ask your people, get them involved in the conversation.

I think that's why I love it too. You know, we are at work more than we're anywhere else. So people need, you know, I do believe people want to come to work to be their best. They get distracted when systems and processes or indeed people kind of bring them down, you know, in motivation or emotionally, or, you know, tap into our fears, you know. And I think really having— most people want to know what's expected of them, and they then want to be able to be given, empowered to get on and do what is, you know, what is hoped of them. And I think people don't want to be in a system that's wasteful or duplicating or counterbalancing each other. So I think to, you know, once I got the model around my head, my conversation about a high performance culture, because that's what this is about. Don't ever use the word culture on its own. It's about, you know, having a high performance culture. You know, once, once you understand our model and you can describe the 12 aspects, it's really easy to start having a very specific and systemic discussion about the strengths and the challenges that a business may currently have.

And when you think, what's really interesting, and it comes back to a point you made earlier on when you said culture is business, it's not the soft stuff that Peter Drucker— and there's now about 1,000 listeners throwing their eyes to the heavens, oh God, not this again. But it is so true, that whole line about culture eating strategy for breakfast is absolutely True. It's only, you know, I'm running Inspiring Change now for 5 years. And the more and the more and the more work I do in the area of culture, the more that line that many people see as a cliché these days, the more that line for me becomes true. Because it doesn't matter how good, how exciting, how compelling, how brilliant, how leading edge, how whatever your strategy is or what it's going to do for the organization. Because if the culture is one that's literally going to cross its arms arms and say, "Not on my watch," that strategy is never going to see the light of day. And actually, if you go back to— here comes another throwing the eyes to the heavens moment— that McKinsey research about 70% of change failing, then what does that look like? The main reason that they saw that change failing was because people weren't bought in, because they weren't on the journey with the organization. What does that look like for organizations?

The strongest offers that my work with Denison can bring, I think, is when we— I talk about strategy mapping. We often say to clients, "Give us your 35, 30-page strategic document." Not many people in a company actually read that. And not many people after reading it go, yes, you know, let me get—

I'm in, I'm in.

Yeah. Let me get, let me get out and do this. I can't wait. So, you know, we take their strategy and we say, okay, what's in this strategy? What's the aspiration for the mission, the business aspiration, which would be our mission section. What's the aspiration as an employer for our people, you know, the involvement trait for us. What are our aspirations in our market for our customers, for change, for how we're going to learn? That's our stakeholder aspiration. And what are our aspirations operationally? So that's consistency for us. And we map the aspirations onto our model. Then we put the current state diagnostic in the middle and say, okay, that's where you want to aspire to get to. What are people telling you currently about their beliefs and assumptions about this business that are going to reassure you that you will get there or make you think, actually, we're not bringing people with us enough to make that happen? And, you know, I think I've often, you know, I worked with one client who had done a lot of our diagnostic, had never, we hadn't really been consulting with them. They'd never really mapped the strategy to the model. We did that for them. And, you know, I did have a leader say, Karen, I hate to admit this, but I now get it. I had been seeing the culture work as a bit of a parallel stream. He said, you know what, seeing our strategy around that model, suddenly the light bulb's gone on and I realize that actually our culture is our strategy. You know, and I think for me, we have failed as a consulting firm if culture is a separate piece that people do when they have a bit of capacity. Knowing your culture, understanding it, diagnosing it, discussing it on a daily basis with your teams is really doing culture work.

Yeah. And it's more about, I think, once you, if you put in place a culture program or you talk about our culture program or the things we're doing around culture, then actually it does do exactly that, doesn't it? It does reinforce it as a separate stream of work. Whereas for me, and I suspect for you, it's much more about what is it we need to do as an organization to deliver our strategy? What do we need to do differently based on what we're doing today? That should be maybe more the narrative internally.

Yeah. I mean, another definition of it is what we do when we think nobody's looking. What is really happening out there? And I think this whole— I understand why even board members kind of go, oh yeah, that culture piece. You know, my own chief exec said, Karen, do something about culture. That's how I got, that's, you know, that's how I found Denison. She didn't really know what she wanted me to do. I didn't really know what I should do until I could really, you know, I found this model that defined it for us. Now the model might not resonate with everybody, but if it resonates, I have never yet met a client that doesn't recognize what they have to do on a daily basis within the model. And it is a very inclusive process. You know, you don't just go and ask the top team, you ask everybody in the business to have their voice on how they are perceiving how these 12 behaviours are currently carried out. You know, that does require an honest climate to discuss that. So it then also begins to build up trust.

Yeah. And I think what's interesting is it's probably that honesty needs to come— sorry, the open honesty doesn't necessarily need to come in when people are filling in the survey itself. It needs to come in post the survey when you're discussing the results, because of course the survey is anonymous, but it's then the willingness of the organization to want to have the, well, gosh, I thought we were doing lots of work on X, but the scores are through the floor. We're on the 10th percentile. How is that?

Yeah, well, I think it's really interesting, you know, the response rate is feedback in itself. Now, how many people are prepared to do it? We generally see about 70%. Some companies manage to get 90%. That tells us something right from the get-go. And then how many people, you know, if it's a unique generic link, how many people are prepared to say which department they're in? I've done this survey with some companies where people wouldn't even say. What department they sit in. Now that is feedback in itself to, to leaders and to top teams. You know, we don't even have enough trust for people to declare which department or section they connect to. That, that for me is really powerful feedback before you go anywhere near the results. Hi, I'm Kleena from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. Let's talk a little bit about trust now that you've brought it up. And what part does trust play in creating high-performing cultures?

Well, trust is an outcome. I don't think you can go to create trust. Trust is an outcome of reliability, keeping promises. So, you know, I would say to clients, be really careful what you're going to say. You know, what's the invitation to your people in doing this survey in the first place? What are you— you know, if you're going to promise to share the results, you have to be prepared to share the results however they look. So trust starts right at that. You know, we often, we have a very clear client engagement process, and diagnosis is one of 7 phases for us. Before you get to diagnosis, the client has to be really clear about discovery and planning. Why, why do we think culture is something we need to look at now? How— what's the trust level at the leadership team like? Are these separate kind of leaders of almost different businesses that just have to come together every now and again to sign off some decisions, or is there real coherence and trust within the leadership team. You know, if their results are going to look a bit different when we segment the data, are they going to be there to support each other or are they going to be there to compete and kind of go, 'Glad my results don't look like that.' You know, because if one section of the business has less clarity and alignment, that should be significant to every single leader. So trust starts— trust is right the way around. What are you going to promise? Are you going to deliver? If you start this process What's your capacity to follow through? How are you going to prepare your line managers? You know, what's the level of trust, you know, in your line managers? How are your line managers going to communicate this to their teams? So trust is huge. And I think, you know, clients often say to me, well, you know, we've got lots going on right now, so maybe it's not the right time to do the survey. That always flags up to me that that's probably the time you need to do it most. Yeah. When people are a bit nervous about what they're going to find, actually that's a really strong trust story from the leadership to say, things are really uncertain now. We probably all need to have a voice and really start to open up our conversation about what we are currently doing and are we doing it in the best way we possibly can?

Brilliant. One thing we haven't spoken about is where where the responsibility for culture sits in an organization. And I think that lots and lots of organizations, probably the culture program, the culture champion, the head of culture probably sits in HR. Is that the place it should sit? Is that the best place for it? Or where else should it be or could it be?

And to be very fair, that reflects our experience. It's usually the HR doors that we come into. I'm always pretty clear with HR directors, you know, they are a major facilitator of this process, but the owner should be the CEO. You know, the ownership has to be at that senior leadership team. Now, when it's purely, when it's owned by HR, for me, that's a red flag. You know, because it has to be owned by the senior leadership team. You know, HR often have the teams with the expertise to facilitate that process and to support that process. You know, with business partners going across the business, they're well positioned to be absolutely key guides and facilitators. But, you know, the sponsorship has to be with the senior leaders throughout the business. You know, for me, when we do our planning for action planning, who's the executive sponsor? Where is this going back up? And if that is constantly the HR Director, that for me would be a worry. Because if we've done the strategy mapping, all the leaders understand their contribution to the culture. It's also the responsibility of every single person, every individual creates and impacts culture. So for me, it's really, you know, top-down meets bottom-up. And, you know, the middle managers have my absolute— well, I think middle managers in an organization have the toughest responsibility. They're strategically connected and they're operationally hands-on. And I feel that they probably get more neglected. You know, leadership teams get lots of development and lots of away days. That middle layer of management are— we often see it, they've often got the least colour in their perceptions because I think they're really squeezed. And I feel really passionate about doing more for that level in any organisation.

Yeah, and I think often, you know, certainly in my experience of working with lots of teams at that level, They're the ones that are, they've got a day job, which is as somebody that does risk or does HR or does IT or does whatever. And they're also doing the leadership piece. They're also doing the people manager piece. And as Mary Davis said in the very, very first episode of this podcast, actually, it's not thinking about leadership as something you do between 8 and 10 on a Tuesday morning, that's not going to work. But the trouble is that because often we don't have dual career paths in organizations, we end up putting people into roles that maybe actually they shouldn't be in. So it is really tough for them. So we do need to tool them up, and we do need to give them confidence, and we do need to give them, you know, the tools to be able to succeed. You know, that's really important.

And I think that's why I really love the Denison model. And, you know, maybe the marketing department won't want me to say this, but the model itself is a gift. Before you get anywhere near the survey, you know, when I saw the model, it's a fantastic checklist. For saying, okay, you know, are we clear what difference we're trying to make? The vision? Do we know the strategic priorities that we're focusing in on? How are we going to measure the short-term goals and objectives? Which team is particularly important for this project? Do they have the information they need on that empowerment piece? Are they capable? You can go around the whole model. How does it connect to our values? Which customer are we doing this for? How are we going to learn from our successes and failures? How are we going to handle conflict? You know, it's a wonderful management checklist.

So before you even get to doing, even if you never did the diagnostic, again, marketing department, cover your ears, you know, pop along to the website and have a look at the model and just actually maybe challenge yourself to think, well, how are we doing in each of these 12 areas? Just ask yourself those questions, as you say, use it as a very basic checklist.

Exactly. And, you know, Denison is very generous in what it shares, you know, our kind of unique value is in the global benchmark, which has taken 30 years to get to. So our statements are, you know, our line items are out there, you know, you can have that. If anybody wants me to send it to them, I will, you know, or you can send it to them, Scott. You know, it's kind of, it's a, I really, you know, I was so excited, you know, I asked my local business school to do me a literature search on, you know, what mechanisms are out there for us to start to measure culture. When I saw the Denison one, you know, I could then start to have a coherent conversation about it. And I think even for senior leaders, it's really difficult to know where to start. It's systemic, it's structured, and I think, you know, having the diagnostic enables you to say, okay, here are the two things we need to start first. Otherwise, it's too huge and too enormous, and quite frankly, nobody's got the energy So, let me think about that for a second then.

Here are the two things you should focus on first. So, let's take a scenario where we've gone in, organization has done the diagnostic, you've got the results of your, effectively, your as-is culture. This is what we are today. But of course, the reason that you're on that journey is because you want to have a higher performing culture or a better culture, whatever you end up calling it in your organization, but we'll go with higher performing culture. How do you know, as an organization, Whether you've done Denison or you've done OCAI or you've done some other model that's given you a picture of your culture, how do you know which buttons you have to push, which knobs you have to turn up in order to get to the place that you want to be? How do you know that?

That's why I like the strategy map, first of all, because if you've got something— and that's why you cannot talk about culture without understanding context. You know, it's very tempting sometimes to look at the results and go, okay, there are two lowest scores, let's start there. You know, that's not the way to do it. It's kind of, okay, what are our two big concerns from the business context right now? How are we looking on our current diagnostic? If we are good on that, that's great. If we are not, yes, let's certainly start there. The leadership team has that kind of, you know, that discussion around, you know, they've now got an overall assessment about the business, they've got segmented data on where each of the functions are. It may be that there's a function that's really key to a business priority right now and they're saying actually they have no clarity and alignment on what it is we're trying to do. Start there. But what's really fantastic about this model is that it's all interrelated. So if the energy is to start somewhere, you cannot, you cannot come in on one of the slices without connecting it to the other 11. At some point it will have an impact, you know, and the leadership team need to be clear from their perspective, what are the 2, you know, 2, no more than 3 corporate priorities that everybody needs to keep an eye on. And then each, each Each leader will have their own data, and they then look at their part of the business. What are their strategic priorities? What is their data telling them? And how do they, with their teams, co-create the two things that they need to look at first? It's an ongoing journey.

And what I love about that idea and that way of going about it, and I've seen this work so well when I was working back in AIB, when we used Gallup for our engagement surveys, the action planning was a really important part of that. So, you know, suddenly you're, suddenly you're you're part of the solution because somebody's saying to you in your division or your team, you know, we're not scoring quite so well here, we're scoring really well here. So what do we need as a team? What do we need to do more of? What do we need to get better at? And you know what, has anybody got any ideas about how we can do that? That is a really powerful driver of engagement as well. So not only are you getting your culture to a better place, you're actually doing that whilst at the same time driving engagement among your employees because you're asking them for their opinions, you're taking those opinions and you're putting them into play, which is really powerful.

Well, it's a good point, Scott. We do have the quantitative number on the measure, but after diagnostic for us comes honest conversation. And that's the point that we then have the qualitative dialogue around that. The number isn't the be-all and end-all. It's really significant, but what really matters is teams sitting down and sharing the stories. You know, here's why I answered the way I did, because actually I feel really frustrated that, you know, X keeps happening and I don't see that changing. You know, that's where the real kind of, you know, and this guides leaders and managers. It gives them a framework to begin to have that conversation. You know, and I think why I loved it, we have a Leadership 360 that uses the same model. So if the leader wants to, they can also say, you know what, 'You know what, I'd like some personal feedback about my style of leadership around those 12 same culture things.' So, you know, because it's an indirect reflection when we do the culture piece because we're really asking people, you know, about the collective and the organisation, but it does, you know, it's a good indicator of how that leader may be leading their segmented data from their function. And you can start pulling that personal leadership style into the collective impact that they're having for the business. And I love that.

Now, that said, that if you are a leader that's got a bit of nous about you and a bit of self-awareness and a bit of openness to feedback, then perhaps you'd be taking that without doing the 360. And again, regardless of whether it's Denison or any other model, then actually what you might be doing is looking at that data and saying to your team, 'Well, what part do I play in shaping what those results are? What can I do better or differently? How can I better support you?' So without even going down a very formal 360 route, just asking the question is really powerful.

Oh, yeah. I mean, can you imagine a leader sharing their results and saying, you know, I did hear a CEO stand up in front of his leadership team and say, I'm, you know, I'm not proud of the results that we've got. And I'm, you know, I'm the CEO that's responsible for some of these. Now, that was a really significant moment because he basically gave every other leader permission to say, I'm not proud that our results look the way they do. And I'm going to take my contribution to why people may be telling me they're not clear and aligned. And now there's a wonderful opportunity to change that. And that for me is where the climate piece comes in. You know, that takes it, it, you know, I think sadly we like to assume we leave our emotions at the door when we go to work. We absolutely do not.

And we shouldn't.

No, no, we're human. It's about the being as well as the doing. Yeah. You know, and, and I think I mean, it's really interesting. I was debriefing a client this week and, you know, pretty high scores apart from one department that had really quite tough scores. And there was a lot of anxiety about what we're going to do, you know, it doesn't look so good on this leader. You know, there is a real— if the climate is right, there is an invitation to support that leader to hear the people in that bit of the business But let's not underestimate the emotional impact of that, the fear, you know. And if there has been a climate of blame, you know, that's why for me discovery is really important at the leadership team. What are you going to do? You know, I have had, you know, some experiences that I would never want to be connected to, but you know, people sacking people. Because the results don't look good. Now, you know, that is not good practice and you have to contract to that right at the beginning. It is part of the problem in itself, you know, and it's exposing, but actually it's what you've got. And if you don't know it, it's even more dangerous. But, you know, you talked about trust. Sometimes that leadership team might need to do some work themselves before they're before they're ready for this level of exposure. It's worth taking a moment to consider that.

And it does reinforce that culture of fear, that culture where, you know, well, geez, where you're literally hanging over the shoulders of your employees saying that the answer, in case you're wondering, is strongly agree for all of the questions, just in case you're wondering. And that in itself is just probably again, another without having done the diagnostic or the survey is another indicator that perhaps your culture isn't quite where it needs to be or should be.

I mean, I really admired— there was a leader, she was in mental health services, and I really admired her. She said, Karen, I would absolutely love to do the survey, but if I do it, I am going to be held accountable for it. And I just don't have the capacity to intervene the way I need to. And my heart broke for for her. You just think, wow, here's someone who— you just think, that is not fair.

No, no. She wants to do the right thing, but she doesn't have the capacity to do it as a leader.

And I certainly had no interest in putting her in that position. No. So the system has to be ready for it and has to support the work that will go on around it.

Yeah, for sure. Listen, we could chat about this stuff all week, probably, but listeners probably do have other things that they have to be getting on with. So, we're going to wrap up with one final question, which is something that I've started asking actually very many guests, particularly in the kind of the area of subject matter experts. And the question is, what do you believe, regardless of whether organizations have done a diagnostic or haven't or know what their culture is today or they don't, what do you believe is the one thing that leaders and organizations can really do to improve the culture in their organizations today, without even knowing any of that? What's the one thing that you've seen that can really help?

Be curious. Ask, ask your teams how they are feeling, what they need, what they don't have. Start to, you know, are they connected? Do they really understand what's expected? You know, I hear so many people saying, I just want to know what's expected of me. And then I want it measured. And I want to have some feedback as to whether we've done it. So, you know, be clear, be curious, not judgmental, and start to talk.

Brilliant. And what a great place to finish. Karen, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast today. Really, really appreciate you taking the time.

My pleasure, Scott, as always. Thanks.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcast, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.