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Dan Bredeson on Planting the Seeds of Winning Cultures
85 Plays1 year ago
Organizational culture and leadership consultant Dan Bredeson (danbredeson.com) joins host Dan Freehling (contempusleadership.com) to discuss his new book "Seeds of Culture" and the importance of cultivating, rather than attempting to construct, a culture of commitment in organizations. Bredeson shares his observations from his career as a leader in the insurance industry, where he noticed the discrepancy between the desired culture of executives and the actual culture on the ground in client firms. He emphasizes the need for leaders to think like farmers, nurturing and growing culture over time, rather than thinking like carpenters in trying to artificially build culture. Bredeson identifies six traits of successful culture farmers, including affinity for people, making culture a priority, bringing the right energy, being authentic, growing credibility, and demonstrating integrity. Bredeson also discusses the importance of effective communication, ethics, psychological safety, diversity and inclusion, generosity, autonomy, and mutual accountability in building a strong culture. Recommended reading: "Leading Change" by John Kotter, "The Four Disciplines of Execution" by Chris McChesney, and "Developing the Leader Within You" by John Maxwell. Show notes at forwardlookingleadership.com.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to Forward Looking Leadership, a podcast for visionary executives building future-ready organizations. I'm your host, Dan Freeling. I'm the founder of Contepis Leadership, a coaching practice that helps organizations develop their leadership pipeline through virtually unlimited coaching for their top-rising talent.
Introducing Dan Bradison
00:00:18
Speaker
I'm honored to be joined today by Dan Bradison. Dan is an organizational development, culture, and leadership expert and the author of the new book Seeds of Culture. He is also the director of field development for CNO Financial Group and brings over 20 years of leadership experience with a Fortune 500 company and several nonprofit organizations. Dan is a member of Aflac's West Territory Hall of Fame
00:00:39
Speaker
and has a master's degree in organizational leadership and learning from the George Washington University. His ideas regarding culture and performance are influenced as much by his upbringing on a farm as they are by his professional experience in formal education. Dan and I were grad school classmates who enjoyed working together so much that we've partnered in virtually every group project. We've became fast friends and have remained so since. Let's get right into it. Thanks for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership, Dan.
00:01:05
Speaker
It is a pleasure to be here and it's always great to chat with you. Likewise,
'Seeds of Culture': Inspiration and Process
00:01:09
Speaker
likewise. So Dan, what drove you to write this book?
00:01:12
Speaker
Oh, wow. Boredom? No. I did start it in early 2020. So we did have a lot of time in the house to sit down and do some writing. But no, the main impetus for it was over the course of my career, I interacted with a lot of different companies of varying size and varying industry. And
00:01:40
Speaker
I was actually in the insurance industry. And as part of my job there, it was to call on companies and talk to them about the employee benefits they're gonna be offering to their employees. And then, so I was meeting with people in the C-suite, executives, right? Directors of HR, those kind of things, CEOs, CFOs sometimes. So I'd see and hear, I'd hear about the type of culture that your organization wanted or aspired to.
00:02:07
Speaker
But then throughout the course of the implementation, I would talk to middle managers. I would talk all the way down to frontline employees because I was talking to them about the type of benefits that they were going to be offered. So I saw a broad disconnect quite often between the type of culture that the executives thought they had wanted to have and what was actually happening on the ground, right on the front line. And it was really interesting. And and I had several clients for
00:02:35
Speaker
10 years, 15 years, and I saw leaders come and go within certain organizations, right? And I saw some leaders who were winning, you know, in every aspect that you could define winning for an organization and other organizations that
Cultural Disconnects and Executive Mistakes
00:02:54
Speaker
weren't winning. And there were some common threads throughout those leaders and the things that they were doing and the type of culture that those organizations had. And I was trying to, you know,
00:03:04
Speaker
put the pieces together as to what creates this winning culture and what's not happening in the organizations that aren't winning. And the leaders that were a part of cultures that were really performing well, they reminded me of someone.
00:03:22
Speaker
They reminded me of my dad, who was a Midwestern dairy farmer. And these leaders had the patience of a farmer. They were really about growing and nurturing, and they used terms like mentoring the next group of leaders. So the aha moment to write the book was really, I wanted to come up with a way to help leaders
00:03:50
Speaker
think differently, kind of change a paradigm around the way that they think about culture. I witnessed too many failed cultural transformations because I just thought that people were going about it all wrong. So I did a little bit of research. I reflected on my past experience and spent a couple of years, put it all together, and that's how we wound up with seeds of culture.
00:04:14
Speaker
That's lovely. I'm glad you brought in your dad into this and that farmer perspective of the long term of taking your time with leadership and not trying to sort of rush it and throw something together and hope that it works and changes everything overnight. Yeah, exactly. No matter how long you think it's going to take, it's going to take you twice as long.
00:04:39
Speaker
Yeah. So there was, there was really, um, you know, kind of some fundamental mistakes that I saw far too many executives making when it came to their approach to culture. Um, you know, my assertion, my assertion and my thesis, you could say around it is that there's way too many organizations that are struggling with culture because their, their leaders are thinking like a carpenter when they should really be thinking like a farmer.
00:05:05
Speaker
You think about culture in construction terms like, let's build our culture or let's go lay a solid foundation for culture. We need to transform culture as if we can pick it up and shape it with our hands. And I would suggest, and the book argues that leaders who I refer to as culture farmers should look at culture as an organic process.
The Great Resignation and Culture of Commitment
00:05:29
Speaker
Culture is grown, it's not built.
00:05:32
Speaker
And the type of culture that they should aspire to grow, the type of culture that will yield the best crop of results and staying with the metaphor is what I call a culture of commitment. This is a culture where people show up and they work hard for the organization and for each other because they want to, not because they have to.
00:05:49
Speaker
I've seen a lot of cultural transformations that seem to be seeking compliance versus commitment. And if you can grow a culture of commitment, you're going to watch your organization soar. And to do that, you need to plant the right seeds of culture.
00:06:06
Speaker
This seems to be spot on and a lot of, you know, how do you get people to really commit to the organization to show up to perform well, to feel that ownership? It seems key here rather than, you know, how do I get people to comply with my dictates as the top dog in this organization? That just doesn't work, obviously.
00:06:27
Speaker
Yeah, and they'll do that for as long as they have to. They'll comply until they get a better offer somewhere else. That was part of the whole chapter two of the book. I did a lot of research about the Great Resignation. I thought I was going to be able to release the book a lot quicker.
00:06:49
Speaker
Right as I was finishing it up, The Great Resignation was like all over the headlines. So I'm like, I can't write a book about culture and not include something about this. People are going to be like, I've toned up for you. So it took another few months of just really, you know, actually watching that play out a little bit. I mean, it was last time you heard something about The Great Resignation.
00:07:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's been months, right? But it was here. It was a real thing. I mean, it really happened. So I kind of dig into that in chapter two. And the idea being that folks will stick around until they don't have to. When the labor market corrected, when the world started to open back up a little bit, people are like, you know, peace out. I've been waiting a year to quit this job. But
00:07:38
Speaker
You know, resignations and the number of quits in the marketplace are really a pro-cyclical economic event. You know, when the economy is booming, people are more willing to leave their job because they're confident they can go find another one. If the economy is a dumpster fire, they're not going to quit because, you know, you're going to try to find another job. If everyone around you is getting laid off, no.
00:08:00
Speaker
they'll come all that to say is that they'll comply with with your mandates and what you're asking them to do for as long as they have to. And then
00:08:09
Speaker
And they'll vote. Right. Exactly. And real winning as an organization isn't derived by the lowest common denominator employees who feel like they have no choice but to stay. And they're going to just stay in the organization no matter what happens. It's by bringing on those people who do have options, who are able to walk and go somewhere else. But how do you actually convince them to be committed to the org and stay in their roles and thrive in their roles?
00:08:36
Speaker
So I'm thinking of the other leaders who are listening to this and they're thinking, okay, I can get behind this. This sounds like something that makes sense that I might want to do. What would you recommend to someone who's ready to make this shift in terms of how they actually go about doing it? The traits of successful culture farmers that I've recognized, the folks that really do a good job, there's six different traits that I've recognized.
Successful Leadership Traits
00:09:06
Speaker
The first one is, I call it affinity. Good culture farmers have an affinity for people. They actually like people. Now, you'd think that leading people, a prerequisite for leading people would be liking people, but that's not always the case. You know, it's, you know, we can be real... It's just because everyone who's worked in an organization... Right. You'd think that leaders should like people, but, you know, it doesn't always work out that way.
00:09:32
Speaker
Hey, let's be honest. We can be frustrating creatures sometimes. So what I've seen more often than not is what I call fluctuating affinity. You start out as a new leader, you're excited. When someone's first promoted into a leadership role, they're really excited. They got a lot of enthusiasm. They got rose tinted glasses. Everything looks great.
00:09:57
Speaker
They're in the honeymoon phase, right? But then after you have some frustrating interactions with folks and you start to see people at their worst, as often as you see them at their best, you know, you kind of cynicism starts to grow, right? And then your, your affinity kind of starts to fluctuate and sometimes you're just done with people. And if you ever felt that way, ever, you know, or is just, you always look at everyone like everything's awesome all the time.
00:10:26
Speaker
I think it's important to recognize that it's a very human interaction, leadership. And you're going to pay off on mood on certain days. You're going to have different relationships with different people. It's all part of the process there, as you know. Yeah. And what I've seen, the best culture farmers, what they do and what I've tried to do in those
00:10:52
Speaker
in those times when I've got that fluctuating affinity, which I might not be a fan of people at a particular time is stay humble, curious, and make connections. So humility, curiosity, and connectivity.
00:11:07
Speaker
to kind of put myself, to ground myself back in a place where I can have that affinity for people, to be the best type of culture farmer that I can be for them is to stay humble. If you look down on people, don't expect them to look up to help you grow culture. Curiosity, stay curious about folks. I remember when I was new to the sales game and new to the sales leadership game,
00:11:34
Speaker
You know, everyone was just a prospect to me, right? Everyone that I met was just, you know, Oh, can I sell to that person? And then if I, when I was moving into a sales leadership role, it was like, well, is this person going to help me hit my quota? I really wasn't interested in them as an individual or what they wanted. And, you know, a few years of struggling.
00:11:57
Speaker
to make my sales quota, uh, I was like, well, I got to step back here. I, and you know, I, the marketplace humbled me. How about that? So I'm learning from experience there. So this humility was growing out of like, whoa. Okay. So I made my quota, but just barely. I didn't make the kind of bonuses that I want to got humbled by the marketplace a little bit. And I don't know how or why, but I just, I started becoming more curious about the people I was selling to and the people that I was selling with.
00:12:25
Speaker
Right. And I learned that, you know, people are sometimes frustrating, but they're always fascinating. Now, one of my favorite things to do is just chat with people and kind of. Everyone is fascinating. You know, yes, even you, whoever's listening to this, you've got, you've got a gold mine and great stories out there. Even if you think you'd live a mundane life and everyone else that you run into.
00:12:49
Speaker
the every frontline employee that you have or person that you work with, or maybe it's someone in the office who you don't have a great affinity for, there's still something in their background that's fascinating. Endeavor to find out what that is.
00:13:01
Speaker
And fascinating for the sake of being fascinating, not as a means to an end, being really important there, not seeing people as just prospects or as widgets in a factory, but as unique people who are valuable inherently. Yeah, like the term used in the book, an authentic curiosity.
00:13:21
Speaker
Right? An authentic curiosity that is not born out of like, because people can sniff out inauthentic curiosity, right? Right. That's like slick salesman. Yeah, it's called nosiness. You know, it's intrusive people. So, you know, that was, you know, the more I get to everyone's got a, everyone's got a great story in her background or some weird job that they did. And I love finding that stuff out.
00:13:51
Speaker
And then the third part of kind of growing affinity is I call it connectivity, right? Which is just connecting with folks and finding a way to on purpose proactively connect with people. Remember the special occasions. At one point I was leading a sales team of about 275 sales agents.
00:14:20
Speaker
Every single person every single year got a handwritten birthday card for me, right? So I had a nice little logo of the organization on and inside, you know, happy birthday. I said, happy birthday. Make it a great day. And I would underline make it. Right. So I mean, you know, take control of out there and make this a great day. Everybody got the same card. Right. And then I'd sign it and 275 people.
00:14:44
Speaker
The other thing that they got every year for me was an anniversary card, a work anniversary card, because in that particular organization, vesting and how long you've been with the organization, you know, was, was a really big deal, you know, from a financial perspective. So it'd be like, you know, if they'd been with company nine years, it'd be like, can you believe it? You started nine years ago, only one more year to fully vested, go get it, you know, something like that. And it, and I had, I put a process and in place for that.
00:15:11
Speaker
Um, I had my assistant who would come in, uh, the third Tuesday of every month and she would drop, you know, two big lists on my desk. And it was the birthdays and anniversaries that were coming up for the next month. And I would sit in there and I would handwrite all these. I mean, I carved out time on my, my schedule in order to create those connections. And Dan, I got to tell you that as I traveled around, there was six different regional offices that I was leading. I traveled around these, the offices and I, you know, I'd go into the regional manager's office.
00:15:40
Speaker
And, you know, more often than not sitting on the shelf right alongside the sales award that they're most proud of would be my handwritten anniversary card. Yeah. Just that simple gesture.
00:15:54
Speaker
And and it almost became a point of pride because I was with that organization for just under 10 years that That it was it was kind of like having your stripes like how many anniversary cards do you have from dam? And they'd line them up, you know, and it was kind of cool to walk in and see that's right We've been working together for six years. You see six cards lined up, you know so connection
00:16:19
Speaker
Money will, money may get a person to show up to work, but it's going to take appreciation and recognition to get them to commit. So that's, I don't know where I got the idea to do his handwritten cards, but man, it was, it was popular. And, uh, this is all, all driving toward that culture of commitment.
Building Genuine Culture Through Personal Connections
00:16:37
Speaker
Every, every single piece of this. Yeah. And the final thing on making connection is go break bread with people.
00:16:43
Speaker
There's nothing like, if you can, if you can find a way to sit down and have a meal with folks, that's a great point of connection and make a point to not talk about work. I had a mentor who, when we went to lunch, if I talked about work, then I'd have to buy.
00:17:04
Speaker
You know, because she just wanted to, you know, to make a connection. I'm also blessed with an Italian wife who loves to cook and entertain. So when I would have like the sales team, not all 275 at once, but typically like the sales managers and leaders come to our house a couple times a year, she'd throw a big piece and there's just nothing like having folks in your home to just make you as the leader real to folks in my experience.
00:17:30
Speaker
So if you have an opportunity to do that, that's a great way to build connection, which is going to grow your affinity for people.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah, and to the tangible actions question, I mean, those are all really practical steps that leaders can take to grow this and it may not be the fancy frameworks and it may not be the hard charging things that you think you need to do to build the culture. But these smaller, genuine, authentic actions can help to really grow that culture over the long term. Yeah, absolutely. And the
00:18:07
Speaker
The part with the affinity would be the second piece of that that leads to do is make culture a priority. What I mean by that is actually talk about culture out loud. Make it a priority. Put it on your calendar. The birthday cards, the anniversary cards on my calendar, it was a priority. Culture was a priority. I actually carved time out to do that.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah, this is your job as a leader is to do this. This is not some side activity that's not as important as what you see as the bottom line. This is what actually helps to grow the bottom line. Yeah, I totally agree. I was working with consulting with a leader of an organization that was struggling a little bit.
00:18:57
Speaker
I recommended to her as I spent some time around the organization, the different leaders, I said, hey, you need to work on the culture around here. And what she said to me was, I've already done that. They just need to execute the strategy. This strategy would work if these people would just do their damn jobs. That told me a couple of things.
00:19:21
Speaker
Number one, I'm not really sure she was high on the affinity scale for folks. It seems like she was a little frustrated. The other thing she had really made culture a priority by saying, but I made the recommendation of maybe go at work on the culture, build some relationships with folks before getting them to try to execute on strategy. When she said, I've already done that,
00:19:44
Speaker
made me, made me understand, or I understood at that point that, that, that she looked at culture as like a box. You can check. Oh, I'm the new leader here. Okay. Go create culture. Okay. Check. I did that. Right. Moving on to plan, you know, step two, it, that, that, that's, that's not the patience of a farmer, right? That's, that's like a carpenter who thinks like, okay, so I attach this piece to here and then I screw them together. Like, you know, she hadn't really made.
00:20:14
Speaker
culture, a priority. So that'd be a second thing that a leader can do is that, you know, put it on your calendar, talk about it. And when I say it's a recurring event on your calendar, right? It's not a one-time thing. It's going to take a continuous, my dad didn't just plant seeds in the ground and then walk away.
00:20:34
Speaker
You got to continue to nurture them and get them to grow. You're never done with growing this culture. This is something that requires continuous tending to. Yeah, absolutely. Because guess what? You're going to have some performance. That's the crop of performance that you get. And then guess what? In Wisconsin, at least, where I grew up, winter came. You see what you got to do next spring.
00:20:56
Speaker
You got to replant, right? So it could be the performance that you have for a year. Hey, it's December 31st. Awesome. You immediately go from hero to zero. Time to crank it up again, right? As soon as January 1st comes. So it, it has to be a, um, a repeating calendar event. And that, and that's going to take the third part, the third kind of trait of successful culture farmers is, is energy.
00:21:20
Speaker
It's going to take a lot of energy, physical, mental, and an emotional energy in order to. So if you're looking for a tangible takeaway for, for leaders, is that.
00:21:31
Speaker
You know, there was a time when I was first promoted to a leadership role in my early 20s. And let's just say that Dan liked going out for a few beers after meetings, right? And it was just part of the culture, you know? And man, there was, when I think back on how many days I was on the struggle bus, you know, getting up in the morning and having to go and perform.
00:21:59
Speaker
At the top of my game, you know, it was you know, let's just say that There was no coincidence that when I was like working out and getting in shape and having the physical energy my actual Performance improved as well. So it takes some physical energy the mental energy He's just never stopped learning. No, I went back to grad school at 44 years old No, I was like 46. I'm so old. I can't even think I don't know
00:22:27
Speaker
I was in my mid forties when I decided to go back to grad school. I mean, you were there, you know, I was the old guy in the room. Um, so the, but it was, I just had always had something in my head, like, you know, I want to go get my master's degree. I want to go get my master's degree while I was grinding away, you know, we're gonna won't work on my way up the ladder and leading teams for 20 years. And plenty of folks could say, well, why are you bothering to go get a master's degree now? And it was, I didn't, I never wanted to stop learning.
00:22:56
Speaker
And also, I wanted to show my kids that's important. Yeah, there's no point where it's similar to where there's no point of where you can stop tending to culture. There's also no point where you as a leader can stop learning new things and stop trying to come up with come up on the latest and continue to look ahead. Never stop learning. Have that mental energy. And then the third type of energy which
00:23:25
Speaker
is, I think is, man, I don't know if anyone is more important than the other, but it's emotional energy.
Continuous Learning and Leadership Credibility
00:23:31
Speaker
This could be draining being a leader, you know? It's the, when I think about my dad and as a farmer, like just the emotional energy of like, we had four kids, you know, wife and four kids to feed. And when milk prices went down, we didn't have a nice Christmas.
00:23:51
Speaker
Right. If there was a drought, it was tough times. Like just that, that emotional resilience. And that's, you know, when it comes to emotional energy, enthusiasm is your offense and resilience is your defense. Um, the, just having that resilience, you know, and I wish, I wish I could bottle and sell resilience. Man, we wouldn't be talking right now. I'd be on an island somewhere.
00:24:20
Speaker
But whatever you can do to try to become more resilient, there's plenty of Ted Talks on grit and resilience, but that's your defense. That's your emotional defense. Your enthusiasm is your emotional offense. And you have to play both in your mind of having that resilience and having that enthusiasm to really bring this energy that's needed to grow culture. Yes, exactly.
00:24:48
Speaker
And then the fourth trait of successful leaders and culture farmers is authenticity. There's so many fake things out in the world, you know, Dan? There's a scarcity now of realness and trust, in my opinion. Yeah. And there's, you know, from fake news to fake Twitter bots to, you know, just it's people are looking for real, you know?
00:25:17
Speaker
And in my opinion, authenticity, if you're, well, how can I be authentic? Well, ground it in self-awareness and sincerity. Be self-aware. And if you don't know what your blind spots are, ask someone you trust. Have the courage to be self-aware. And how are other people perceiving you as a leader?
00:25:44
Speaker
Seek out some peers, seek out the folks that report to you and figure out what you're good at, figure out what you're bad at, but be authentic to who you are and then stick to it, which is the sincerity part. You're not opposite of sincerity, I mean, fake, right? So another trait of culture farmers is the next one on the list here is credibility.
00:26:16
Speaker
Credibility and the way I break it down is that credibility is the reason people will start listening to you Okay, and Because they're gonna be the organization is gonna be wondering why especially if you want to start growing culture or if you think that there's a Cultural change that should happen. We're gonna be like, well, why should we listen to you?
00:26:37
Speaker
You know, it's, and that's just human nature. My kids, every question, why, why, why, you know? And that doesn't change when we're adults. It's just, it's going to be, well, why should I listen to you? Some things to look out for if you're looking to grow and increase your credibility with your organization, here's some stuff to look out for. Beware the allure of tenure. Quite often, if someone is trying to position themselves as being more credible, right, then maybe their ability would
00:27:07
Speaker
would lead people to believe, they'll just say, well, you know, I've been here for 20 years and this is the way that we do XYZ. No one cares how long you've been there. What we care about is that, you know, are you good at your job? Now, have you been here 20 years or have you experienced one year 20 times?
00:27:30
Speaker
years of experience being a very imprecise proxy for actual ability I think is something that comes up over and over again and the research and it's so important to separate those two. I've been playing golf for 20 years and I suck at it. So why does tenure, you know, tenure does not equal skill. Just because you've been doing something a long time doesn't mean you do it well.
00:27:56
Speaker
So if you are a young leader out there listening to this is that take solace in that. It's not about how long you've been doing. It's about how well you're doing while you're in the role. And can you find ways to bring value? I was promoted to a regional manager when I was 27 years old and the district manager, the top producing district manager reported to me was 54 years old, twice as old as me.
00:28:25
Speaker
And, you know, if I was maybe a little self-conscious because I was maybe overly self-aware of like, well, this person's like twice as old as mine. And maybe I looked into it or maybe someone told me, but I just, I always tried to find a way to bring her value in the ways that I could and understand the ways that I couldn't. And we had a great working relationship, great working relationship. I mean,
00:28:51
Speaker
she eventually retired and we still exchanged Christmas cards. And I haven't worked with her in the day myself. Probably haven't worked with her in close to 20 years. Right. But you had the same, yeah, you were working toward the same goals and you were bringing real value to that relationship. Yeah. And I didn't try to, you know, I shoved my ego aside. I had that humility to be like, why she knows a lot of stuff.
00:29:17
Speaker
If you're currently a leader and you're concerned about your credibility, watch out for blind spots. What I mean by blind spots is people. If you are, let's say, a senior leader and you're promoting and putting junior leaders into position, their credibility or lack thereof is going to impact your credibility or lack thereof. People take a look at who you promote in place.
00:29:43
Speaker
And if you do have to take a flyer on someone and take a chance on, you know, promoting someone too early, well, then it's your job to bring them up and mentor them because they suck at their job. Other people around that are going to notice it. And they're going to be like, why do you know, why did Dan promote him? What's that guy? You know, and sometimes we like people so much, we keep them around and all they're doing is hurting our credibility. Um,
00:30:10
Speaker
Next thing to watch out for is trying to leverage your title or position. That can really hurt your credibility. If you have to tell me that you're a vice president, I immediately find you less credible. It's like, dude, I got the org chart. I know where you sit on it. You don't have to tell me that I should listen to you just simply based upon the legitimate power or authority of your title. Right. That should always be
00:30:35
Speaker
a very last resort for getting anything done, if even then. And if people can't tell that you're in a real position of authority just from the way that you act and carry yourself and add value to the conversation, then you're doing it wrong in my opinion. Do you ever play that kind of social experiment where I like to say you're out at a business meeting and there's a whole group of coworkers sitting around and it's one of those where like, you know, someone's picking up the check. You ever try to guess like,
00:31:04
Speaker
who the server is going to bring the check to. I don't know if I have, I'd love to hear what you've done with this. No, just try it sometime. It's an experiment. And they're usually pretty spot on. That's really interesting. Like you can tell just innately. Yes, maybe it's servers ain't stupid. They typically will bring the check to the right person.
00:31:30
Speaker
Without having something out to tell them because they're just picking up on like who's in charge around here, you know Yeah, just next time you go out with a large group. I'll definitely try that. Yeah So after credit bit so credibility is the reason that people will start listening to you Integrity is the reason that people will continue listening to you and that's kind of the the sixth
00:31:57
Speaker
trait of a successful culture farmer is integrity. Without it, you can just throw all the other attributes that I've just went through and just throw them in the trash. Because if you say one thing and do another, people are going to stop listening to you. So if you lack integrity, if your words and your actions don't match up, then people aren't going to like you. They're not going to have an affinity for you. They're going to be like, does Dan really think
00:32:27
Speaker
culture is a priority because sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, can't trust what comes out of his mouth. It's going to take a tremendous amount of energy to... It's a whole lot less energy to tell the truth than to remember your lies. Your authenticity will come into question, your credibility comes into question.
00:32:51
Speaker
The six traits of the really successful leaders, culture farmers are, once again, affinity. They like people. They make culture a priority in order to have the energy to do it. They're authentic. They're credible. And they have integrity. So moving away from the book a little bit, I'd love to get some of your thoughts on some more general leadership trends and looking toward the future of leadership.
Future of Leadership and Cultural Theories in Remote Work
00:33:17
Speaker
So just, I know you're not, you know, you're not a fortune teller, but just speculating here, what are some major changes you see coming to the business world in the next five or 10 years? Wow. Um, you know, if I can answer that question, I'd be running a hedge fund. Um, five, five years from now, you know, who knows, you know, COVID jumped on us less than five years ago.
00:33:48
Speaker
Who could have seen that coming? Right. Yeah. I mean, there's so many things coming out of the blue and you mentioned the great resignation and all of that too. Yeah. AI scares the crap out of me. Mostly because I watched the Terminator like a thousand times as a kid, but also because I probably haven't invested the time to see how it can be a tool. I'm just waiting for Skynet to take over.
00:34:13
Speaker
It's useful when you're – I was just at a coaching conference and they're doing a lot of these presentations with AI and how amazing it's going to be and I think there's a lot to that obviously. But I think these sort of science fiction scenarios do help to ground you in
00:34:30
Speaker
you know how could this go wrong what we need to be looking out for so i think there is benefit to having the terminator right they're talking about like a i control drones i'm like wait a minute has no one no one watch terminator this is this is exactly how it goes down. So five to ten you know i'm gonna i'm gonna dodge that question i'm gonna i'm gonna punt on that a little bit again here's why i'm more of a historian than a futurist.
00:34:58
Speaker
You know, maybe it's just, maybe it's because I'm coming off right in a book where I had to do a lot of research. And, you know, as I mentioned, I was so close to having this thing, you know, a completed manuscript. And then the great resignation was everywhere in the news. And then that kind of forced me to dig into it. And, and during the great resignation, there was.
00:35:19
Speaker
There was one thing that really drove me nuts, which was you need to watch the talking heads or read the headlines about the great resignation of people. It's like culture matters now more than ever. Now more than ever before, it's important to have a good positive workplace. Now more than ever.
00:35:41
Speaker
It's almost as often as you hear people say, you know, the new normal. This is the new normal. I got tired about those things. And I got curious. I'm like, really has is culture now important for the first time now more than ever? And is it you mean it? It's now more important than it was during the Colorado Coldfield War.
00:36:01
Speaker
When members of private security and the Colorado National Guard massacred 21 people, including women and children, just to break up strike, because people were fighting over workplace culture, or how carne calling in the Pinkernans to break up strikes, and all the other labor problems that we had during the Gilded Age. Culture has been important forever. It's not suddenly more important. It's a part of our history.
00:36:29
Speaker
Culture and a culture of commitment that people care about in a place to show up to work where they feel valued and committed to that organization, it's going to be just as important five years from now and 50 years from now, just as important as it was 50 years ago and 100 years ago.
00:36:48
Speaker
So I don't know if I'm answering your question, but I don't – I think you're getting – Yeah, I think you're getting at it. So in my view, a lot of what you're saying here and definitely chime in if I'm off base here, but there are some real fundamentals that
00:37:04
Speaker
essentially amount to being a decent human being who works well with other people toward common goals as part of their work. And doing the basics right is actually rare. And if you can get those basics right and start growing this kind of culture, that's the best way to be ready for whatever the future is going to bring. Yeah. I mean, it's
00:37:35
Speaker
Someone asked me, so for the last year, I've been working remote, which has been interesting because while I was writing the book, I guess I was working remotely. I was working when I was writing it, but I had never worked fully remote until the last year, which made me nervous because I'd already finished writing the book.
00:37:55
Speaker
I was like, oh wow, does this stuff still make sense? Are there philosophies and ideas that I have in the book? Do they work in a virtual world? And the answer is yes. Yeah, they're evergreen. Yeah, luckily because where do I see the business world going in the next five years? In regards to culture and kind of what I've been spending a lot of time on, I think it's going to be those kind of evergreen ideas that were the same back
00:38:22
Speaker
50 years ago, 100 years ago, right? I mean, the seeds of culture are like effective communication is five years from now is ineffective communication going to be better, right? Is another seed of cultures ethics? Are we saying that, you know, is ethics going to be different and we're not going to need ethics, right? Do you still need ethics in a remote work environment? And there's just because the way that I define culture is how we do things around here.
00:38:49
Speaker
Right. And, and those things are everything. How you hire, how you fire, how you recognize, how it's, it's how you do everything. That's, that's the real, real culture and, and how you do things virtually versus onsite in person.
00:39:05
Speaker
You still have to communicate effectively. You still need ethics. You still need psychological safety. Diversity is a good start, but you've got to work towards inclusion too. Generosity, you can still be generous in a virtual environment. Autonomy, that's a big one in a virtual environment. And then mutual accountability, where we're holding each other accountable because we're both committed to the organization. I don't need someone coming in to hold me accountable.
00:39:32
Speaker
Yeah, so getting away from a lot of the fads and the manufactured debates of the day and back to some of these really foundational elements is where you're seeing business leaders need to be going.
00:39:48
Speaker
Anecdotally speaking here, I have some friends who are getting forced back to the office and I'll use that word. They're getting forced back to the office. No, there's different ways. We've been called back to the office. We've been asked to welcome. We've been welcomed back to the office. I think they're, they're not happy even if it's just three days a week because for their particular job, they can do it from home. They can do it remotely, but
00:40:13
Speaker
One thing that is often used as an excuse or reason why we have to call people back to the office is a culture. You got to pull people back in for the culture. Well, yeah, if your culture was bean bag chairs and craft beer on tap in the break room, well, then yeah, you got to pull people back into the office for that. But that's not really what culture is. You know, culture is how we do things around here. And people don't want to show up at the office because you got some cool furniture, right? It's
00:40:44
Speaker
It's more than that, it's deeper than that. So where I see in the next five years to 10 years is maybe an understanding of what are those evergreen principles that create a good culture that people can commit themselves to.
00:40:59
Speaker
There's a long-winded answer to a short question. No, it's a refreshing perspective, especially as there's so much of the fad and ideas of the day that are coming out that it's this historical look that you bring to it and that return to the basics and doing them right and being a decent human who can work well with other people. That's in its own way refreshing to hear now.
00:41:22
Speaker
Oh, that's good. Thank you. Yes, you don't want the people who disagree with that. There's bigger problems. But I think it is really like the, it's nice to agree with the stuff in principle, but it feels like really doing it day in, day out is where the work is. Yes. And it's going to take patience and I keep going back to it is just
00:41:49
Speaker
You know, how would a farmer approach this? Farmers play the long games. You know, they've got, and there's new technology out there, right? There's some really expensive technology in farming. And I got, my dad would, one day a year, my parents would allow me to take a day off school and skip school. And we would go to the World Dairy Expo.
00:42:18
Speaker
in Madison, Wisconsin, and then, and it is people from all over the world. Cause you know, Wisconsin is the dairy state. Uh, it's America's dairy land. And so I grew up on a dairy farm and we would go to the, to the world dairy expo. And I remember as a kid walking through there and looking at all the different machinery and technology, and this is going to be back in the eighties just to date myself, but you know, they had robots and robots, milk and cows back then. I was like, wow, that's crazy.
00:42:47
Speaker
You know, so the analogy I'm making here is that five, 10 years from now, some of the technology may change. You may have milk and robots. You may have AI in your business. You know, you have to have the version of milk and robots in your business, maybe AI, but there's still going to be some foundational things. Like when we saw the milk and robots, remember my dad saying, yeah, if only they could get a robot to feed them.
00:43:13
Speaker
There's still going to be some fundamental things. If only they could get a robot to pick up the manure. There's still going to be some core basic foundational evergreen seeds that need to be planted no matter what the twists and turns of your industry.
00:43:38
Speaker
Dan, so we did a lot of studying of different leadership theories during our time at GW. Can I ask you what's a leadership theory you most describe to and then what's one that you think is something you don't really fully agree with or might be overhyped in some ways? Servant leadership, I ascribe to that.
00:44:04
Speaker
For many years, I led a team of independent contractors. So those 275 sales reps I talked about, they were all independent contractors. They were not W2 employees reporting to me. So my legitimate authority, legitimate power was very limited. I needed to influence them because they didn't really have to listen to me. They had to want to.
00:44:31
Speaker
And I would say out loud to them, I would say the words, listen guys, I work for you, you don't work for me. What can I do? I am here to serve you.
00:44:43
Speaker
Right. I work for you. You don't work for me. Now I'm an at-will employee. So I'm going to choose, you know, how, how and where and when I'm going to do that. You know, because I'm a servant leader doesn't mean I'm just your servant, right? Uh, we're going to be in this together, but I do look at you as my number one customer. You're my primary customer. What can I do to help you achieve your goals? So taking a servant leadership approach. And I don't know if it's because I just had so many years where I was doing that.
00:45:14
Speaker
but also situational leadership. I can recognize a lot of times in my career where I was differentiating between who I was delegating to, who I was supporting, who I was coaching, who I was directing. So if there's some
00:45:33
Speaker
And maybe the way that I viewed the situational leadership with servant leadership is like, this is how I'm best going to serve this person in this situation. This, I do need to direct in this person in this situation. This is a person who I just need to coach. This is a person, you know, in where they meeting them, where they are. Yes, I need to delegate to them. This is a person who needs my support right now.
00:45:57
Speaker
you know, so it's fundamentally not how do I feel like leading them? It's what what do I think would be the best approach to best serve them in this moment? Yeah, and I guess if I'm gonna go back to the second question authentic leadership.
00:46:13
Speaker
Right. I have some questions about that. I mean, I know that sounds weird because I just talked a lot about like how, you know, there's a lot of fake stuff out there and people are thinking about, you know, they need authenticity. I get that. But sometimes in the authentic leadership, and maybe I'm, you tell me, you tell me how you feel about authentic leadership. Yes, people love authenticity.
00:46:38
Speaker
But I've seen some folks twist the idea of authentic leadership into, um, well, I'm just a jerk and that's who I am and you just have to deal with it. I'm being authentic. You know, like, uh, I had, uh, I had, um, uh, a leader of mine who was, uh,
00:47:03
Speaker
Love him to death. Very authentic guy. The guy would often drop F-bombs in a meeting. Now, the team that I was leading, and occasionally people would call him out like, language. He's like, that's just who I am. Kind of like, you got to deal with it. That's just who I am. People want authenticity. Yes, they do.
00:47:28
Speaker
But you know, when I asked him to come in and to talk to my organization, one time I say, Hey man, this listen, I'm no prude, right? You drop out bombs around each other all the time, but like just not in this room today.
00:47:43
Speaker
Right. Not, not for this group here today. And you're like, you know, almost had to clutch his pearls like, Oh, what do you mean? That's, then I'm not being my authentic self. I'm like, please man. Just like, just not today. You know? So I don't know if that's answering your question, but it's definitely is.
Authenticity and Leadership Recommendations
00:48:01
Speaker
Yeah. Like it's about just cause you'd like to talk a certain way or you're not worried about offending other people, but those other people are worried about are just.
00:48:10
Speaker
Your message is going to be lost. And the way I explained it to him, like, dude, you got such a great message, but people are going to tune it out the first F-bomb you drop. So I don't know if I disagree with authentic leadership, but that's just, I struggle with it. No, I totally understand that because I think there is a misconstruing of authentic leadership that's exactly this. Seth Godin, I'm not sure if you've come across his books and everything, but he says authenticity is a crock.
00:48:39
Speaker
which I always found an interesting way to put it. But his basic message is that as a leader, you're always putting forward what you need to in order to move
00:48:57
Speaker
the activity, the cause, the mission, whatever it is, forward. And it's so much less about what makes you as the leader feel good or feel like you have to do less work. And it's much more about what do you have to bring forward as a leader. And I find that pretty compelling too of there's a lot of times when
00:49:20
Speaker
you know, what feels good to you as the leader is not necessarily what you should be doing in order to really make the impact you want to be making. And a lot of times the leader is doing the hard things that might not be easy that really will move the needle. Wow, that's... Yes, put that on repeat. You know, it's so much easier to just be yourself, right? But that doesn't mean it's the most effective.
00:49:49
Speaker
right? You know, it's, yes, be yourself. I mean, don't don't be fake, but just there are times where it's really easy to be yourself, it might be harder to be the best version of yourself in that particular moment. And in one of my very first mentors, he'd often say, you know, it's not about you.
00:50:12
Speaker
right? Because I would go in there complaining about, you know, that the team doesn't do this. And I told them this and I, this and I, this, and he's like, it's not about you. It's about what you can do for them. Okay. You know, so, so yes, the, the, you know, the way that I talk to what I do or what I feel or I'm, I'm just being authentic. Yeah. But you know, you said about being the real you or the best you, you know, and I don't know if they're,
00:50:40
Speaker
You can probably do both at the same time. I'm sure there's someone who could dive into that. But since you asked, is there a leadership theory that I'm still struggle with, it would be that one. Yeah, it's not using authenticity as an excuse. It's not using authenticity as a crutch to just do whatever you were going to do. It's being genuine, having integrity, all of the things that you mentioned are fundamental to being a good leader.
00:51:09
Speaker
And at the same time, it's not just, okay, I'm going to go and unload on my team because it makes me feel better about some other thing that happened in my life. And that's terrible leadership, obviously. So it's figuring out what parts of your authentic self you can bring forward and making sure that you're self-regulated enough where you can actually give people the steady leadership they need to grow the organization over the long term.
00:51:40
Speaker
you know, kind of doing what you feel like doing. And I had a leader once who, she was coming in to talk to the team. She was like a VP and she was coming in and talking to the team that I led. And there were some folks on the team were like, well, I don't remember what the topic was, but they kept saying, well, we'd like to do it this way. And we'd like to do that this way. And we'd like to do this. And she goes, will you continue to do it because you like to do it or because it actually works? Because they might not be the same thing.
00:52:07
Speaker
You know, so, yeah, it's an interesting topic. It definitely is. Yeah. Um, one last question for you, Dan. So, um, is there a leadership book or some other resource that you find yourself returning to the most often? On my desk right now, um, is I'm looking at, uh, leading change by John Carter.
00:52:35
Speaker
Um, because we were going through, uh, I'm currently working with an organization to change kind of their go to market and some of their, their sales practices. So I've found that, um, you know, just a good refresher of kind of working through the eight steps of, of Cotter's change management. Um, I keep coming back to that. Um, it's certainly not a new book. It's been out probably close at 30 years now.
00:53:05
Speaker
And the four disciplines of execution, I find myself coming back to that as well. I think Chris McChesney is the main author on that. It's from the Franklin Cubby folks. I don't know if you're from there at that one. I haven't come across that one in particular. What's the gist of that? So it's the four disciplines of execution and the thesis is strategy is knowing what to do, execution is knowing how to do it.
00:53:31
Speaker
And it really, if you want to talk about some tangible takeaways, that's got like, you know, super tangible takeaways on how to actually execute on something, you know, this broad strategies of, but first of all, okay, so how is that going to work on the ground? You know, um, yeah, the four, four DX, four disciplines of execution.
00:53:55
Speaker
find myself coming back to that one. And this is going to be a super old school one. Maybe I'm dating myself or maybe it fits in with exactly the type of leadership theory I ascribe to, which is developing the leader within you by John Maxwell. Yeah, classic. It was the first leadership book that I read. And I think it was the first one that he wrote before he had to go like pump out a book every three months.
00:54:26
Speaker
21-year repeatable laws of this, the 17 laws of that. But that's the different levels of leadership in that make a lot of sense, especially for the type of organization that I was leading. Yeah, it goes right in line with some of the real classic foundational elements being what's missing now. So I've really loved our conversation, Dan. Thanks for sharing all your expertise with us.
00:54:55
Speaker
No, this is great. This was awesome. Thank you, Brad. Oh, I'm so glad to have you, and thanks again for coming on. Where can people find out more about the book and what else you're up to?
00:55:08
Speaker
uh, Dan Bradison.com. And, uh, probably in the show notes or a link to get the proper spelling on my name. Uh, uh, D A N B R E D E S O M.com. Uh, will be the offer splash page for the book. You can grab the book anywhere, anywhere that you purchase books, Amazon, Barnes and Noble everywhere that you can buy a book. You can find it there.
00:55:36
Speaker
Fantastic. And the book is Seeds of Culture. So definitely recommend that everyone check that out. It says chock full of all kinds of wisdom from Dan and something that everyone should really check out. And so we'll put the links to all that in the show notes. And listeners, thanks again for joining us. If you got something out of the show, if you can share it with a colleague, leave a quick review. That helps a lot in spreading the word so others can find us. And Dan, thanks again for joining us. Hey, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for having me. Of course.