28. The Argumentative Employee + The Ambiguity of Culture

Episode 28: The Argumentative Employee + The Ambiguity of Culture (Summary)

Why most talk about building a culture is usually directionless lip service. Plus, responding to an employee who constantly argues and complains. We’re getting after it now, on Boss Better Now!

Links:
To learn more about Joe Mull, visit his website ​Joemull.com​.
To hear more from Joe Mull visit his YouTube channel​.
To learn how to invite Joe to speak at an event, visit ​Joemull.com/speaking​.
To check date availability or to get a quote for an event, email ​hello@joemull.com​.
To explore options for coaching from Alyssa Mullet, visit ​Joemull.com/coaching​.
For more information on the BossBetter Leadership Academy, visit Joemull.com/academy.
Email the show at bossbetternow@gmail.com.
To leave comments, ask questions, or to message us visit our Boss Better Now Podcast Facebook Page.
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Transcript – Episode 28: The Argumentative Employee + The Ambiguity of Culture

Joe:
Why most talk about building a culture is usually directionless lip service. Plus, responding to an employee who constantly argues and complains. We’re getting after it now on Boss Better Now.

Alyssa:
You’re listening to Boss Better Now. Please welcome speaker, author, and nachos superfan, Joe Mull.

Joe:
Hello again, BossHeroes. Thank you for joining us. This show is your show. We gather to help you navigate the many challenges of leading people at work. Whether those challenges are frustrating, ambiguous, or never-ending, we endeavor to be your weekly dose of advice, humor, and encouragement. If you think having a show like this one is important, then please take a moment to rate the podcast, leave us a review, and share episodes with others online. I am joined, as I usually am, by my fabulous co-host professional coach, Alyssa Mullet. Hello, Alyssa.

Alyssa:
Hello. And can I just second that we love our fans and we would really, really, really love to hear from them, like nothing makes doing this thing, I mean, outside of the natural joy that is you and I together, but nothing makes it sweeter than hearing from people about what really, you know, set their mind on fire or got their wheels turning, or what kind of impact a strategy or a camaraderie question of the week had with their teams. That’s the juicy stuff that makes it really worthwhile.

Joe:
Or if you think we are absolutely bananas. If you’re like –  that thing you talked about is total bunk and I completely disagree with you. We, I mean, I would get such a thrill out of that too, just because it’s — to spark a reaction — is terrific. And you know what else I would love to know, Alyssa? I would love to know where and how people are listening. Do you listen while taking your dog for a walk in the morning? I listen to the new episode every Sunday morning as I walk my dog, um, just to, to have it in my ear for that week. And, uh, and yes, I know that might sound weird that I do the show, but then I listen to the show, and I actually hear it in different ways. Um, or do you listen, like, are you commuting back to work? Are you running on a treadmill? Are you listening to it at lunch? Are you streaming it while you cook dinner? Uh, I’m just curious, like, where are you listening, Boss Heroes. We’d love to know you can, uh, email the show BossBetterNow@gmail.com. You can tweet me @JoeMull77. That’s also my Instagram @JoeMull77. Or if you’re watching this video, you can drop a comment in the box below and we’ll see it.

Alyssa:
Yes. And that’s how I view what I am able to consume of our show, because I can only take so much of my own voice. So, I do it in consumable bites, but whenever the episode drops on YouTube that’s where I view it.

Joe:
So, you watch it on video?

Alyssa:
I do. I do. I got to torture myself for the full experience.

Joe:
Nobody likes hearing their recorded voice and nobody likes watching themselves on video. So, I don’t, I don’t think you’re alone in that. I give you credit for doing it.

Alyssa:
Just, you know, here to torture myself and others. Thanks for listening

Joe:
True. In the intro, you noted me as a nacho superfan, and I have to tell you something that I learned recently. Um, so nachos and cheese are my favorite snack. Um, if that’s like a go-to thing for me, if I’m really feeling munchy and I, when I was doing keto last year and just continuing to try to eat healthy, I rarely do it. Uh, I am a nacho super fan, but what I learned recently is that I’m not saying it properly. Uh, I, I have a friend who told me that when I say nachos. So, so what I mean when my favorite snack is, is tortilla chips and nacho cheese together.

Alyssa:
Yes.

Joe:
And a friend of mine told me, nachos is a different thing. He said nachos is the chips and the cheese and the guac and the Pico and the chicken and the, um, cheese and the sour cream and all of it. It’s like the big dressed-up thing.

Alyssa:
OK.

Joe:
And I mean, I am here for that too. I’m like, yes, please, to all of it. But in our house, if I say to my wife, “Hey, do you want some nachos?” Like, we don’t think about the whole concoction.

Alyssa:
Right. Right.

Joe:
Where do you land on that? I feel like maybe you’ll settle an argument. Where do you land?

Alyssa:
Well, I guess I, for sake of ease, consider it all nachos. I mean, I feel like what your friend described with all the things is like “Nachos Supreme”, right?

Joe:
Thank you!! Are you listening Joe and Bethany? Just pay attention to what’s happening right now because it means I was right.

Alyssa:
Oh. So, there we go. That’s why that was in that whole piece.

Joe:
I mean, you could have gone the other way, but you completely agreed with me. And yes, it’s like if I say, “Do you want some nachos?” I don’t think that automatically means “…and every imaginable topping that comes with it.” And since they’re not here to debate, we’re just going to declare me as right. And move on.

Alyssa:
Wait, so wait a minute. What do your now-former friends declare, declare as the other thing with just the cheese and the chips?

Joe:
Chips and cheese. They say it’s chips and cheese. Like if I just want chips and cheese, I have to clarify it as being only the two pieces of what otherwise would be involved in a larger something they call ‘nachos’.

Alyssa:
Okay. All right.

Joe:
I’m making various hand gestures on the video here to like demonstrate the size and scope of this. So, if you’ve never checked out the YouTube version of our show, maybe, maybe stop by and see me wildly gesticulating about my favorite Mexican snack. And we’ve spent enough time on that. Don’t don’t you think?

Alyssa:
Agreed.

Joe:
Okay. Well, I want to start today with Mail Time. We got a question from Cindy in Michigan, (Alyssa: Oh yay!) and I’m going to read you what she sent over because I think it’s fodder for an interesting conversation. Here we go. ‘Hi, Joe and Alyssa, we have an employee who pushes back with almost every directive, guidance or task asked of her. When we recently changed our hours of operation, she came back with an alternate suggestion of hours that gave her a three-day weekend after asking for a raise and new salary structure, which we granted, she said, all the work we did to figure out the new numbers was flawed. And she insisted on a bigger raise. After introducing a new process, critical to operations, she ignored the instructions and spent two weeks telling everyone it wouldn’t work. We dread dealing with her, and I know we should “pull the weeds” but she’s our only technician and she’s good at her actual job. How much is too much to deal with when it comes to someone who sucks up all the workplace happiness? That’s Cindy in Michigan.

Alyssa:
Wow.

Joe:
I have so much to say! Where do you want to start?

Alyssa:
Well, I’ll be short and simple then hopefully. So, my, my first thing was, okay, this seems like an engaged person, maybe overly engaged, right? Um, because they’ve got constant feedback going on. The thing that clinched it at the end for me was Cindy saying, she’s the only person in that role. Right?

Joe:
Mmm Hmmmm.

Alyssa:
Okay. And I, to me, I wonder how much that other person, that individual, knows that they are the only person.

Joe:
Right.

Alyssa:
And how much of that is “you need me more than I need you” in terms of dictating their commitment in the workplace.

Joe:
Yes. To what degree does someone recognizing how disposable they are, influence the degree to which they regulate their behavior. Great points.

Alyssa:
That’s Right. Okay. My second thing is the last line is – how does she say it? – something about allowing the overall happiness…

Joe:
How much is too much to deal with when it comes to someone who sucks up all the workplace, happiness.

Alyssa:
Great. And she also mentions about she’s good at her actual job, but I would argue how much of your actual job, her actual job, includes making other people not unhappy. If you infect the entire team, you know, that we’ve gone to the whole age-old, “one bad apple upsetting the whole cart”. This is the… this is like the exact definition of that to me is that her actual job does include not defecting infecting the entire team with her unhappiness.

Joe:
You went where I was going to go first, which is (Alyssa: Ok) that there’s kind of a, uh, there’s a bug in the matrix. There’s a glitch. There’s a flaw in the thinking here, which is, but she’s good at her actual job. And we do this thing in our minds as leaders sometimes where we say, “I’ve got a really good employee who does blank. He or she’s really, really good. They never call off and they’re super reliable and they are our, you know, our customers really like him or her, but…” And then you hear about all the ways in which they engage in behavior that does harm. And the pushback there has to be the, no, you don’t have a good employee. She is not good at her actual job. This person is reliable at a couple of things she’s asked to do, right. But appears potentially to be lacking a whole other set of skills and instincts that are crucial to being a great employee. And we have, I’m sure Cindy has people on her team who are great employees and they’re the total package. And so, we’re not gonna besmirch them by lumping this person in with them and saying, oh, well, she’s good too. No, she’s not. There’s a pattern here of behavior that is doing harm. And when you use a phrase, like ‘sucks up all the workplace happiness’ then you’re talking about an impact on culture and the experience that people have every day. And actually, that’s a perfect little tease to what we’re going to talk about in a few minutes, uh, relative to culture. Uh, but, but let’s talk about the… the behaviors too, which is this constant pushback and questioning and arguing, um, which as a set of behaviors alone, I don’t have a problem with that as a leader. If I have an employee who says, “Hey, I think there’s a better way to do this.” or, “Hey, I really want to question why this decision was made”, or, you know, “I appreciate that you did this for me, but I would have been happier if you did this for me.” At a foundational level, that doesn’t bother me if the person is not demonstrating a pattern of behavior that sucks the workplace happiness out. Right?

Alyssa:
Right.

Joe:
If, we have folks who, who come to work and they want a voice and they want their bosses to solicit their ideas and their opinions, and they want to have some influence over their work environment, that’s good. That’s important. And that’s what we should be doing as bosses. We should be mining our people for those things because, at a psychological level, people need to have influence and have some choice over how they spend most of their waking hours.

Alyssa:
Yeah.

Joe:
And so sometimes when we see employees doing these things, it’s because bosses aren’t asking it’s because the organization isn’t invested there, they’re treating employees as worker bees, and it’s a “command and control” environment and it’s ‘show up and shut up and don’t think, and just do.’.

Alyssa:
Uh-huh, uh-huh.

Joe:
But I don’t think that’s the case here for Cindy and her team, especially cause she says, you know, we’ve, she asked for the new salary and we try to make these accommodations for her. When you have someone who constantly argues and complains in spite of your efforts to get their feedback and input. Well, now you’re being victimized by some traits that are probably out of your control. And she used the analogy of “pull the weeds”, which I’ve talked about in my books and keynotes, which is that once someone demonstrates to you who they are, believe them and act accordingly. And if you have a weed in your garden, somebody for whom, no amount of nurturing and support and fertilizer and oxygen will convert them into a flower – because we just don’t transform into thriving flowers – then we got to pull the weed.

Alyssa:
Yup. You know, this whole concept of pulling weeds and, you know, is it engagement versus, um, the behavior in which it’s infecting, uh, the rest of the team. I think that that is the crux of where the majority of our great leaders really struggle. Like ‘Is it me trying to being too attuned to the fact that this person is constantly coming at me with feedback or engagement, or can I objectively say that the behaviors that they are exhibiting outside of the recognized ways in which we have talked about feedback, being beneficial to our relationship and to the team environment, is there objective evidence that they are acting outside of those mechanisms of improved engagement and feedback?’. Those are the hard questions to try to go, ‘Okay, can I remove myself enough from the feeling of nothing will ever be enough for this person to say objectively, they are infecting the rest of the team and affecting the ability of the entire team or a good portion of the team to have happiness, to enjoy coming to the workplace, to not have to continually defend why they are doing something or how they’re acting in accordance with whatever new changes?’, that kind of thing.

Joe:
And at the heart of what you’re getting at, I think is, is that the leader needs to respond with curiosity and to differentiate between incidents and a pattern. And so let me talk about both of those for a second. So, when someone argues or pushes back or says, ‘I don’t like this’, you know, the first response by really emotionally intelligent leaders is curiosity, Hey, what’s that about? I’m not going to get defensive. I’m not going to feel like they’re disrespecting my authority. Cause as soon as you get caught up in that cycle, there’s a no-win situation for everybody. But if you can just be kind of compassionately curious and say, ‘huh, what’s that about? Let me, let me try to talk to this person and understand like, where are you coming from on this’? And, and you know, some of the coaching stuff that we’ve talked about here and really helping people to explore that is useful in those moments and when incidents occur, that’s probably the best response.

Alyssa:
Uh-huh.

Joe:
But when you start to notice a pattern of behavior, then we have to evaluate whether or not this is something for us to be curious about and it’s fixable, or is this something we need to ask for a change around? And if the person demonstrates that they can’t change, then what are our options? So, if I’ve got an employee for whom, this is a pattern, you use the phrase like nothing is ever good enough. And the other pattern here and Cindy named this is ‘we dread dealing with her’. That’s her language. All right. So, we have a pattern and there is a belief now amongst leadership, that this is how this person is wired. And we can still bring curiosity to that. Right? We can still sit across in that person and say, hey, I’ve noticed this pattern. For example, for example, for example.

Alyssa:
Yeah.

Joe:
I’m not scolding you. I’m genuinely curious and why I want to ask you this question: Are you happy here? Because I’m seeing this pattern and it’s making me wonder if your needs aren’t being met and it’s not something we can overcome. Cause like the schedule is not going to change the way you want it, and the pay isn’t going to change that you want the way you want it. And we’re going to have to do this new operational process that you don’t think is going to work. Like none of the stuff you’re unhappy about is going to swing in the direction you want it to. So, are you happy here? And that conversation goes in a whole different direction. The other kind of conversation that I think bosses could have in this situation is about style.

Alyssa:
Hmm.

Joe:
I mean, if I have an employee who, every time they see something, they don’t agree with, they make a stink. I may want to coach that person on picking their battles a little bit and saying, ‘Hey, you know what? I get it. But if you make a stink about everything you don’t like, you’re the boy who cried “wolf”. And then when something really comes up, that is the total violation for you that you really want to be heard on. Everyone’s going to dismiss you because all you do is complain. And we’re so used to those complaints that now they’ve been tuned out. We all got to pick our spots and I, and, and I want you to keep the dialogue open with me. Um, but it, it’s kinda human nature that the, you know, when, when somebody whispers you lean in because you want to hear what they have to say, but if somebody’s constantly shouting it eventually just becomes noise.’ I think that’s another angle you can take with someone like this.

Alyssa:
Wow. Wow. That was powerful. That like in some way to whispers that you wanna lean in, but whatever, someone’s constantly shouting, you tune them out. That’s like, I think I’m going to have to write that down.

Joe:
And here’s where I think we can put our superpowers together though. Right? Because I come at it from like, here’s what I want to say as the boss, but you’re the coach. And so, what’s the question or series of questions I ask this person to have them gain that insight for themselves rather than me just giving it to them. Because if they can land on that themselves, then we’ve, we’ve supercharged the effectiveness of the insight.

Alyssa:
Well, I think that the whole series goes to what were the common theme of… of raising self-awareness. Right? And so, while that can take lots of different shapes and forms, I think starting with the question that you brought up, which is, are you happy here? Right. And then some questions about, okay, following up to that is what does happiness look like to you? What does fulfillment feel like to you? So, we’re going to get into ushy-squishy gray because a lot of what I have found is in this area of never enough-ness, whether it’s, you know, in our personal lives or our professional lives, we don’t name what the end goal or feeling or enough-ness is. We just think that once we get there, then we’ll know, and the truth is that rarely ever happens because it will never be enough even for yourself if you don’t define it.

Joe:
So, if we see a pattern of behavior that what’s really going on with this person is a never-ending inability to be satisfied…

Alyssa:
Right.

Joe:
…or what we might see as satisfaction, but that they perceive as problems, problems, problems. I’m probably not articulating that as well as I would like, I’ll go back and listen to this and say, oh, I should’ve said that. But…but this idea that there is never a state of, it’s always a state of discontentment…

Alyssa:
Right.

Joe:
…for the person,

Alyssa:
Because we, they have not been able to articulate name and/or describe the feeling that is satisfaction, contentment, ease in the workplace. What does that look like for them? Uh, what kind of money are they making? Is it a number? Is that what the pursuit is after? Is it a, uh, a certain type of manager that they’re looking to be led by, or maybe they’re looking to lead, and you are you and your processes and your, you know, uh, changes and operating hours are all considered obstacles to this undiscerned, uh,

Joe:
Ideal. Yeah.

Alyssa:
Ideal

Joe:
Yeah.

Alyssa:
That they haven’t communicated even for themselves. So, questions that help frame that in for them can start to actually bring self-awareness to how close they may be… already are, or maybe they’re not to that ideal.

Joe:
Yup. And I think it’s important for our BossHeroes to understand that your job isn’t to fix people. I think when, when you have someone who maybe has this constant state of discontentment if they’re coming into the workplace with their own neuroses, their own issues, their own challenges outside of work that are then influencing their level of engagement or satisfaction or happiness at work, and then they’re taking it out on the workplace. Um, that isn’t something that you’re really going to be able to overcome. And, and when leaders address this, you know, balancing the need to solicit ideas and opinions ‘and to be flexible, and to try to meet people with where they are with also being able to communicate that, hey, Nope, sorry, we can’t do it that way. And this is the way it’s going to have to continue’. If you, as a leader are not able to overcome the discontentment, it’s not a failure of leadership but allowing someone to remain and continue to do harm is. And so, we have to have the conversation around, you’ve got two choices left, which is commit anyway, and start thinking about how we need to change your style and your tone to be successful here or move on and whatever you pick, I’m going to try my darndest to help you be successful. But the time has come to make that choice because we can’t continue as we have.

Alyssa:
I hope that you got lots of gems out of that Cindy because I know I sure did. And I’m not even in your shoes right now. So, our sincerest best wishes to you and your entire team.

Joe:
Absolutely. And, and this is another great example of where I’d love to hear from readers or from listeners because I think that there are probably a lot of other scripts and angles and so many folks who are listening to this right now are dealing with this problem right now or have in the past and maybe have ideas or language or tactics or strategy that they’ve used that have worked and have not. And so, if you’re listening and you want to tell us a little bit about that, then drop a comment in the box below the video or send us an email at bossbetternow@gmail.com or hit us up on social media. I’m @JoeMull77 on Twitter and Instagram.

Joe:
And that brings us to the Camaraderie Question of the Week. Bosses build camaraderie on teams by making it easier for people to find things in common with each other. That’s why here on our show, every week we give you a question, you can use it meetings to facilitate connection and build camaraderie. Alyssa, our question this week: what is something that makes your job challenging that most people never see?

Alyssa:
If you could see inside my brain when I’m in a coaching session, if somehow it was like transparent, you would see the hamster in there (Joe: Yeah.) running a million miles a minute going, ‘Oh, this one time, this happened to me and blah, blah. And this went up. Oh, yes. I know how that feels. Oh yeah. Let me tell you a story about the time I got over that and di-di-di-di’. All of these things go on in my brain and I have to shut it all off (Joe: yeah) and stop and hold only the space for the client. What serves the client? That is my sole job. And so, the biggest challenge that the client hopefully cannot see. Sometimes I own up to it and I’m like, ‘All right, I need about five seconds to quiet the hamster in my brain before I am able to articulate the question that I want to make sure has the ability to propel them forward’. So, I have to silence my own self and unpack that later. Um, but that’s probably the biggest challenge, but I think that’s probably a challenge in any of

Joe:
For a lot of leaders!

Alyssa:
Yeah! In any of my conversations, the, the podcast is the only time where I can just be like, ‘Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, let the hamster, you know, let it out of its wheel and cage and it just goes wild’. But otherwise, yeah, that’s.

Joe:
Yeah. I’m having a hard time answering this question. Uh, and I don’t know if it’s in part because I just feel so lucky to get to do the work that I like to do mostly on my own terms. Um, there are, there are minor annoyances and headaches and bumps in the road.

Alyssa:
Does naming something feel like ingratitude?

Joe:
Um, it does. That’s a great point. Thank you. Um, there are some challenges related to money, like when you quote people fees for keynoting or for consulting. And, um, if they’ve not gone out into the marketplace to see what other people charge, they can come back and say, ‘You want how much to talk for an hour?’ And you’re going, ‘Okay, you know, hold on, timeout. It’s not talking for an hour. It’s preparing for two months.

Alyssa:
Right.

Joe:
And bringing 20 years of experience and expertise. Right? And paying the six employees. And, you know, there’s that piece too. Um,

Alyssa:
Yeah.

Joe:
Honestly, one of the first things that I thought of when I saw this question is, and this doesn’t happen often, but every once in a while, um, I will work with an event who insists that my slides need to match their – like their conference theme template or, um,

Alyssa:
Oh, that’s annoying.

Joe:
Or they want to change my slide deck. And when you’ve spent 20 years trying to figure out how to help people remember things and learn things and be captivated by things, uh, to, to have a 23-year-old intern saying ‘No, we’re gonna put all of our own chyrons and branding on your thing.’ Cause it’s important. Like you kind of take the deep cleansing breath and say, ‘Hey, I’m happy to put that slide at the front of my deck. Right?

Alyssa:
But otherwise, no thank you!

Joe:
And we can put it at the end of the deck, but I’ve curated this for like, I have one keynote I’ve been doing for four years and it’s nowhere near the way it was now than it was when it started four years ago because I’ve learned how to make it better and better and better and tweak it and I’m customizing it for your audience. And no, we’re not gonna, we’re not going to change that component of something that is very carefully calibrated to create the result that you hired me to create. And again, I don’t want to sound ungrateful. I mean, you know, any chance to stand in front of an audience is a privilege. Uh, it absolutely is. And I completely get that most of the time when I’m working with somebody who is asking for changes, it’s because they’ve been burned badly by another speaker or expert who – I had an organization recently say, we want you to do a slide deck walkthrough with us, um, where you show us every slide before you step on stage. And I think when I first started out a couple of years ago, I’d have been like, what? But now I go, Ooh, what happened? Like clearly something happened. And then, and they told me, ‘Yep, last year we had a speaker who went and found some data about us online and used it in of our customers and it was out of date and inaccurate and it was horrendous.’ Uh, and so, you know what I say? ‘Yeah, sure. I’m happy to do the slide deck walkthrough for you because you’ve been burned, and I get it. Let’s take a look together’.

Alyssa:
Yeah. Way to overcome those challenges.

Joe:
I like this question for teams because so much about people’s jobs goes unseen. You know, we know people on our teams for the tasks and responsibilities that they have, that we notice that we hear about, or that we interface with people around. But every day people have hiccups and headaches that we don’t see. And so, if you pause and ask people, ‘Hey, what, what’s the, what’s the rough stuff that we don’t get to see in the chair that you sit in?’ You know, maybe we all learn something about somebody on our team that we can help prevent for them.

Alyssa:
That’s awesome. Great question. Great question.

Joe:
That’s the Camaraderie Question of the Week.

Joe:
All right, Alyssa, we come to another favorite segment of mine. Stop It. And I got to tell you these days, most of the time, when I hear a senior leader talk about culture, I end up thinking, oh, just stop it.

Alyssa:
You alluded to this in the first segment. So, tell me what you specifically mean.

Joe:
I did.

Alyssa:
What’s agitating you most?

Joe:
Most of the time – I’m going to profess some broad sweeping generalizations here that are not true about everybody. So that’s my qualifier, my disclaimer, but I have found them to be true most of the time. And that is when someone is talking about culture, they have no idea what culture is or how to change it. They talk about it as a buzzword. And it’s been driving me a little bit crazy in recent years because I’ll get on the phone with somebody and say, ‘Well, you know, we just really need our leaders to get the kind of training they need to drive our culture.’ And I’ll say, ‘Okay, tell me about your culture’. And it’s just word salad that comes out next. It’s buzzword salad and

Alyssa:
Word salad. I love it.

Joe:
Organizations are spending an absurd amount of time and effort and resources to define their culture or change their culture without really doing any of the work necessary to understand culture. There’s a ton of great books and resources out there. Uh, Connors and Smith have written a bunch about the results pyramid and how to influence organizational change that I really like. Um, and, uh, The Culture Code is a terrific book, uh, out there as well. But here’s the thing, I’m not just going to complain about this and say, stop it. I’m actually going to try and give people a reframe for this.

Alyssa:
Okay.

Joe:
The next time a leader in an organization is tempted to talk about their ‘culture’. I want to swap that word out with the word ‘experiences’. What are the experiences that take place inside of our organization? What’s the, what is the experience of being interviewed? What is the experience of being onboarded? What is the experience of new hire orientation? What is the experience of working for my boss? What is the experience of getting training? What is the experience of professional development? What is the experience of opportunities to get promoted? What is the experience of working with our customers? What is the experience that our customers have? When we answer those questions, we start to get into all of the pieces and parts of culture.

Alyssa:
That feels tangible.

Joe:
Yes!

Alyssa:
Experiences feel tangible. Yeah, I like that a lot. That’s real.

Joe:
And we know that if we want to change an aspect of our culture, we first have to drill down to the experiences that people are having so that we can evaluate them as useful, harmful, good, bad, relevant, not relevant. Um, it’s a starting point for those conversations. There’s a ton of definitions of the word culture out there. But my favorite one – and I don’t have it in front of me where I saw this. I saw this a couple of years ago. It’s always stuck. So, forgive me for quoting something and not being able to appropriately credit the author – but my favorite definition of culture is ‘How we do things around here’. Right? If you are listening to this podcast and you’ve been on a great team where there’s no drama, and as soon as somebody tries to raise drama, somebody else on the team goes, ‘Hey, we’re not about that drama. We don’t want no, don’t do that. You got to promise somebody, go talk to them. We don’t want any of that stuff. We are a no drama shop here. That’s just the way things are. That’s how we do things around here’. And that’s the culture of their team. Those are the experiences that people have. Conversely, if you’ve been on a lousy team where people pit others against each other and whisper in corners and get caught up in team drama, and I’m a new hire. And I walk in, I’m very quickly going to pick up on how we do things around here.

Alyssa:
Yeah.

Joe:
If the culture of our front office is that when the phone is ringing off the hook, everybody pitches in and takes every call. That’s just the way we do things around here. And how do you get to that? Well, you talk about those experiences and those situations and why it’s important. You don’t talk about, well, we have a culture of, um, pitching in. Well, what does that mean exactly? Well, let’s communicate the expectations and talk about the experiences everybody should have. And then we drive that in small bite-sized pieces, rather than talking about culture as this big ambiguous thing.

Alyssa:
Well, I think your rage was appropriately channeled and because I think that swapping ‘experiences’ for the generalized term of ‘culture’ is so meaningful. Experiences mean something and if you can center that – that is powerful.

Joe:
And I hope it wasn’t too ragey. I hope it’s just more like mild irritation,

Alyssa:
No. That’s just me.

Joe:
It’s more like, yeah, let’s, let’s just do better. Can we do better around the word culture? Can we, can we find better words? Can we hear ourselves say ‘culture’? And just, even if we just pause and question, what do I mean by that?

Alyssa:
Yes.

Joe:
And what are the, what are the realistic expectations that I should have about what I’m trying to change or affect so that it doesn’t become this kind of ambiguous thing that everybody’s supposed to have stakes in, but nobody knows how to influence.

Alyssa:
Uh-huh.

Joe:
That’s why I think…

Alyssa:
Word salad.

Joe:
Word salad. Stop It.

Alyssa:
Don’t use the word salad.

Joe:
Well, that’s our show this week, folks. We have one request: Do you know a BossHero? We want to hear about those leaders who go to work every day, devoted to creating the conditions for people to thrive because we want to spotlight them here on our show. Not just to recognize them for the difference they make in the lives of others, but because we can learn from them. We learn and gain skills and insight when we hear about the ways in which the best bosses operate. You can nominate a BossHero for recognition on our show by going to BossHeroStories.com. Fill out the form and tell us about the BossHero you’re thinking of. If we choose to share their story on our podcast, we’re going to celebrate their contribution, they’re going to get all the feels, they’re going to get all the, all the feels – that sounded like fields for a minute. We’re not giving away real estate. They’re going to, they’re going to get all the feels and get some recognition that I’m sure is deserved and we’re going to send you and them some pretty great Boss Hero swag. To nominate a BossHero, once again, just go to BossHeroStories.com. That’s our show this week. We’ll see you next time.

Alyssa:
This show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Remember, commitment comes from Better Bosses. Visit JoeMull.com today.

Joe:
Hey, BossHeroes, check it out. One of the phone calls I get most often is the ‘we have one person here who really needs help’ phone call. The leader on the line tells me about an abrasive executive, a manager, not meeting the needs of his or her team, or two physicians who can’t overcome conflict. Their question is always the same – Do you have any training I could provide for this person? I have to tell them the uncomfortable truth: theirs is a problem that training won’t fix. The problem these leaders described requires a different solution – Coaching. A professional coach helps people explore new ways of thinking and operating while examining the root causes of their own behavior. When someone needs to examine their approach, adjust their style, become more adaptable, clarify goals, or navigate conflict. There’s only one coach I recommend – our own Alyssa Mullet. Alyssa is a professional and executive coach who works one-on-one with clients to tackle the issues that live behind closed doors. Experienced, credentialed, and revered by her clients, Alyssa can help you or any leader struggling on your team design a path to achievement and professional success. I’ve sent Alyssa to clients all over the country and they rave about it her every time. Every single time. So, if you have that one leader who is struggling or that one leader is you, I strongly encourage you to invest in coaching. For more information on working with Alyssa or to get a quote, visit JoeMull.com/coaching.

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