125: Good Comes First with Chris Edmonds and Mark Babbitt

Today on the Career Clarity Show, we’re talking about one of the biggest factors that can go into dissatisfaction with your job and with your workplace – organizational culture. If you have worked in any sort of work environment, you know what a difference the energy of the organization makes, the values of the organization makes. And you know what an incredible difference there is between a healthy happy culture where you feel like you can thrive and do great work, and maybe not so healthy and happy culture where you don’t feel like you have psychological safety or can bring your best stuff to the office or to the workplace. 

Authors Chris Edmonds and Mark Babbitt are here to talk about what the elements are that go into culture, why culture matters, how to be intentional, how to think about it, and perhaps even how to screen it from afar. Their book Good Comes First is available now and shares similar insight into maring career discernment decisions and finding a great place to land and build a career.

Want to learn more about our strategic framework for successful career change? Download The Roadmap to Career Fulfillment ebook right here!

Show Notes:

• Good Comes First Book
• Roadmap to a Fulfilling Career eBook

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Transcript

Lisa Lewis Miller  0:04   

Welcome to the Career Clarity Show. If you want to create a career path you’ll love, you’re in the right place. I’m Lisa Lewis Miller, career change coach, published author and your host. And each week, we’ll bring you personal transformation stories, advice and insights from experts about how you can find a more fulfilling, soulful and joyful career. Welcome back to the Career Clarity Show, I am your host, Lisa Miller. And I’m delighted that you are with us. On today’s episode of the Career Clarity Show, we’re talking about one of the biggest factors that can go into dissatisfaction with your job and with your workplace. And that is organizational culture. If you have worked in any sort of environment, corporate, nonprofit government, what have you even volunteer environments, you know what a difference the energy of the organization makes, the values of the organization makes. And you know what an incredible difference there is between a healthy happy culture where you feel like you can thrive and do great work, and maybe not so healthy and happy, have a culture where you don’t feel like you have psychological safety or can bring your best stuff to the office or to the workplace. So in today’s conversation, we’re going to be talking about what the elements are that go into culture, why culture matters, how to be intentional, how to think about it, and perhaps even how to screen it from afar. So as you are making your career discernment decisions and trying to find a place that’s going to be a great place to land, and to build a career and a reputation for a while. You are equipped with all the things that you need to know about culture to make that decision successfully. I’m delighted On today’s episode of the podcast to be joined by the two authors of the brand new book coming out today. Good comes first, let me tell you about them. Chris Edmonds is an executive consultant and culture coach with the purposeful culture group and the Ken Blanchard companies, who has helped senior leaders create purposeful work cultures. Chris has worked with companies such as v star interiors world kitchen, consolidated electrical company, and time investment company. Chris is the author of Amazon bestsellers a culture engine leading at a higher level with Ken Blanchard and five other books. Mark Mark Babbitt is the president of work IQ, where workplace intelligence w q comes front and center as today’s business leaders attempt to improve their leadership style and company culture. He has worked with companies from IBM to faith based nonprofits and Silicon Valley startups. Mark is the co author of a world gone social how companies must adapt to survive. In addition, he’s contributed to Harvard Business Review, entrepreneur, Forbes and many other publications. Chris and Mark, welcome to the Career Clarity Show.

Chris Edmonds  3:03  

Lisa, thank you for the invite. We’re thrilled to be here.

Mark Babbitt  3:06  

Absolutely. Thanks. Thanks for thanks for asking us along along on your journey.

Lisa Lewis Miller  3:11  

Well, I think that what you have coming out in this book good comes first is pretty remarkable. And I love to have you share just a bit about what the book is about. What caused you to write it the where this came from?

Chris Edmonds  3:28  

Well, I was born, no, we’re not going to go back quite that far. What what both Mark and I have been gravitated towards in our our careers, is to kind of make sense of happen. There’s some good bosses like them, there’s lousy ones, how come they’re some decent cultures about them, there’s mostly lousy ones. And so we’ve been studying for decades, kind of what’s qualities are? And and what are the benefits to a business. Because face it, we’re in kind of the land of, of capitalism, which means results are the only thing that matters. And literally the book is founded upon the belief that and we have proof that when respect is as important as results in team members, lives, associates, lives, employees lives, then really good things happen. Creativity, problem solving. Customer Service typically goes great people solve problems, right? well in advance. So before it’s on fire, we’re just talking about avoiding the wildfires and the smoke, but that’s across much of the country. We don’t want fires like those. We want people to feel like they’re validated for their ideas and their efforts. And yes, their accomplishments. And unfortunately, most bosses are focused upon those accomplishments that that deliver results and they’re not really very attuned to the respect side of things. And that’s why That whole concept of good comes first meeting when employees, team members, associates, associates feel respected, validated, honored, then you’re well on your way towards a culture that’s going to increasingly align with your goals, your vision, serving customers, well, et cetera. Mark, what do I miss?

Mark Babbitt  5:22  

Well, I’ll just add that I came at this from a much different perspective. Like you, Lisa, I was involved in it, I’m still involved in the career development world. 2010, we launched a site just to help young careerist college students, recent graduates ascend into the workplace, perhaps more gracefully than they would otherwise. And it became very clear, quite some time ago, well, before the pandemic, that we were graduating young professionals into the workforce only for them to be completely unhappy. And, and only to sit back and go, I spent 468 years getting my degree for this mean, yes, I’m paying my bills now. And yes, I’m supposed to be happy about that. But I don’t feel good about what I’m doing. I don’t I don’t feel honored. I don’t feel validated. I I’m, this is not who I’m supposed to be. And, and it occurred to us in question, I’ve known each other for many years now. And we sat down one day and just said, you know, we, we can fix this, we can help fix this, we can help leaders understand their role in creating a culture that doesn’t suck. And that’s, that’s where a good comes first, was born.

Lisa Lewis Miller  6:54  

Well, so let me ask you this. Because, Chris, when you were talking about the principles that create a good culture, you talked about respect as this sort of table stakes level culture item? And when you say it, it sounds so simple. It’s like forehead smackingly obvious. And it seems to be shockingly rare. Oh, completely. So how do you how do you explain that? And I guess how to organizations and leaders. Explain how they can wander so far afield from truly having respect as not just a value that you give lip service to, but to a founding principle that underlies every interaction between individuals and departments and clients and customers?

Chris Edmonds  7:45  

Oh, absolutely. It is, it is kind of one of those shocking, I know what let’s do. So I want to I want to do a couple of things and and bring mark in with with his insights on it, we basically look at how do we help leaders understand that their culture isn’t perfect. And to understand that there’s more than just profits and results that that they should be driving towards? And they kind of look at us like we’re from literally another universe. And if we think about have we been trained to observe the quality of the work culture and work interactions know, they’ve been trained, and walked through a process that helps you have conversations about respect and conversations about how people are treated? No, have they ever been taught how to actually change the work culture, away from something that is clearly not working, which we’ve known for decades, gallops fabulous through 12. And their engagement, engagement across the US never went up above 34%, which is a whole bunch of pissed off people. So we’re clearly doing something wrong. And I think what what Mark and I have tried to do in this book is to is to set up a process that helps leaders think about Okay, so are we truly holding people accountable for the results that we want? Because that’s kind of a whole system? And the answer is no, right? Some do, some don’t. But then there’s the what if we get better at holding people accountable for results after we demonstrate respect, and after we set some ground rules for what respect means in our company, and then the leadership of the organization who are under the microscope constantly as they deserve to be? If they’re not behaving according to the ground rules of let’s say, one of your respect values is is I do what I say I will do. And sometimes it falls in integrity. Sometimes it falls in excellence, right? But the idea of whatever behavior you decide is going to be one of the core three or maybe four for your company. leaders have to ask First, and they have to model it. And they have to coach next level leaders to do it. And when next level leaders don’t do it, they have to have a conversation and hold them accountable. So what we’re literally trying to do is a improve the way managers across the globe manage for the results that are needed, because you’ve got to do that. But let’s do it in a fashion that actually is respectful is civil. Right. Mark, do you want to talk a bit about the background of why we think leaders need a bit of education?

Mark Babbitt  10:35  

Well, yes, it does. sound simple. So getting back to your original point. The trouble is that and Chris touched on this, our leaders have have not been trained to do that. They’ve been trained to be autocratic. command and control, I’m in charge, take it or leave it, you’re just lucky to have a job, do your job. I mean, the industrial age, just beat the crap out of us when it came to respect. And, and, and so today’s leaders are waking up and they’re going, Wow, I have people leaving, we have an employee of NASA to this because I’m making them come back to the job that they they used to do. what’s what’s wrong with that? I don’t, I don’t have to change. My company doesn’t have to change. Let’s just go back to the old normal, which was fine for me. And now you’re saying no. And, and so they’re their mentors are the leaders. mentors have never been through this? The their their predecessors never been to this, their professors never taught them this. You know, why? Come on, guys, why can’t just do what you’re told, right? That’s that we’ve lived off that for 130 years. Why change now? Well, the answer is because respect matters. Now, it always has. But we, we didn’t measure it. We didn’t, we didn’t hold people responsible for it. And, and of the companies that we interviewed and research for this book, respect was the number one category where people went, if I feel good about the work I do here, and if if I feel my boss rewards me for the positive contributions, the positive behaviors that I bring, if I’m respected for that, then results are just a little bit better. They’re 3035 40% better than they were, if I had that boss who said Zoo says, just show up at work at eight o’clock Monday morning, and do your damn job. And, and so that that’s, that’s what we keyed on is. Now respect is a big. We understand respect is like that mission statement that leaders plant on the wall, right. And it means so many different things to many different people. And we also understand the values and behaviors that that fall under this respect umbrella, can can can take many different definitions for Chris mentioned integrity. Well, if you ask 20 employees and managers mid level and up what integrity means to them, you’re going to get 90 different answers. Right? So that that’s part of our of our processes. Let’s just talk about integrity. Let’s define integrity, then let’s align our practices and our behaviors to how we define that that respect value, right, and then later, let’s just say we have somebody that isn’t quite living up to that value. Let’s let’s talk about how we’re going to coach and mentor and redirect that person. So they so they can meet that value, or let’s show them the door. Let’s, you know, attrition is our best friend. If, if that person. Maybe they’ve been a 20 year veteran, and they’ve they’ve been a top sales guy forever. But yeah, is that jerk people do you don’t want to work with him, but he produces what that used to be okay. And now it’s not because he’s not meeting respect, value. And, and so that that’s what we’re trying to get leaders to rethink how they build their company culture is, if that guy’s a 20 year top performer in sales, but he’s a total di ck and nobody wants to work with him, then let’s open the door because that’s not okay.

Lisa Lewis Miller  14:38  

Well, Mark, I have a follow up question for you on that. And Chris, I want to get your input on this too. But so many organizations have a belief I have a perception that the reason that they are able to be as profitable as they are or to tread water if that’s what their financial situation is looking like. Is Because of their top producers, and typically, the more you produce in an organization, the more leaders have been willing to turn a blind eye to the way that you treat others. Because you’re the golden goose, and nobody wants to kill the golden goose. So Mark, I hear you talk about this example of that, you know, the 20 year veteran who’s a jerk to work with? And how do you get the buy in and convince an organization that it’s worth it to, number one, try to cultivate the the ideal, you know, values aligned behaviors from this individual, especially when it’s something that the organization doesn’t have a previous track record of doing? So they don’t have a deep bench look at history of capacity in this space? And then number two, how on earth do you convince an organization that not only they can, but perhaps they have a moral imperative to let go of somebody who is a top performer if that person can’t be in alignment with however the organization has defined respect?

Mark Babbitt  16:14  

Well, one that is an amazingly good question. And I’m gonna I’m going to take a second and and let’s just let’s do demographic of our leadership teams, right, right now, our leadership teams were are based basically on the people that were top performers at one point in their lives, whether it was sales or anything else. The people who drove the best results got promoted. Right? We didn’t promote people who valued respect as much as results. We promote people who drive results, right? So there’s kind of this frat brother mentality that goes into everything that you just discussed. And we take it a step further and good comes first. We label the those people according to their demographic, and typically, they are older, white males. Right. And most of those older white males are afflicted with what we call Boomer male syndrome. They come from this frat brother mentality, this results driven, testosterone filled world where respect is is not as important as results. Matter of fact, it’s kind of considered soft, you know, go be a Bambi somewhere else that isn’t this company. Look, look at look at Amazon, for example, Amazon, you know, is is being crucified right now for their frat brother mentalities, Uber, so many examples of companies that, that that have fallen on much harder times than they ever imagined, because of this Boomer male syndrome thing that we’re dealing with right now. And so

Chris Edmonds  17:58  

Even some politicians are feeling to

Mark Babbitt  18:00  

me more, maybe especially politicians. You know, it and by the way, this isn’t just in corporate America, it’s nonprofits. It’s its church, its religion, its politics, right? We’re, this is how we used to lead. And it used to be okay. And call it woke, or whatever you want to call it, but it’s not okay, anymore. And in when you look at a boardroom, and there’s 14 people in there, and only one of them is female, and only one of them are none of them is non white. And you’re going to make decisions for your entire workforce. That that’s only 49%. White, and I what, right, it doesn’t, it just doesn’t make any sense. So one of our challenges as authors of this book is, we have to present Boomer male syndrome to the people that are actually suffering from Boomer male syndrome. And we have to get them to go Holy crap, that’s me. I’m that guy. I don’t want to be that guy. Right now, the people who are gonna keep being that guy until they retire, well, then fine, you keep being that guy cuz we can help you. Right? You’re going to do what you do, you’re going to keep surrounding yourself with your fellow frat brothers, you’re going to keep making poor decisions, you’re going to you’re going to you’re not going to drive a great culture, but you’re going to retire someday, and the person who replaces you is going to be much better at your job than you are and, and that’s that’s our approach and the book is his wake up. Look around you. I mean, just just, it doesn’t you don’t need a consultant, you don’t need to report to look in that boardroom and see how many other white males are sitting next to you. Right and, and that’s what we’re trying to get people to realize is this is a systemic problem in western corporate world and we’re trying to help fix it.

Chris Edmonds  19:53  

Well, at Viking, one of the things that was very, very apparent to us was one we are to be Talking to leaders. And you can tell with with our conversations thus far our our belief, and it’s been reinforced for years is we can’t go into the middle of an organization and have an HR vice president drive a culture change, it has to be driven from the boardroom, it has to be modeled by the owners of the business slash senior leaders of the business. And so we know we are do old white guys common at not just old white guys, but people of color who have made it to the C suite because they often behave like Boomer males, because it’s the command and control. It’s, it’s my way or the highway. That is the philosophy that we’ve had leaders unfortunately have to model. And so one of the interesting things about about culture, clarity, and also fits Career Clarity Show, because we want leaders to realize that their time is incredibly precious, the impact they have on day to day work life for employees and team members is hugely significant. And most of them pay no attention to whether or not in daily interactions, people are treated civilly much less with respect. And so we’ve got to be able to help leaders realize that, yes, the old command and control really wasn’t ever very good. But it’s particularly terrible now. And it’s terrible. Now, because of the generational shifts that we saw happening pre pandemic, where Millennials are going to be the overwhelming majority 75% of the workforce in 2030. might might even be sooner than that, we’ve got Gen Z’s coming up, who have a very different philosophy of life, they’ve seen a very different societal kind of economic and political environment over the past 10 years. And so now, these bosses who as Mark said, they’re trying to reopen why we’ve got this terrible impact on all businesses around the globe. They’re trying to scramble to get back to where they were. And so what they’re doing is simply plugging people into the existing puzzle. But the puzzle is stupid. And the experience is awful. And so what we have to do is help those leaders number one, realize that maybe what they’re doing is not a very good model. And we know we have to teach them that there’s a better way. But more important is this great resignation, the feeling that? Well, we are paying people more money now. And here we are. And we’re still I heard on the news yesterday, that that one childcare center there was being interviewed. They’re short, 5050 staff. Well, those folks were often part time you didn’t have benefits, they were paying awful. But again, the experience they had, they may not have felt valued in their role and valued for their expertise and value for their style. And I think that’s very common throughout organizations today. And it’s we need leaders to realize that number one, it wasn’t very good back then. Number two, don’t plug people into something that was not working very well. And number three, you’ve got generations who are not going to put up with command and control, old school my way or the highway thinking. So there’s a bit of a urgency. I don’t know that it’s an organizational heart attack yet. I think some get it. But you asked about, and it’s been and Mark, you’re exactly right. This This question is probably the most critical question that we face. We were on the phone yesterday with a client who we’ve been working with for now four years. And during the blue collar industry. And here we are talking about one division that’s on its fourth leader in those three years, because they have not been the right culture.

And so we’ve got the the president of the companies and I get it, we’ve made some moves, we moved as far as we could. We lost some of those misaligned people are in early on, but the high producers that were misaligned, we haven’t held them accountable. like okay, we know how to do this. And, and so we’re mapping out a strategy here for the next year to help them get much, much clearer about this is not negotiable anymore. This is this is part and parcel of you coming in the door. You have to be respectful, you have to be honest. You have to be frickin nice to each other. And we need to attract and hire people that fit that model first and then We can apply their skills. And and I want to go back to the idea of Career Clarity Show, I think all of us have worked for really good bosses, hopefully. And we worked for mediocre and really sucky bosses too. And so there’s a pattern, right of those, those good bosses and to a person I’ve been, I’ve been doing this longer than I need to admit, Mark Mark has seen quite a bit as well, is that bosses just don’t understand the impact of people who are disrespectful, they don’t understand that a quick word can really be devastating to somebody for a day or a week or a life. And it’s very interesting because it is, it is the softer side of managing people. But if your listeners are leaders in an organization that is much more brutal, and much more results at all costs, then maybe I’ll give them a chance to think about doing something different about going to work for somebody else. Because the only to work for somebody else who does hold them in a place of value and respect. It’s way more fun. And and we have proof that companies that create these purposeful positive, productive environments, engagement goes up 40% or more customer service, those 40% or more results in profits 35% or more, in 18 months. Now, if we think about the audience, we have senior leaders of small businesses, huge multinational, then having a bump of 30 plus percent in profits, that’s pretty darn good. You can’t do it first, you don’t get that first, you did it only after creating an environment where people feel safe. People feel valued, and people are engaged in the purpose of the organization to kind of improve the community etc. Only when you do that, does customer service comment, do the results go?

Lisa Lewis Miller  27:07  

You ever shared a lot of really important points and questions and considerations here and I, as I’m hearing you talk about the intended audience for your book, there’s a there’s a phrase that perhaps you do have both heard of, of pale, stale male, to describe your your readership. And it sounds like the the boomer syndrome that you’re talking about is almost like thinking in the pale, stale male modality, right, because there is nothing inherently wrong with being male, with being white with being old, being young with anything. But when you are creating a culture for your organization, based on the privileges that those types of identity have afforded you that they don’t afford everybody else, it is very quick to create an organizational culture that you might think is respectful, but doesn’t actually feel respectful to anybody else. And I think that there, some of the generational things that you both were bringing up are really important, because I think that the idea of respect means something really different, you know, the word respect can be so weaponized, like, well, I just need that person to respect me. Like what is what does that mean? Does that mean, obey? Does that mean, not ask any questions is that mean, be always deferential. And so I think that, you know, as, as someone who has not yet the intended audience for your book, but who, you know, would like to be one day in their career, it’s interesting to hear and interesting to think about how you can effectively communicate to an employer and, and get them to buy into and take action on that. If you let go of your high performer who is creating a toxic subculture within our organization, the organization when we see that accountability will rally and actually create the production, no equal to or in excess of what that person was driving from, where they were sitting.

Chris Edmonds  29:25  

Well, you’re exactly right. And one of the things that we highly emphasized in good comes first, is that sometimes the role of the leader it’s hectic, right, it’s multitask, he gets 1000s of decisions a minute, and that’s not even worked yet that’s available right at home or in community, with your family, friends, etc. But what we have to help leaders realizes that their perceptions of what’s happening in the lives of their employees, team members are probably wrong and that the only way You can understand what needs changing what is a pain point? What is stupid, right? Could be simple policy stuff that will cause people to kind of say no, you guys don’t respect me. The idea is you have to measure it. It’s like, Well, you can’t measure respect. We can if we define it in observable, tangible, measurable terms, that we can create an employee survey that does it. We’ve got some clients doing weekly one question pulse surveys, we’ve got twice a year, you’re 30 questions, surveys, I had one client who did 120 questions, everybody actually did it once a year. But it’s the idea that you should not assume that, you know, what really is the experience that employees have everyday that team members have every day. And until you do, any decision you make, could be increasing device as opposed to opening opportunities and validating others. So we we help leaders understand that measurement is good. And that measurement is going to be customized to your particular value behaviors that you all as a leadership team, come to, we will help coaches, we will guide you. And and it’s like, you know, in some cases, calling 40% of the time, there’s always a value that bubbles up in our first two day session with with a client is that we need to have profits when you do have results when you do not have excellent that’s like I don’t have enough systems in place to do it that people will forget what the results are and how important they are to the company’s thriving. And and they’re afraid if I let go of this, then we let go of those high performers and we’re not going to recover the money. And so there’s, there’s a bit of education. And the other piece I want to mention is that the the question about why should we deal with a high performer who’s a jerk? The problems are multiple in that environment. And there’s people that end up saying jerker Michael worked for him. She doesn’t listen to me. And B means May, on and on and on. There’s been things bubbling for a long time. And so often, and Mark and I call it the organizational hardening test, there’s just something there’s a point in time where you finally go, No, we can’t do this, Chris can’t stay here, he can’t keep treating people that way. And the reality is, if you’ve not created any expectation, you’re letting people behave any way they want. The only thing you measure the results, you don’t care about the body bags the corner. So the measurement piece is key. And you hear me saying the education part of this, we really have to help leaders see that they’ve already understood that a boss that is relationship driven, and civility driven, much less respect driven, often has less turnover, higher retention, these people have more fun engagement is higher customers love them. It just goes on and on and on. And on. And on until often, there’s some burning bridge that causes them to move off that dock, then they kind of feel like I’m just maintaining the system. They don’t say to themselves, I’m maintaining a stupid system, because it really inhibits people. It reduces turnover, the buzz in the community is awful. Glassdoor scores are awful. So that measurement piece helps leaders get to a stage where they understand that we need to give Christians you know, but if in three months, he doesn’t treat people differently. We’re not.

Lisa Lewis Miller  33:56  

Well, Chris, I have a follow up question for you. And then mark, I’ve got one coming for you. But Chris, I hear you saying that a lot of times leaders are woefully out of touch with what’s going on in the live day to day experience of their frontline and of their managers. And then I also hear you saying that you put the the leaders in a room to come up with what these behaviors are and what the standards are for what they want from the organization. How do you how do you bridge that gap of them not being as aware of what their workforce actually needs, but also being in the position to drive the initiatives and sponsor and create the programs to try to create the culture that they think are they hope is what their organization needs?

Chris Edmonds  34:39  

Yeah, great, great questions. The piece that I found early, early early on in this work, was I had to help these leaders understand more of the reality outside the 10th floor, you know, whatever it is. So what we do when we engage with a client is We do discovery interviews. And we might do 30, we might be 50. We typically interview all the executive team and their direct reports, which means well, now you’re talking to all those folks that have that are affected by Boomer male syndrome, no matter what, you know, size, gender, color, race, etc, they are no then we go to we need some we need some frontline supervisors we need, maybe even some employees. And so what we end up with is a document because we asked basically the same core eight, nine question. And we end up with patterns that it can be two phone calls in, it’s like, okay, there’s a there’s a dick in the room, right? There’s, there’s a woman who’s unethical in there, there’s this that the other. And so we present without naming names, the facts as we learn them. And we’re very careful to say, here’s what seems to be the case. Here’s what the interviewees told us. And I had, I’ve had such interesting reactions to this, because what we do is we give it to him a week in advance, before we come see him and give them some questions. And we say You may not believe all of this, but let’s see where we come together, whether you seen any of these things bubbling in your divisions and other divisions and in other surveys that have been done. So in essence, what we’re trying to do is to turn all the Klieg lights on and say, here’s what we’re seeing, you tell us if that reflects the actual operating issues, norms, which could be good, could be bad. And I would say 95% of the time, there is a consensus that is this is going on. You know, I may not like what you said about, you know, this division or that division. But we’ve been dealing with this for years. And so if I can get that moment, then we can start to say okay, cool. Do you have, you know, benchmark performers who who treat people civil, who are kind, who are responsive? And who customers like to go to more often than the next person in the cubicle slash office up the road, what have you. And that way, and I also go back to the above market, Irishman, you had some great bosses, what did they do? What did that what environment did they create, what kind of ground rules were in place? And, and these leaders will come up with great values and great behaviors. And we literally spend two days talking about what does integrity mean? so that everybody can buy the same thing, because then we’re gonna measure it. And, and what what is interesting is, unless the discovery document and the discovery process lets us actually see some of the core reality that maybe this team has never dealt with upfront, openly, transparently, then we are helping them get to a stage where they have to realize my job is to understand the perceptions, all this work environment, and the experiences that people have, Mark what I miss

Mark Babbitt  38:32  

Nothing in, we’re gonna run out of time here really soon. I get real quick. And this is your show, Lisa. So I want to turn it back over to you. But I think that the the real key here is awareness. For leaders we were not only are we trying to help the older white males understand their role, their their responsibilities, but we’re also trying to empower leaders like you who may be read good comes first and say, This is the kind of leader I want to be, I don’t need to be like my mentor, like my predecessor. I, you know, we kind of test marketed the book and we sent it to, to many of our millennial and, and even Gen Z colleagues and then they went, this is this is who I want to be, I don’t want to be my father, I don’t want to be my boss’s boss’s boss, this is who I want to be. And so I’m going to enter my leadership role. With this risk putting respect on the same plane as as results and and an increase. That’s the point I think you’re trying to make is, is we can we can do leadership differently. And when we do leadership differently, we can do culture differently, and now we we actually will attract employees who really want to work here.

Lisa Lewis Miller  39:55  

I like thinking about your book as a manifesto for aspirational or in Operational leadership for everybody, regardless of the what their demographics are. And, Mark, I have one last question for you. And that question is, let’s say that you are not in the C suite yet, right? You’re not privy to those conversations, you’re not paying the big bucks to have you increased come in and, and increase your awareness about what’s going on within your organization. Let’s say that you are a step or two before that in your career, and you’re unhappy where you are, and you want to go somewhere else. But you feel really unclear on how to screen an organization for culture before you land, to make sure that you are landing in a spot that that believes in respectfulness in the same way that you do. And where you feel like you are going to have psychological safety and where you feel like there are going to be other people that look like you and all levels of leadership. Mark, what would be some of the things you’d encourage somebody to look for that are symptomatic of organizations with cultures aligned with the recommendations and good comes first?

Mark Babbitt  41:07  

another great question. First, leverage every source you have available to you, glassdoor.com indeed.com, the company’s social media profiles, the news, your contacts on LinkedIn, right? Ask them, you know what it was like to work there. And if you don’t have a contact on LinkedIn, this work there, then ask your contacts have the context, right? It really comes down for young careers entering this negotiation on whether I’m going to work here or not. It really it comes down to three questions and they have to be asked during the interview. And in they can be asked directly out of the interview. Or you can say, Can I sit down with my the person who will be my, my direct manager? Before I take the job? Right? But you got to ask these questions. One, what do you like most about working here? Two, what do you like least about working here? And the third question, and the most important is why is this job open? Now, if this job is open, because we’re growing, then that’s that’s a positive sign. Right? But if this job is open, because the last person, especially a personal leadership role, they just weren’t cutting it. The you know, they weren’t driving the results we needed. She was super nice to everybody. But we’ve just the third quarter report was terrible. Well, these are giving you clues that this is a very Amazon like command and control, aggressive culture, right? And the answer, by the way, doesn’t have to be verbal, or in full sentences. If you ask the interviewer or your your the hiring manager, that last question, and they have to think about, you know, just the right words, because they need to be politically correct. And it’s not a great situation, in their hemming in their hiring, and they’re usually just don’t know how to answer the question. Well, that tells you a lot too. Right? So candidates to get the clarity that you’re trying to help them get, they have to ask the right questions. And and this is no time to be, you know, Alam about it. You You have to be bold in the interview process or you’re not, you know, because you’ve probably read their About Us page, it probably sounds great. You read the careers page. Oh my god, that all sounds perfect. The job description. Well, that’s me. That’s a fast paced, dynamic, blah, blah, blah, right? Well, no, you got to ask the questions. Don’t Don’t, don’t just take people’s word for it.

Lisa Lewis Miller  43:46  

I love that. Chris, any parting words before we wrap up and tell people where to get your book?

Chris Edmonds  43:52  

No, I just were. So I’m hopeful that we’re able to increase the quality of work closers over the next 10 years. Culture, refinement takes a while even if it’s a one of your listeners is thinking about bringing this process to their department of pen or department of 30 it’s still a process, it’s gonna take probably two months and y’all are gonna be there anyway. So if you can start to create some foundational agreements around around respect, defining some values and getting some behaviors, you’re going to be moving that team forward into a place where there’s less conflict and less dismissiveness. And, and there’s no question that all of our workplaces need that today.

Lisa Lewis Miller  44:40  

Fabulous. Well, for folks who have been listening to this and thinking, I think I need a copy of this sucker. Where do they pick up the book and learn more?

Mark Babbitt  44:50  

The book will be available. Hopefully right around the time this part of this podcast airs. And so it’ll be in the normal places and Amazon, Barnes and Noble and all that. But we’re also very happy that we we’ve struck a deal with our publisher to be in the independent bookstores, the powers, the Harvard, the Harvard bookstores. And in some of the smaller online retailers, so an anvil and, you know, a nonfiction authors dream is to, is to have your book in the window when you walk through an airport. And we’re incredibly proud that Hudson booksellers and others the airport locations will be will be carrying goods come through. So we’re quite excited about that.

Lisa Lewis Miller  45:32  

Well, congratulations to you both in this work that feels like it’s the culmination of a lot of years of your professional experiences and of your values coming forth. It feels like a really beautiful way to create culture change at scale. Be in just two people. So congratulations to you both. And thank you again for coming on the Career Clarity Show. Thank you, Lisa. Lisa, thank you so much for the opportunity.

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