How to Build a People-Focused Culture

[00:00:00] So, how often have you heard about creating a positive work environment? I would guess in HR that it is a lot. And, you know, if you've been around at all, you know it's not perks. But honestly, what does it mean and look like? Well, we're going to learn about this all momentarily from someone who's actually done it. So today, my guest is again, Josh Block.

[00:00:24] Josh is the president of Block Imaging and author of People Matter at Work, where he advocates for cultures that prioritize people. Hello, Josh. How are you? I'm doing well. It's good to be back. Yes, thank you. So I'm going to dive right in. Waste no time. You mentioned we've had we had another episode, but you mentioned the three T's as a foundation for a positive work environment. Can you talk me through those three T's?

[00:00:54] Absolutely. So when I became president over a weekend and it was totally unexpected, hadn't been trained, which is a story for many, right? Is that they spent five years in college becoming a certain trade or or having a degree of some sort. And then they worked in their career for a couple of years and then they became a leader. And they became a leader because they were responsible and they showed up on time and they were kind of nice to people. And yet they weren't really trained.

[00:01:21] And so I'm thankful that in my journey, I grew up in a home where work was a positive thing. I wanted to create a place where people love to work. And so I came across these three T's and the first was really out of necessity. And it was the word together. And this idea was sharpening any decision of consequence. And I was forced into humility because there was so much that I didn't know. And so this idea of like working together to sharpen decisions was the first T.

[00:01:51] And then the second was something that resonated deep within was this idea of making thoughtful decisions. I was 29. Lots of people in the organization were older and more experienced than I was. And so I just wanted to be a credible leader. And part of that was making thoughtful decisions. And while nobody seeks to make haphazard decisions, thoughtful is this idea of using careful consideration. Okay, no big deal. Who cares? For the needs of others. Oh, that changes everything.

[00:02:20] What is it like to be on the other side of my decision? And then the last was this idea of transparency. And that was just born out of the idea that if I was following someone, I would want them to be transparent with me. And so together, working together to make thoughtful decisions and then be transparent about those decisions is really what started a we cycle within our organization. And it led to trust. It led to people being generous and giving back to the organization.

[00:02:48] And it also led to what we talked about in the last episode, which is people owning the organization. Mm-hmm. My favorite is transparency. My God, how many times has that come up? But I'm not going there yet. Okay, first, I want to start in order. You talk about together. It sounds like teamwork and collaboration, which we're all trying to create.

[00:03:12] I mean, I don't think I've worked in or consulted to an organization which didn't have collaboration in their values. Sure. Yet still, in so many organizations, there's silos, there's competition. How do we actually go about creating togetherness? Yeah. Yeah. I kind of think of things in spectrums oftentimes. Yes. And on one side is that I'm a dictator.

[00:03:41] And on the other side, I'm creating a democracy. And so those are the two poles that we're trying to avoid. The dictator is I'm just making a decision, ready, fire, aim. And then democracy is where I can't make any decisions until everyone agrees. And the middle, the messy middle, is this idea of I'm going to share ideas. Sometimes they're early stage ideas. Sometimes they're late stage ideas. And I would say the biggest piece of together for me has actually come from transparent.

[00:04:11] Is, hey, I'm thinking about this. I'm moving toward this idea. Or at the very end, I'm 90% sure this is what we're going to do. Do you have any thoughts that would just sharpen the last 10%? And so I love really communicating early on to advisors, whether it's inside or outside of the organization. Is this a I'm just considering this idea very, very early stage or I'm ready to launch.

[00:04:36] I'm just looking to kind of hone in that that is what we've sought to be transparent around to get to together, which ultimately then takes us to making thoughtful decisions. Okay. I love that idea around sharpen the last 10%. Because in HR, we're often asking employees for input. Sometimes if we're doing a great job, we're asking early. But a lot of times we're also asking to help hone that last 10%. And it's a fair question.

[00:05:06] But how do we in HR be clear about the fact that it is just the last 10%? The majority of this decision has been made, but we do want your help on that last 10%. Yeah, it's some of it would be, for instance, when I think of some of my advisors, hey, I'm planning to launch this next Tuesday and I'd love to just walk you through it and see if there are any holes you can poke in it. It doesn't mean you have to take their advice necessarily, but I cannot tell you the number

[00:05:33] of times that citing it in at the very end has, like someone has said, hey, just watch out for that. And it's like, again, with a 16-year-old who's just starting to drive, I can't sit him down every time he goes out to drive and tell him 25 things. But I can just say, hey, it's a little, we live in Michigan, so it's a little icy outside. And I want you to just be careful at the corner of jolly and openness, right?

[00:06:00] And so in that little moment, let me tell you, when my son rolls up to that intersection, he remembers that one little piece. And it might be, in this case, a difference between an accident and not or whatever. But oftentimes it really, even though it's a funny example, it is very true that when we're sending our team out or when we're making a decision, that last little piece of advice, I just, I can remember so many situations where that last piece of advice made all the difference in the world. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:29] But I, you know, I think the point also that I would want to emphasize is don't forget the first part. Don't forget consulting early. So you don't want to pour a bunch of effort into something that was on shaky ground to begin with. Anyways. Okay. I'm going to move on from that because I want to get to thoughtful. What does thoughtful mean in a business context? It sounds soft and so many business people avoid it. Yeah.

[00:06:57] It's when you make a decision that, and I share this in People Matter at Work, is moving from the golden rule to the platinum rule. Mm-hmm. The golden rule is treat others as you'd like to be treated. The platinum rule is to treat others as they'd like to be treated. And as we ascend, in my case, as president of the organization, but wherever you are, and as you even move through different seasons of life, all of a sudden what's important to you is different than what was important to you when you were first starting your career

[00:07:26] or had young kids or whatever it is. And so for me, that platinum rule is what are the things that are important to people that may not be as important to me anymore, but maybe once were. And so just remembering that when we make a decision, there are a number of areas that are disproportionately important to people. Number one, as a careful one, is compensation. Anything related to compensation. Of course. It's money.

[00:07:55] It's security. It's worth. And so it's not just pay, but it's overtime hours and standby hours and boot stipends and health insurance and retirement and anything that touches money just is a topic that is really important to people or tends to be. The second is workspaces. Whether it be a work truck that people are driving in and installing and be installing

[00:08:24] CT scanners for our organization or people's desks and lighting and the temperature and people's work environments tend to be really important to them. And so when I think about careful consideration of the needs of others, I'm in an office right now, temperature, I have a thermostat on the wall and I get to kind of choose my lighting to some degree. And so recognizing when we move, we've had a ton of growth. So we've doubled in size over the last two and a half years.

[00:08:50] And so we have cubicles that move around and we've built offices and done all those sorts of things. And there can be kind of a haphazardness to, oh, just take a quick look, have, have, you know, materials or have facilities or someone make the call. And I will tell you until the last six months, there was not a office transition, renovation restructure that I was not, I did not sign off on at the end because I've just recognized

[00:09:18] that when I, when I want to make careful consideration for the needs of others, it's taking a look at new workspaces. It's so true, man. You nailed it. I only, I only nailed it because I got nailed by it. Right. Did you learn the hard way? Yeah. In the book, I say those two areas because I remember when I first became president, I was sitting at a, at a cocktail hour with a new team, with a team member and they were talking about their compensation. And I was transparent.

[00:09:48] I was just like having this open conversation. And I learned so much that like, what was a very safe and comfortable conversation to me was really high stakes to this other person. And so, yeah, I've learned it the hard way plenty of times. And that's what kind of led to me sharing in the book. Okay. Now we're going to get to my favorite transparency. Everybody says, oh, we're going to be transparent. And then they aren't. They never are. What gets in the way of being transparent?

[00:10:16] And how can we overcome this urge to get the message perfect? I think going back to what we talked about earlier, the cynicism and your view of people in many ways, I think you are going to get what you expect from people that if you don't think they're trustworthy, you're going to, you're, if, if they aren't already not trustworthy is, is they will begin to respond. And that way you'll draw certain team members. And the same is true with transparency. Do I trust them with information?

[00:10:45] And for us, instead of being a minimalist, which is just how little information can I give these people so that they can do their jobs? We really have gone to the other end of the spectrum, which is how much can we share without harming someone? Right. So there's a few things that are private. You know, performance is something that's private. People's personal health and things like that. And then owner's box information. There's some information that we hold there to protect the owners.

[00:11:12] Other than that, man, I think people, people hold back way too much. And for performance assessments and once a year, they just wallop them. And for me, I want the people that I lead to know that if I think something or I'm concerned about something or I have performance feedback, you are going to hear it very, very quickly. And I'm just blown away by the trust that that builds between a team member and their leader.

[00:11:38] How are you sharing difficult information about performance in a way that builds trust? Yeah, I, it's kind of a, it's, it's kind of a funny question because I would say, how do you not do it? Like you walk in, someone walks in the office, for instance, I just, I just traveled with a

[00:12:03] team member and we actually tacked on a ski trip to the, the travel, uh, to the business. And we had moved some flights around and had done some things. And before what was an hour one-on-one yesterday, he actually looked at me and said, is there anything you'd like me to do differently on that trip? So the dream is that you actually have people who are hungry for performance feedback. And we talked about some things that we can do differently, but that whole piece of walking in and saying that I believe in you enough to give you feedback.

[00:12:33] And what happens is when we actually give feedback, that's clear and kind that's drawn from Brene Brown, clear as kind. What happens is we develop feedback muscles. We're good at giving it. They're good at receiving it. Then ultimately it starts reciprocating where they give us feedback in return. And as we build those muscles together, the weight of feedback actually reduces because it's born out of belief. And so when we give consistent micro feedback, we're not talking about wearing two different

[00:13:01] kinds of socks or, or, you know, kind of obscure things. But when we give meaningful feedback, and we do it consistently, I love that. And I want our team, they never have to wonder what I'm thinking about their performance. They know exactly positive and areas where they can grow. They know right away. And so I think that the hardest part of giving feedback is when you wait and you wait and you wait. And oh, I'm going to be kind.

[00:13:30] And Patrick Lanzioni actually talks about that. Letting someone go is the last act of cowardice because you you've waited. I'm going to be nice. I'm going to be nice. I'm going to be nice. And then boom, as opposed to just giving meaningful feedback all along the way. And if you ask the people who reported to me, like, is there something that Josh is concerned about your performance that you don't know? I bet a Chick-fil-A gift card that they'll say no. When I give a keynote and we have a Q&A at some point throughout the last 15 minutes or

[00:13:58] whatever, I noticed like in hundreds of questions, there was kind of an eerie answer and they were all the same. And if someone says, well, I have Jason works for me and he doesn't show up on time and the team is frustrated because he doesn't take responsibility. And I look at them and I say, like, have you told Jason that it's it's frustrating to you and it's it's painful for the team and it's it's a gap that you expect him to close?

[00:14:23] Well, I sent the message through someone or I said any rarely do they ever say, like, I did it. And I would say you do it on a Monday, then you do it three Mondays later and then you do it six Mondays later. And before you know it, you can go to HR and you can say you can actually what really happens. And it's it's kind of humorous and maybe I don't know, humorous to me at least is when

[00:14:48] you give that feedback and you present the gap, what tends to happen is people either one, they close the gap and there's a story about Tyler in the book. There's there's 12 stories from our team. And one of them is a story where I gave it a significant challenge to Tyler and he closed the gap. And it's been an amazing journey to watch his growth or they they leave on their own because they don't believe they can close the gap. And there's a beautiful thing about when someone leaves on their own, they they

[00:15:18] they got to control the story. You run into them at the grocery store and you ask how they're doing. And it's it's OK versus when you let someone go. Of course, there's a whole bunch that goes along with that. And so, well, that happens from time to time. The number of times that we've talked about a gap consistently and someone has just said, I don't want to close it. I can't close it. And they just start applying somewhere else. They get another job. And we all get to say, like, I hope that you do really well at the place that you move to.

[00:15:48] And there are times where where employees are trying to close that gap with the employee, but they're the employee just doesn't get it. And I you know, and you can't spoon feed them actions so that they get it. Well, the last the last conversation I mentioned in the book is I believe that letting someone go should never be a surprise.

[00:16:14] And and there are three reasons why people are exited from our organization. They tie to three C's is you have character, competency and chemistry. Chemistry we can work on. Are you do you work well with your leader? Do you work well with your team? Competency we can work on as we can potentially develop. And we don't teach character here. So like we leave that to your mom. If she didn't teach you character, we kind of tongue in cheek. But if you didn't learn character along the way, we're not going to teach you.

[00:16:40] And so if if it's a gap in character, it's not a surprise because they know what they did. If it's a gap in chemistry or competency, we work with a person. And then it leads to this final conversation on June 16th that just says we've talked about this gap several times. If we're unable to close it between now and August 5th, it will be time to bring closure to your time in our organization. Gosh, I I can't imagine ever saying that.

[00:17:07] Well, the what happens then after you've said that is when you go in and you say we're going to have a difficult conversation and bring closure to your time, it's not new information to them. It's actually well. Letting someone go is never fun. It's one of the worst, worst parts of leadership. If you've set the table, not only does it honor them and give them a chance to know the severity of it, but it then makes the final conversation more of a wow, we didn't get

[00:17:35] there as opposed to I'm disappointed in you and I'm kind of shoving you off the island. Mm hmm. I love that word. Honor them. Well, it's a phrase, I guess, but honor them. I love that. It's one. It's one of our core values is honor. It's respect is meaningful and we kind of live in a world of tolerance, like tolerate each other. And we're not looking for reactive tolerance. We're actually looking for proactive honor.

[00:18:01] So I want to circle back to transparency because some transparency people say they're being transparent, but it's just painfully negative. They'll say, you know, they'll call the latest leadership decision, you know, flavor of the month. It's just BS. And then they'll say, yeah. And I just say it like it is. How do we coach productive transparency?

[00:18:32] Yeah. It goes right back to honor. Right. Right. Is when we when we complain either when we complain down the chain, we're actually dishonoring both people. We're dishonoring our leader and we're dishonoring the person who's following us. And so if we have a concern about a direction, it is our obligation to share with the leader our concern with that direction in the moment and then even after the fact. But ultimately, transparency and complaining are not the same thing. Right.

[00:19:01] And so when we're being transparent, the purpose of it is to honor the person and honor the organization. Transparency is not complaining. Yeah. Oh, God. OK. So for a nature professional who wants to bring some of these ideas into their organization and maybe the three T's in particular, where should they start?

[00:19:30] Yeah, that's a great question. So People Matter at Work comes out on March 3rd. And so it's available Amazon and anywhere books are sold. And then you're also if these three T's piqued your interest, you're welcome to go to peoplematteratwork.com. You can follow me on social Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn and so forth. But if you go to peoplematteratwork.com, you will learn more about some opportunities in the keynote space and coming alongside of you and your team to support as you look to move

[00:19:59] from here to there. Well, thanks, Josh. That was excellent. I'm especially thinking about that part at the end with the idea that we should honor people with feedback. In HR, we've got progressive discipline and there is a spirit behind progressive discipline or performance improvement programs where we are trying to help people understand what it takes to succeed, what it takes to have a greater impact.

[00:20:27] And if we don't do anything that's like that, if we don't provide people with that kind of feedback, we're not honoring them. So I love that perspective. Josh and I have another discussion about coaching leaders to be caring because so often people, you know, don't feel cared for even though the leader cares. See the link or search it up in my list of episodes.

[00:20:55] And overall, thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.