Lead With That: The Role of Leadership in Shifting Team Culture & Creating a “Work Family”

Interview Transcript

INTRO:  

Welcome back to CCLs podcast, Lead With That, where we talk current events in pop culture to look at where leadership is happening and what’s happening with leadership.

Ren:

I’m not sure if you know this, but family is a bit of a dirty word these days. Well, in the corporate context at least, and maybe for some of us as the holidays approach, in the family context too. But anyway, as Netflix tells us, we model ourselves on being a professional sports team, not a family. A family is about unconditional love. A dream team is about pushing yourself to be the best possible teammate, caring intensely about your team, and knowing that you may not be on the team forever. Thanks for the copy, Netflix. So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk family versus team and which one might be best. When we think about the traditional family structure, we often associate it with love and loyalty and long-term commitment.

But how does this compare to the team dynamic? Teams are known for their agility, diversity, and adaptability. Which approach is more effective in today’s America when it comes to leadership and building a strong, cohesive, and high performing workforce? Are either of them appropriate, even? Nothing like the threat of being off the team forever as a motivating factor.

Either way, we’ll talk about leadership’s role in creating these structures, look at some of the payoffs, some of the payouts maybe, and see how you can create the culture you need most. Welcome back everyone. I’m Ren Washington and, as usual, joined with Allison Barr. Allison, best team you’ve ever been a part of?

Allison:

The best work team that I’ve ever been a part of was when I was getting my first graduate degree and working retail. And my boss was named Ellen, last initial G, because I had a couple Ellens as bosses. So Ellen, if you are listening, best team I was on.

Ren:

And did that team, even better than any other team you’ve ever been on in your life? ‘Cause you said best work team.

Allison:

Well, I mean we could talk about when I was in 6th grade playing soccer and my soccer coach gave us Kit Kats after the game. That was certainly —

Ren:

So just chocolate bribery really boosts the best —

Allison:

Oh yeah. You do well, you get a Kit Kat. That was enough for me.

Ren:

Well, I mean I think it might already be a worthy conversation of which one would you pick? 6th grade Kit Kat chocolate bar soccer team, or Ellen “G for gangster’s” retail team.

Allison:

It depends. I mean, context, right? I have to make a living, right? So I don’t think I’m good enough to make a living as a soccer player, unfortunately. Though, if I had … Is that what you’re asking, for a job?

Ren:

No, I’m trying to … Yeah. Well, I wonder. Maybe you are talking about it, because some of it’s like, do I need to make a living in order for the team’s greatness to be relevant? I don’t know. I guess I’m probing the idea of, what are the structures that were the most effective for you inside of a team? Whether that team was personal, professional, sports, debate, work …

Allison:

Okay. I see where you’re going with this.

Ren:

So, if you had to choose, if you had to choose, which one are you choosing? Which Allison was happier? Now that’s too loaded.

Allison:

That’s too loaded.

Ren:

Which team was better?

Allison:

Probably the retail team.

Ren:

Yeah. What made it better?

Allison:

Well, a lot. I mean there’s a lot to say there. We had a really strong foundation of trust amongst us, and there were really clear expectations from the moment that I was hired, from the moment that I had my onboarding, my very first meeting, expectations were laid out. Not just around my job, but how the culture was there and what I could expect. So I think because the groundwork was laid so early and there was trust amongst us as a team, that allowed us to handle obstacles in a, not only just an empowering way, but a way that allowed us to progress through them a lot faster than if we had not. And we had fun. We had a lot of fun. And I will say when I was talking to you about the Kit Kat situation, Ellen also had a budget for staff rewards. And it was not anything major, but here and there we might get, I don’t know …

Ren:

Larger Kit Kats.

Allison:

Larger Kit Kats. I don’t know. I think once I got rewarded with a Starbucks gift card, which we’ve talked about Starbucks before, so I was happy about that, but there was motivation that was not simply targeted to making a financial goal.

Ren:

I appreciate that, especially when we start to think about reward and incentive, because I think that’s a critical part of leading and leadership, and work and work effectiveness. But before we maybe continue to diverge, I’m getting a sense of maybe the best teams you’ve been a part of, best family you’ve been a part of. I’m just kidding. But that brings me to the point. I was like, oh, what an interesting premise. I see this post around Netflix’s culture and “we don’t model ourselves after family.”

I mean they put that … You go on their culture page and … you want a job at Netflix? It’s not the first thing they say, but it’s about halfway through after their values and things like that. And it made me think, yeah, is that better? Should we be calling our work groups families? And I was like, should we model ourselves after a group of dysfunctional people like our families or like my family? I can only own my own experiences. But I mean, what do you think? Family, team, had you ever even considered? Did you consent to being part of a family? Where do you fall on this?

Allison:

Well, I think companies and employees who say, “We’re like a family here,” are well-intended. I think they’re well-intended and they’re trying to send the message that they have a supportive, accepting environment much like a family should behave. But some translate that to be a metaphor for the most dysfunctional parts that can come in family units. Not all the time, but often what that metaphor means is a lack of boundaries, expecting unconditional acceptance despite maybe even abusive behavior, and forced prioritization with punishment for not doing so. Punishment for not putting the, quote unquote, the family, the work family, first.

And so I saw an interview with the former CEO of Netflix who said, and you’ve alluded to this already, family is about unconditional love despite, say, your sibling’s bad behavior for example. A dream team is about pushing yourself to be the best teammate you can be, caring intensely about your teammates, and knowing, you already said this, that you might not be on the team forever. And I interpret that last part, by the way, as for a variety of reasons. Sometimes people choose not to be part of the team or they get promoted. It doesn’t have to be a negative.

By the way, we’ll probably get into this as well, but Hastings, he had an 87% approval rating from his employees according to Glassdoor, which is astronomically high. I think the norm is somewhere around 35, 36, something like that. So he was doing something right, but you asked about where do I fall, team, family? I don’t know that I really care, but I understand why people get turned off by companies saying, “We’re like a family here.” What about you?

Ren:

Yeah, I mean wasn’t laughing at you. I think that’s funny. And the nihilist in me is like, yeah, who gives a shit? ‘Cause I’m here to do work, though. But I think you and I probably have a unique individual drive that moves us through environments. That would be my read of you. But I do pause and I wonder, because when you start talking about the dysfunctions of a family, I’d say yeah, those are the dysfunctions of all families. I think you can love a family member unconditionally and hold them accountable.

And I think sports teams, I think about Ted Lasso or John Wooden even. I think real coaches who understand that our sports, especially college coaches or high school coaches, when an athlete comes through his system for 4 years, the best coaches in the world realize that the winning and losing is a finite experience. But the kids there, you’re foraging life. So you can love a student unconditionally, love them as a person, and expect more from them as an athlete and not necessarily start them.

So if I wanted to push back on what I would consider some of the arbitrary borders that this family versus team dynamic puts forward, I probably could. I wish you would’ve picked a side because then we could debate. I don’t know. I like the familial nature of an organization, but you know what I love most about a team? The family nature of it too. And so when I think about some of the best teams, whether they be family or teams I’ve been a part of, there was this unity, this “we are bound by a seal” or “I identify with my team or my team members” or “we are here to do something together.” And those are the things where maybe I fall down. Yeah, I don’t know if I really care, but I wonder how I could tap into the benefits of both of them.

Allison:

Yeah, and that was something I was going to ask you, too, is how can we have both? And I think what we’ve seen in the research, and what CCL’s research posits too, is that some of the most necessary leadership skills right now are empathy, compassion, emotional intelligence, and also agility, drive for results. So it’s not overt in what Netflix says, but what I hear when people have these conversations is that family feels too emotional and that team perhaps feels more drive, drive, drive for results when we’re at work and our goal is to drive for results. I would argue that’s not necessarily true, but that’s, I think, what people hear when they’re debating those 2 sides.

And you need both. Let us not forget that we work with human beings. When you just mentioned being unified, when I was working retail, I was selling clothing. At the bottom line, I was selling clothing. However, we had so much fun as that team. And like I said, we were able to come in every day and know that we did have a financial target to meet, but there was a certain level of support that we gave one another to achieve that target, celebrations when we did make it. And if we didn’t make it, there was conversation pretty immediately about what we could have done differently. So yeah, at the end of the day, I was selling clothes to people, but we were unified in our approach, in what we were trying to do together. And some people might gasp at this, but some of my lifelong friends I met working that job. So there’s another argument that’s, “I don’t go to work to make friends, I go to work to do my job.” That’s fine. But some of us also make friends.

Ren:

Well, it’s interesting when we talk about commitment in our leadership framework: direction, alignment, commitment. Commitment is not just committed to me or committed to finishing the job, it’s committed to each other, our shared success. It’d be interesting … Did the work contribute to your long-term friendships? You talk about lifelong friends. Was that because you all just happened to vibe or were you forged in the fire of retail, which is something that we could chuckle at, but for real? I mean anyone who’s ever done that knows. I don’t know. What would you say to that?

Allison:

So, is the question why we became friends? Did it have more to —

Ren:

Yeah, did work contribute to it? Because as we explore this environment and you think about, and I mentioned this idea of team environment or family, either way, I felt best when I was unified and you said, “Yeah, you know what? Me too, especially here in this team, and I met some friends.” So did the familial environment contribute to the long-term friendships, or was it this hard-driving team environment, or was it this third, unnamed, part of the equation?

Allison:

I think it was the third, unnamed, but probably includes both of those things. [clears throat] Excuse me.

Ren:

Sure, yeah.

Allison:

The culture there. I think it was the culture. We were taught how to have difficult conversations from the get-go. And there was an expectation that we would have difficult conversations. That was expected of us. It didn’t mean that we couldn’t ask for support, but asking for support meant that you were looking for some sort of remedy, not to complain. And so the culture also, I think, this is my opinion, led them to hire people who had similar interests. And so after work, for example, some of us might go to a yoga class or we might go hiking. There were things that we all had in common in terms of interests that, I think, enabled us to nourish those friendships.

And so what I’m getting at though, with the difficult conversations and the feedback and all of that type of thing, is that our workplace relationships were so strong. And when you think about friendships and family, ultimately you think about having really strong relationships. That doesn’t always happen. It often does not happen at the workplace. So I think it was the culture that really, naturally allowed for friendships to unfold.

Ren:

Really strong relationships. I wonder. As we’re exploring the different characteristics of family or team or any of these things, just as we talk, I keep on mapping on, is that exclusive for a family, or is that exclusive for a team, or is that accessible if you’re on one or the other? And the really strong relationships thing is interesting, because I think in a dysfunctional family, there’s no guarantee you’re going to have really strong relationships. And then I wonder … But then maybe, is a strong relationship necessary for the success of a family? I don’t know. It depends on what the goal of the family is. Then transfer the same into the work environment. Are strong relationships necessary for the success of a work environment? I guess it depends on what the work is trying to accomplish.

And that makes me think of the first thing that you said, maybe a question or 2 ago. People feel like the “family” word is maybe too personal and so we’re shifting to a little more of a team-driven language. But I would say culturally, now, people engaging in work are more mushy than ever before. Why is empathy in these things the driving force behind work? When before, 10 years ago, it was … Not 10 years ago, even maybe 40 years ago. Time is so weird. 40, 50 years ago, we work you until we kill you. Even some, right now, organizations believe in this extraction capitalism. But so we shift into … Managers should care about each other, and we should care about people, but don’t use the word “family” because families are really screwed up. So we don’t want to do that.

It’s just really interesting to think that there’d be such a pushback. And maybe there’s not such a pushback, but I’ve heard this … dedication in family. Don’t let someone use the guise of family to suck the loyalty out of you.

Allison:

Yeah, a couple of things came up when you were talking. I think people hear it as a manipulation, and for whatever reason, that’s what they hear. No one’s saying that you can’t say it. Go ahead and say it. Right? Go ahead and say it.

Ren:

Well sure, sure.

Allison:

I wonder too, when you were talking about people are, you said, mushy, mushier than ever, sometimes I wonder if, in our line of work, we get into a bit of an echo chamber because we initiate those types of conversations, and we create the type of environment and the type of space where people can talk about what’s really going on with them. But I don’t know that that is culturally common at the workplace. I think we create an environment for people thankfully to be able to do that.

Ren:

Well, maybe mushy was too reductive, a slight marginalization or minimization of the experience. But I would say maybe from a lens of a Boomer or even a Gen X-er, the pushback of this “everyone gets a trophy” vibe.

Allison:

Oh, I’m so glad to bring this up. Keep going.

Ren:

As the pendulum swings, and you could look into this environment saying, well, people come to work now, and they want more than a paycheck. And if that’s the case, maybe some of them even come into work saying, “Hey, I want to build relationships that matter.” I don’t know if people are saying that, but maybe they do. I could imagine someone looking at that from the outside and saying, well, that seems like family then is your jam. So what’s the problem? And so I don’t know. But why are you so glad that I’m bringing up this idea of “get off my lawn?”

Allison:

Get off my lawn.

Ren:

Tell me more.

Allison:

Well, because a McKinsey study came out very recently, this is this year, and across 4 generations … So for the first time in contemporary history, there’s 4 generations at the workplace. And across all 4 of those generations, the top 5 reasons for an employee to leave an employer were the same. So this notion that generations want different things from their employee is not true. And anytime that I hear somebody say … I know you said it in jest, but people do say it very seriously. Anytime I hear someone say, “Oh, Millennials want a participation trophy,” or, “Boomers are out of touch,” my question is, how do you know that? What’s the data that led you to that belief? Because if you’re just parroting what you heard from a headline, you’re doing more harm than good.

So the top reasons for people leaving an employee, and again this is across generations, are inadequate compensation, uncaring leaders, so that goes into what we’re talking about, unsustainable work expectations, lack of career development, and lack of meaning in their work. And that’s across generations, which is not what we’re talking about today. But I thought I would bring that into the conversation just for anyone who’s curious.

Ren:

It’d be interesting to see … Now I’m just going to play the role of a Boomer here. While someone I know may have quit, no one quit. And so maybe one person quit and when they did quit, it’s because the job didn’t pay enough, or they hated their boss. But most of us just expected to work in misery, especially with my hard puritanical upbringing. Sorry to get political and religious, but I wonder then if there’s not something …

Because that’s a really interesting facet. I go, okay, cool. I hadn’t heard the stat around everyone leaving for the same reasons. And when I hear those reasons, I go, “Okay, cool, that makes sense.” Money, I don’t like my boss, I don’t make sense of meaning. And I don’t know, we don’t have the numbers, but I wondered if it was like, well fine, some people quit, but usually there were a lot more people living in misery. And maybe I’m thinking the conversation is shifting to, well, don’t live in misery anymore. And maybe that’s why people don’t want to use the word family, because families are miserable.

Allison:

Well, back to what you said, role playing. “I went to work every day.” I’m paraphrasing what you said. “I sucked it up. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.” 2 things can be true at the same time. Okay, that’s great. And … a lot of people don’t want to, and so they’re pushing back, and that’s it. I’m sorry that you experienced that, and the masses don’t want to do that.

Ren:

Well, I mean this is a useful transition. Speaking of the masses and then listener as a leader or all of you listening, engage in the active process of leadership, which is getting stuff done together. Maybe we say, well, how do I shift the narrative? I’m a leader, I’m a middle manager. How do I lead from an organizational standpoint or for my teams if I’m in a family structure or a team structure? Or what do the people want and how can I give them what’s required?

Allison:

Well, I’ll be curious to hear what you have to say too. I just shared with you some research about what people do want. So there’s that, right? A middle manager can’t necessarily control compensation. Some of them can, but a lot of them can’t. However, they can, for the most part, manage inspiring people. They can manage career development to an extent. That was one thing also that Ellen did really well was give us opportunities for growth constantly. It was constant. And they can control having a type of environment where people aren’t working 7 days a week, assuming they were hired to work a traditional 40-hour work week. So they can control some of those things. And for a leader to be inspirational is a bit tricky because that’s going to be different for everybody. But there’s research out there and it’s pretty tangible. What do you think?

Ren:

For being inspirational, or just what it means, what people want out of work?

Allison:

For what people want out of work. I think honestly, Ren, I think sometimes we overthink things and make these huge statements or huge stories that then become contagious all over organizational development, and then in LinkedIn, and then in the workspaces, and it just starts to domino, where maybe not that many people are actually that unhappy.

Ren:

That’s interesting.

Allison:

You have to look at your company’s turnover.

Ren:

I don’t know, I —

Allison:

Sorry, go ahead.

Ren:

Oh, interesting. Well, yeah, I just got real meta with you. You said maybe people aren’t unhappy. I was like, we should look at pharmaceutical sales on anxiety meds.

Allison:

At work, I mean.

Ren:

If you want to talk about how happy people really are. Hopefully they’re not purchasing their anxiety meds at work. I would agree with you. I think there’s something you said that really resonates. I think we overcomplicate things. And something you said, too, around the greatest teams you’ve ever been a part of, whether it was Ellen or soccer, was expectation, clear expectation. And here’s something that I know is true for humanity. Suffering comes from expectations.

Allison:

Say more about that.

Ren:

You want to be … Well, if any of you want to be happier in your relationships, your personal relationships, have less expectation of the “shoulds” and the “oughts.” Pain comes from what we think should be or ought to be. And I often ask leaders or ask anyone, “Who said that’s supposed to be that way?” So often I think we are over-index on the things we are told is supposed to be the case, and then that continues to echo through each other.

So you and I could talk much longer about maybe humanity and expectation and suffering, but for the teams, it is an interesting paradigm because I say teams revel and succeed with expectations. And I would say the best teams have boundaries for their expectations. One team would say, “I would expect you to try your hardest and learn from every opportunity.” That’s different than, “I expect you to never lose.”

And so I think there, when I use the word expectation, what I mean is that it helps for people to understand what’s expected of them, and if what’s expected of them isn’t bound by over-rigid criteria, like “Meet these sales targets, then you are accepted,” even though I understand that there’s an environment for the necessity of those things, instead, maybe the expectation is, “You are expected to be your best self here.” And then we take the ups and the downs as we go, recognizing that you are not your wins, you are not your losses. You are the work.

Allison:

Yeah, I think there’s inter-relational expectation and that’s where pain can come. And then there’s job expectation. And that sounded like you need to be on time. If you’re scheduled to start at 10:00 am, whatever that means for you, you need to be on the sales floor at 10:00 am. If that means you need to get here 10 minutes early to settle and whatnot … So I mean very specific. It’s almost norms is more what I mean.

But I remember being hired for a job after that, and not having that same expectation conversation, and I eventually just asked in my onboarding meeting, but it was unbelievable to me that I was not told what time we start in the day, how many vacation days I had. It was unbelievable to me that that was not provided to me from the get go.

Ren:

Why didn’t they do that? Did they say?

Allison:

I just asked. I didn’t ask why they didn’t tell me that. I just asked them because I realized we weren’t going to talk about that and we had our first onboarding meeting and I didn’t even know what time I was supposed to show up for work.

Ren:

Was it a culture where you could just come in, whenever?

Allison:

No, no. No.

Ren:

Okay. That’s super weird then, right? That sounds like a failure of work right there. That’s like a negligence of duty.

Allison:

Right.

Ren:

Yeah. That’s interesting.

Allison:

But my point is, though, those inter-relational, I think, expectations, that can cause some misery. You’re right. If I expect you to treat me in a certain way or I expect … Like in families, sometimes. Families can expect unconditional acceptance, and that’s not usually how it goes.

Ren:

That’s a bummer because it should, and I agree with you. If only that was the environment. And not to get too heady about it, but it’s interesting … I was listening to some music the other day, and this artist was talking about “find someone who loves you for you.” “She loves me for me.” And I thought, what an interesting idea. How many of our relationships where we look at each other and we are like, “I love you for the person you are?” Or do I love you for the person who you could be? Or do I love you for the person that you told me you were going to be?

And so thinking in the context of work environment, really in the personal environment, I was like, it doesn’t really matter if you love me for me. Do I love me for me? And what the relevant conversation for work then is, as you create your own value or your sense of value, when you are either a leader or, maybe like you said, a mid-level manager who can’t pay for compensation but helps people qualify and define their own value, helps people qualify and define the pride in themselves and love for themselves and appreciation for their own efforts …

I think in a family or on a team, these are the conversations that, when we lose, we can look at each other and say, “Dust it off, man. We’re going to lose again.” And when we win, we go, “Congratulations. Also, need I remind you of the loss?” So we’ll win again too, but let’s just keep on doing the environment where we are proud of ourselves, or we are proud of what we’re doing, or how we’re doing it, or why we’re doing it. Which comes back, I think, to that connection that I said earlier.

Allison:

And it connects as well to what people want out of work, one of which was meaning. And I think there’s something really admirable about trying to create a workplace culture that’s nurturing and compassionate. And like you said earlier, there has to be a way to blend. I don’t know that it’s necessarily a polarity to have a nurturing and compassionate environment with a drive for results type of environment. I think you do need both.

Ren:

Agreed.

Allison:

However, what Netflix brought to the table culturally is and was really interesting, because Hastings believed in a culture of transparency, which you and I both know is really crucial in leadership. They also prioritize their people by giving them freedom and autonomy, but also responsibility, clarity on responsibility. And they also believed that paying the highest salary possible was a better retention plan and better motivation than paying an average salary with bonuses. Which I know some people, people who are responsible for deciding on salaries, that might blow some minds a bit, but that’s their strategy.

So I do think it’s both. And when it comes down to it, it is culture, and culture can be complicated. We probably don’t have time for that today, but it is. It is, what is the culture you’re creating on your team? By the way, you can create a culture within your team that is different from the organization’s culture. And I’m sure, Ren, that you know the cliche. Actually, I’ve heard you say it before in programs, that culture eats strategy for breakfast. And there’s something to think about there, too.

Ren:

I resemble the implication of cliche usage. I love the notion of the polarity. It’s not an either/or. You can be absolutely high performing and compassionate. And again, I grew up in the sports world.

Allison:

Me too.

Ren:

And leadership looked like William Wallace, like Braveheart. I mean, coach standing up in front of the group, charging up their warriors to go out there and kick a ball or tackle somebody. And that’s such an interesting translation. And then I have a military father, so another real command and control, standing in front of your troops, rallying them to a particular target.

And this idea of how we focus our energies, when we think about the culture that we can create around us or the team members that we want to be a part of, I think that structure that I came up with, where there’s no crying in baseball, is such an interesting, limiting paradigm. When I think, whether we’re using a family or a team framework, don’t be reduced by your language, because everything that we’re talking about, it’s like the highest performing whatever, just create a family that has those things, create a team that has those things. None of these things are restricted to the environment.

I wonder if we could, or even if we would’ve had time to explore it, what is something that’s solely for a family and not for a team? I think you alluded to something earlier. I can’t remember it. But I wonder, what would be something that’s just restricted for either one of the 2 places?

Allison:

Well, families aren’t trying to maximize — Well, let me start over.

Ren:

Okay.

Allison:

Because what I was going … I’m going to say it. What I was going to say is that families aren’t necessarily trying to maximize capital, though somebody out there would argue me —

Ren:

That was a thing that I thought you said.

Allison:

Somebody might argue me on that. And I’m not talking about families that have businesses, I just mean families that … Just your family. You go home for Thanksgiving, or you go home to celebrate a birthday, or you have a family reunion or something. When you’re all together, you’re not trying to make a product and you’re not trying to gain a new customer.

Ren:

Well, so let’s just stick with Netflix just because. And I’m sticking with the paragraph that I talk about family and teams, and dream teams are about performance, not seniority. So okay, I guess there’s that performance metric that one could argue is reserved for a team. Now, if I could frame that we often say in our classrooms, too, that performance is actually not just the results. Winning as a team is results. It’s learning. Do you know how to do it better? And it’s satisfaction. Do I want to work with you again? So I could be that person that you’re talking about, Allison, that in fact, while a family may not push for capital gains, they do work for results, which is learning and satisfaction and —

Allison:

Families do?

Ren:

Then if you wanted to get … I would say so. I mean, think about the best familial environments that you’re ever in. Well, see, this is interesting. What do we want from families?

Allison:

Elaborate, yes.

Ren:

I want from family an environment full of support and love. And in that environment, I support people on their growth and opportunity to learn and try and learn new things. And I create an environment where we don’t have to like each other all the time, but we do respect, love each other, and so we want to continue the good work. Now I could see that same language for a really effective team and feel good about it.

Allison:

Sure, sure. And I think it’s complex. I think it’s complex. Yeah. Yeah. When we’re talking about family, it’s too nuanced, depending on who you’re talking to and their family dynamics. And some people don’t have families. Some people have been excommunicated from their family. I just think I could go down a real rabbit hole here, but I get what you’re saying. I do get what you’re saying. Yes, you need all of those things to thrive. And maybe that’s what we’re talking about is thriving organizations. What do you need to thrive? Ultimately, organizations have to make a profit for them to succeed, to exist even, to exist. They need customers and they need capital to be able to exist. So different than a family, but what you’re saying is potentially how people thrive, and you need to thrive at a workplace.

Ren:

Yeah, I appreciate your perspective, especially the idea of the familial and it’s super nuanced and loaded, and family can be traumatic. And then I’m thinking, okay, well have you been on teams that could cause as much pain and suffering? I was like, I don’t know. As a family? Probably not. Maybe some of us have. Write in, let us know. But then I’m thinking, okay, well what is the next frontier now, Allison? Because I don’t want to use either word, dang it. I want to do a new word. Here at Ren Organization, we’re not family, nor are we a team. We are at this other word. Is there a more appropriate word that I should start using at CCL when I’m emailing someone like, “Hey team.” That’s what I say on my emails regularly. “Hey team.” Is there a better encapsulation?

Allison:

Well, and that’s why I say sometimes we overthink, and I don’t mean me and you. I mean all of us, inclusive of me and you. I think we overthink things sometimes. And it’s my understanding that one of the reasons organizations began using that language of family was to drive recruitment, and to create engagement, and to create a reputation for their organization.

So I don’t know, to me it does not matter. To me it does not matter. I understand why it does for people. I think the bottom line is that companies were using that language and then it stuck, so that they could create a reputation for their company, that it was a culture of belonging. It was or it is a culture that’s compassionate and welcoming and understanding and all of the things that you would assume come with a proper family. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the case, though. So when you call a workplace a team, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to have all of the things that you mentioned.

So that’s why I say I don’t know that it matters that much. I think what matters is if you are a leader, what kind of culture are you creating within your team? And Ren, you mentioned earlier about direction, alignment, commitment, and how leadership is a social process. Your organization and your team’s culture is the way that things get done, the way that people interact, the way that people make decisions. Leaders’ own conscious and unconscious beliefs can drive the repeated behaviors that become the practices on a team. We talk about this a lot, but I think because those practices become, then, the patterns of the culture, leaders have to understand what their responsibility is in creating a culture. Again, this is probably another podcast, but …

Ren:

Yeah, especially when we start talking about the lived patterns and behaviors of people. Because great, good luck for working through the unconscious patterns of behaviors that echo through my existence as I lead humans, ’cause I am a human. I mean, that’s the Rosetta Stone.

Yeah, I’m with you. It’s like does it really matter? Especially family or team. Does it matter when the world is burning? Who cares? But I think whatever drives the motivation. I think at its worst, people use a word for family to draw people into this idea of the perfect nuclear family with two and a half kids and a white picket fence, which was never really a real family anyway. And maybe that’s where people are like … The pendulum’s swinging back away from family. Don’t even give me this … Whose family? And what ideologies are we following here about what a family needs to look like?

And at the same time, you know what, I’m not here to demonize anything. I like a familial vibe. There’s certain things that I like about CCL that, I would say, we’re not like the Olympic dream team on basketball. There’s the way leadership works, the way players interact with each other. It just looks different. And that’s okay, and I’m okay with it. But I think it comes down to, as you’ve said and always, our favorite consultant language, it depends. But maybe asking what do your people need? Family, team? Why do they need that thing? And then when you create a new word, Allison, or anybody, you just email me first.

Allison:

Yes. Well, I can’t help but ask you a probing question. I’m sorry. I know we’re almost out of time, but I’m going to anyway. I’m going to anyway.

Ren:

Let’s do it.

Allison:

You said you like that CCL has a familial vibe. What does that mean behaviorally?

Ren:

What does that mean behaviorally, and what do I mean about it? CCL was an organization that I think welcomed my humanity and the humanity of those around it in a way that I hadn’t ever really seen or experienced. And I saw the space for people to be. And I guess maybe in the healthiest family, that space for the humanity was, I think, representative. And we have this … I’m not trying to air our dirty laundry, but who doesn’t have dysfunction? We have dysfunction, but there’s something charming about our dysfunction, like an uncle you really don’t want to interact with, but sometimes you do. And sometimes he says something funny and then you’re like, “Okay, yeah, I get it.” And so I think there’s probably the glitz and the dark stuff that I think is really representative of the familial vibe.

Allison:

Okay, you know I’m not going to let you off the hook that easy. So you said, I’m paraphrasing, they welcomed your humanity. That’s very conceptual. What is that? How? How did they do that?

Ren:

I guess there was some of what I said earlier around an expectation that I come and do my best. That my personal success was aligned with the organization’s success. And for me, that was a resonant of my family experience and different from the high-performance team experience where … Again, because my high-performance team wasn’t at Netflix, it was on a football team. So I had a very unique role in a larger cast of players, and we were driven toward a particular goal, and there was no crying in baseball. And so I felt like there was this crying at CCL and it’s like almost part of the job. So maybe that’s what I mean. And I think maybe the humanity of it, it’s amorphous. It’s hard to nail. And that’s maybe what I meant why familial. It’s intangible.

Allison:

Yeah. I dig, because somebody asked me recently, why is culture change so hard? And it comes back to what you just said, and what you said a few moments ago, which is, leaders are responsible for culture, and culture is driven by our unconscious and conscious, but our beliefs. And it is very hard to find a leader who’s willing to look at that kind of thing and really start to dissect what they are bringing to the table and creating.

And I want to validate too, it’s really hard, because it takes a certain level of self-awareness, but also a willingness to ask for that type of feedback. How am I showing up for others? What am I creating here that’s working? What am I not creating? Oftentimes, there’s a disconnect between senior leadership, their belief in what culture is, and what the employees are experiencing because of that lack of awareness. So it can be very, very hard. So for the companies out there that are … It sounds like what you’re saying too, Ren, is that you were welcomed as your, dare I be cliche again, but as your whole self, versus just somebody who’s coming in to make a dollar for CCL.

Ren:

It certainly felt that way.

Allison:

Yeah. So if you were —

Ren:

It certainly felt that way.

Allison:

And I hope it still does.

Ren:

It does.

Allison:

Good. So if you were going to leave leaders today with a tip, what would that be?

Ren:

I am reminded of … You were talking about your whole self or that exploration of the unconscious and the conscious and reading a book by this author, and she’s got this premise around child raising and she has a sense that makes me chuckle. Ultimately, you just got to get over your own stuff. Don’t project your own stuff on your kids. I say it jokingly because I’m like, well, winning, solutions, we got it. So maybe it’s … identify your own stuff. If family’s a dirty word for you, you need to suss that out for your long-term satisfaction.

Allison:

Yes.

Ren:

If “team” is too cold for you, why? And I think then, using that as maybe an open exploration for those other people around you to do the sense-making, you asking me what makes it familial? What are the behaviors? I don’t know if I’d ever been asked to define the behaviors. They’re pretty quick at hand. But I think it’s useful to name our experiences, as Brené [Brown] would tell us in Atlas of the Heart. And the more we can name our experiences and label them, the more effectively we can navigate them. Just that, I guess, leaders. All of those things.

Allison:

Just that. It’s that easy.

And I think from more of an organizational lens, I would offer that the most mature and successful organizations, Netflix being one of them, operate with the belief that leadership is a collective activity. Those organizations that do so have a higher capacity to take creative action in the face of complexity, which Netflix certainly reflects. And right now and for the past couple of years, we’ve been in what we would call a VUCA environment, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. So now would be the time to really think about whether or not leadership is a collective activity at your organization.

Again, that’s probably another podcast at hand. However, one way that you can do that if you are a leader is to look at one piece of direction, alignment, and commitment. Just one. You can look at how you’re creating direction. How are you creating direction? Is it a shared exploration or is it dictated? What you’re looking to do is create a shared exploration around what direction we’re trying to take and an acceptance of multiple perspectives, not necessarily dictating. “This is what we’re doing and I need you to be compliant.”

So yeah, I think there’s a lot of different things that we could talk about here. Ren, and I appreciate the conversation. And as always, to our listeners, you can find all of our podcast episodes and our show notes on ccl.org. And a special thank you to Emily and Ryan, who work behind the scenes to get our podcast off the ground. And we’ll look forward to tuning in with you next time. I almost said team. I almost just said, we’ll look forward to tuning in with you next time. Find us on LinkedIn, let us know what you want us to talk about next. Thanks, Ren.

Ren:

Thanks, Allison. Thanks everybody. See you next time.