Megan Hyatt-Miller:

While these might seem like soft outcomes, you can imagine how the kind of people who experience a sense of felt safety, a sense of congruence at this level, are set up to produce results in a totally different way than somebody who doesn’t feel safe and who feels a sense of internal conflict with the values of the organization.

Michael Hyatt:

Hi, I’m Michael Hyatt.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

And I’m Megan Hyatt Miller.

Michael Hyatt:

And this is Lead to Win, our weekly podcast to help you win at work and succeed at life. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about culture, which as you all know is one of those soft things that nobody can define, that’s probably of limited value you need to be executing. This culture is something for people that have too much time on their hands and somehow get the woo of it all.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Wow. That’s a real sales pitch. That is kind of what we think though, isn’t it?

Michael Hyatt:

Well, I was going to tell you too, I just finished writing a book on reverse psychology. Don’t buy it.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, okay. That was your one dad joke with the whole podcast. You’re done now.

Michael Hyatt:
I have to credit the account Dad Jokes for that one. I read that yesterday.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Unbelievable.

Michael Hyatt:

Okay. So obviously we don’t believe that. Right?

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Right.

Michael Hyatt:

But I think a lot of people do. So I’m merely giving voice to what I’ve heard from some of our clients when they start the program. You talk about culture and people roll their eyes, because they’re like, first of all, nobody’s ever been taught on what it is or how you create it and nobody has time to anyway. So what we’re really focused on is driving results. That’s what they would say to us. But the thing that we also say is that culture is the unseen force that drives operating results. So if you want better results, you better pay attention to your culture, because that’s how you get there.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

You know, I think one of the reasons that people tend to be dismissive of culture or what I find sometimes is when I’m talking to people is it’s like something we all know we should do like flossing your teeth, but you just kind of put it off like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Next time I go to the dentist. I’ll do it after that. Because it sounds like it’s going to be painful or embarrassing or like you’re not going to know how to do it.

I think there’s just a sense of like, what does it even mean? How would I do it? And it just all feels sort of overwhelming. And it’s not sort of in the concrete world that as business owners, we would prefer to live in, where you have real numbers and spreadsheets and whatever. So it makes sense to me why people feel this way, either overwhelmed or cynical about it. And they just don’t really engage with culture at the level that they could. And then they wonder why their operating results aren’t what they would like to see. So we’re going to get into that today.

Michael Hyatt:

Yeah. And sometimes I think people kind of view it like the weather. You know it exists, it’s a factor, but you can’t do anything about it. So even business owners who own the company feel like sometimes they’re a victim of this culture, this thing that just happened, that they had no agency in creating, that somehow they just drew the short straws, got a bad pool of people and got a bad culture. But that’s really not true. Culture is something that’s created and you literally can take the raw material of the normal human beings that all of us hire and create an amazing culture. And that’s really the premise of this show.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Yep. Here’s the reality. Culture is the default setting. Anywhere you have a group of people, there is going to be a culture. So whether you’re talking about your family or marriages, maybe your church, town, cities, neighborhoods, extracurricular groups, you were just in Kansas City at the Chief’s training camp sports teams, they got a culture. The fans have a culture. Governments, organizations, wherever there are people there is going to be a culture. The question is it going to be thriving or toxic or somewhere in between.

So we’re going to talk about that today, but I think before we even start, we have to actually define what culture is, because if you were to just stop and ask some people in the street, what is culture, people would, would look at you like, I know what it is, but I’m not sure how to explain it. But here’s how I would say it. Culture is the way that we reliably engage with our work and one another, determined by a set of shared values and behavioral norms. So culture is the way that we reliably engage with our work and one another, determined by a set of shared values and behavioral norms.

Michael Hyatt:

What that says to me and the reason I like it is that there are some ingredients that you can … I almost said manipulate. That’s not the word I want, but it’s some variables like the levers on a machine that we can adjust to get a different result. So shared values, that assumes that you’re intentional about identifying those values, naming them, and then making sure that you’re getting people in the organization that share those values, that there are norms, that as the business owner, you’re setting expectations and instead of guidelines or operating guidelines, so people know what behavior’s expected, what’s going to be tolerated, what’s not going to be tolerated.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Yeah, I think so. Well, we’re going to actually get into all of that in our next episode, but today we are going to talk about culture being the unseen force that not only drives operating results, but also employee satisfaction. And those are inextricably linked, employee satisfaction and operating results. And there are really four ways that it does that, that it drives the operating results and the employee satisfaction. So why don’t we dig right in?

Michael Hyatt:

Can I just explore for a second this thing that you said, I find very interesting. And that’s the relationship between employee satisfaction and operating results. How do you see those two things is as being related?

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, we talk about this a lot in our coaching program, that if you have a dream that doesn’t require a team, you’re probably not dreaming big enough. Because on our own, we can do so much, but we can’t do nearly as much as if we have a team. And I think the kind of people that we’re talking to are people who are dreaming big. Now you may not, if you’re listening, have a team yet, but you may want a team. You may be intending to build a team or you may have the beginning of a team, or you may have a very large team, but regardless, those people, whether they exist in your company or not yet are going to be critical for driving results because you can’t make the operating results in your business happen on your own. You have to have a team.

And if that team is going to perform at their best, if they’re going to have longevity in your organization, they have to be satisfied. They have to enjoy their work. They have to feel like they’re making a contribution. They have to be connected to something that’s bigger than themselves. They have to feel like they enjoy working in your organization, and so that’s where culture comes in. As a business owner culture may seem like it’s not really for you, but you’re really the beneficiary in many ways of a thriving culture. Because if you have a happy thriving team, then you’ll be able to produce operating results.

Michael Hyatt:

Well, one of the things I think we saw when we won the Inc. Best Places to Work Award for two years in a row, that engagement is a key metric. And so for your people to execute, for them to be aligned, for them to do great work, for them to come up with wonderful innovations, that means they’ve got to be engaged. And that really is a function of the culture. And so the way Inc. measures whether or not you’re a preferred place to work for employees is by how engaged your employees are.

We scored like 95% or more, which is astonishing because in most organizations, and we could probably ask Joel for the exact data, but it’s like 30% of the employees are engaged at any one time. So that means the rest of them are scrolling through Facebook, shopping on Amazon, playing games, chit-chatting, not driving the operating results because they’re just not happy with the culture. And so you’ve got to help them to become engaged. And that’s really what we’re going to talk about today. These four different ways that culture drives employee satisfaction and operating results.

Okay. So the first way is that culture creates felt safety. What do we mean by that?

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Yeah. Well, this is one of those things that, again, as a business owner, you’re probably not thinking much about. After all, as a business owner, our felt safety is created by generating revenue and having money in the bank, if you’re just going to cut to the bottom line. But that’s not true for our employees. For them, part of what creates a sense of felt safety, like I feel like I can just relax here, I feel like I can be myself, is having established clear expectations and boundaries that make people feel safe and secure. So that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about felt safety.

So when you know what the expectations are in your company, when you know how people are going to reliably engage with their work and each other, which is determined, as we said at the beginning, definitionally by a shared set of values and behavioral norms, you can just kind of relax because you know what’s going to come. You’re not going to have capricious decision-making or a boss that flies off the handle or find yourself being harassed or something like that, because there is a clear set of fences in which you can live and work in. And that makes people feel safe and comfortable.

Michael Hyatt:

I don’t know if this has been true for you, Megan, but I’ve worked in an environment where it was chaotic and where the boss didn’t share his expectations, but then jumped all over me when I didn’t meet up to these expectations that he never took the time to articulate. And you definitely don’t feel safe in that environment. I couldn’t sleep before I’d go into work the next day and I’d show up and I never knew what to expect.

I never knew if I was going to get yelled at, and obviously I wanted to do a good job. I wanted to please the boss, but I felt like I was throwing darts blindfolded, never knowing if I was close to the target or not close to the target. And for me a good day was not getting yelled at. So if I could finish the day and not get yelled at, that was a good day. Well, that doesn’t exactly lead to me doing my best work. Because in that kind of situation, I’m not playing to win. I’m playing to not lose. And that’s a small game that doesn’t deliver big results, not only just for the company, but for customers or for anybody else that you’re trying to serve.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, I think the big idea here is that you can’t be in a mode of self-protection and simultaneously be taking the kind of risks, innovating, being creative and thinking outside the box that ultimately drives big operating results. Those two things are mutually exclusive. And so if people are mostly worried about trying to feel secure and safe, then they’re not going to be delivering the kind of results that you want. So that’s where culture really comes into play because there’s no there’s no way around making people feel safe other than to set clear expectations and boundaries that they feel good about and then make sure that your behavior’s congruent with that.

Michael Hyatt:

You know, I think part of this, Megan, too, is the way we think about failure as business owners. That’s part of the safety. If failure is something that for us and for our team is something catastrophic, that is an extinction level event, then that is going to make everybody nervous all the time. And nobody’s going to want to go out on a limb. Nobody’s going to want to take risks. Everybody’s pretty much committed to protecting the status quo.

But I’ve also worked for bosses, and I’ve had a few, thankfully, in my career who I knew had my back, that gave me permission to fail, that gave me the freedom to try new things. And I had some huge wins in those jobs, but I also had some pretty bad losses, but it was okay because on some, the wins outweigh the losses. And I think that’s a kind of culture you want to create. But I think that’s why as a business owner, you’ve got to think very intentionally about how you think about failure. And I love what John Maxwell says. He says, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Well, that’s a very different perspective than sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, because in that scenario you always win. You may just be learning because you failed, but that’s okay because you’re better set up to win the next time.

Okay. Let’s get to number two. The second way is that culture enables a sense of congruence. Okay, big word alert. Let’s define congruence.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, congruence and alignment are basically synonyms. And one of the things that we have seen over time is that particularly for our younger team members, and this is not exclusively true, but I think maybe they’re just more vocal about it. They really want to feel like they can personally be aligned with the values of the company. So they don’t want to have a sense of cognitive dissonance between their personal values and what they’re expected to live up to in their work. So for example, if integrity is really important to you, making your actions match your words, then if you work for a company that doesn’t value integrity, that maybe values hitting goals above everything else, that’s going to create internal conflict or cognitive dissonance for you, and there’s very little tolerance for that anymore.

So I think companies that are really winning are being very forward with their values, with what matters to them, with what they think is important. Because what they’re trying to do is to create a sense of resonance with the people that they’re trying to attract from a talent standpoint and say hey, you belong here. You can bring your whole self to work and in bringing your whole self to work, because you have the sense of congruence between your own values and our values, you can perform at your very best, because again, you feel safe, you don’t feel any internal conflict. You’re really able to make your highest and best contribution.

Michael Hyatt:

You really want people to have a sense that they belong, that when they walk on the property, they walk into your office or they log into a Zoom call or whatever it is, that they think to themselves, these are my people. This is my tribe. These are the people that I identify with, the people that share my values, the people that I’m engaged in some big project with that really matters. And I think it’s really tempting when you’re in a position of leadership, but I would say this just for people of a certain generation, like my generation, that you might want to come up with some values that are super common, kind of innocuous, don’t really create much pushback, but that’s not really what you’re after.

It’s better to be very defined with your values and take a point of view, because that’s going to make recruiting easier and it’s going to make retention easier, because people are either going to identify with those values or they’re not. And if they’re clear and if they’re kind of even pointed, then either they will sign on and be thrilled, or they won’t, and you don’t want a bunch of watered down values and a bunch of unengaged people.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

So you wouldn’t want a value that just said excellence.

Michael Hyatt:

Right.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

You know, that’s kind of boring. That’s kind of vanilla. We’re looking for something that has a little more oomph behind it, where people can either raise their hand and say, absolutely I am in, or heck no, I’m out of here. That’s what you want. You want it to be, I want to say polarizing, but I feel like that’s not the right word to use right now-

Michael Hyatt:

A little bit.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

But you want people to really have a moment of decision and to have a fork in the road and really raise their hand or not. And part of that is because, and this is something that’s so easy to discount, more than ever before the workplace, whether it’s virtual or in person, for many, many people has become their primary group of friends. It’s their primary social group. And so they’re looking for friends when they come to work.

These are the people they’re going out with on the weekends, or they’re having over for dinner or they’re going on vacation with. And so they’re looking for like-minded people, they’re looking for congruence. It’s not just a day job. It’s really something where they want to feel like they can express their whole selves and bring their whole self to work as well as have relationships with people who they have congruence with as well, in terms of their values.

For example, Full Focus, one of our values is intentional margin. We really want people to have the rest and rejuvenation that they need outside of work to do their best work. We reject the choice of either winning at work or succeeding at life, that does not work for us. And that is a hard line that we have taken because we want people, we want our clients and our customers to be able to have that double win, but we also want our team members to have that. For example, we have had people in the past who did not want to work with us, or did not stay very long, ultimately because they wanted to work a lot of hours. They were diehard workaholics, and they weren’t planning to give that up anytime soon.

Conversely, we have been able to attract amazing talent because we have people who say like, “I have kids that I care about. I have a life that I care about. I want to be able to attend to the important things outside of work and make a meaningful, significant contribution at work. And I don’t think those things have to be mutually exclusive.” And that’s a real stake that we’ve put in the ground that people resonate with and come to work for. So another value that would really attract the right kind of people is enthusiastic contribution, which says that we see our work and the people that we work with as a gift from God, and we operationalize our gratitude by adding value to every person and situation that we encounter.

That’s a certain kind of person that we’re looking for. We’re not looking for people who are cynical. We’re not looking for people who just want to punch a clock. We’re not looking for people who just feel entitled. Those are not our people. And those are not the kind of people that our people want to be working with. And so I feel like this is one of those fork in the road values that either you feel personally aligned with or in congruence with, or you really don’t. And I love that.

Michael Hyatt:

Yeah. There’s a sense in which the values and the culture you’re trying to create becomes a filter, so that people opt out if they don’t identify with that. If we had somebody in our organization and maybe we do, and I’m just not aware of it, but if we had somebody in our organization that was cynical or entitled, they would get the stink eye.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

The good old stink eye.

Michael Hyatt:

So that’s really what you want in your values and your culture, is something that you’re taking a stand for. I think that’s really important because if the culture’s not worth taking a stand for, it’s probably not doing the job that it could do. And so are the values something that people are willing to say, man, and this is really what you want, I’ve looked all my life for this kind of organization. I’ve tried this organization. I’ve tried that organization, but in this organization I’m with my people. And that’s what you want, and that produces the best work.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

So I think you can see this first way, creating felt safety, the second way of enabling a sense of congruence. While these might seem like soft outcomes, you can imagine how the kind of people who experience a sense of felt safety, a sense of congruence at this level, are set up to produce results in a totally different way than somebody who doesn’t feel safe and who feels a sense of internal conflict with the values of the organization.

Michael Hyatt:

Yeah. And I think it goes back to something you said when you first introduced the second way, and that is you want people to bring the entirety of who they are to the job. And if people are holding back, if they only feel like they can identify with your values partly, and they can’t fully engage, then you’re not going to get the best work. But you want people so committed, so identified with the culture, that they leave nothing on the field. They’re willing to work hard when they’re working, play hard when they’re playing, but really willing to give it their best effort. Which does lead to this third way, that culture drives employee satisfaction and operating results is that it calls out the best. A clear vision for our culture calls us to the best and highest version of ourselves, eliciting our best performance as individuals and as a team.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Yeah, because otherwise you just run on default mode. If there’s not a standard, this is why at Full Focus we’re so excited about goal setting and more importantly, goal achievement. Because if we don’t have something to direct our behavior and our ambition, then it either goes sideways into something funky, or we just don’t accomplish anything at all. Similarly, when we have a standard in our organizations for how we’re going to behave together, how we’re going to live and work together and what those expectations are, then we rise to that challenge.

It’s constantly standing there encouraging us, challenging us, sometimes chastising us for not bridging that gap between where we are and where we want to be. And when we think about values, when we think about behavioral norms, these things are aspirational. We’re always moving toward it. It’s not necessarily that you come to a place of arrival, but certainly the challenge of it being such a high standard calls out the best in us. And that’s when you really see what’s possible with people and you really get their greatest creativity, their greatest innovation, their best ideas, and ultimately their best performance.

Michael Hyatt:

You know, if you think about it, Megan, one of the things that makes Mastermind Groups work, and one of the things that makes like our coaching program work is people are around other people that want to be at their best, that want to grow, want to develop, want to realize their full potential. But there’s no reason why you can’t build that inside your company for the people that are employees of your company, even contractors of your company. There’s, something about, and this is why it’s so critical to recruit, A level players because A level players bring out the best excellence in other people. They recruit the best people.

The best people want to stay at a company that’s full of those people, because you get used to playing at that level and you don’t want to slip back into mediocrity. You want to play with the best. And so I think there’s a dynamic inside the company that as business owners, as business leaders, we can create and every hire incrementally moves us toward that. Every standard, every project, every win, everything contributes to that. And that’s why culture is really about everything inside your organization, but particularly the way that we play together, the way that we relate to one another.

Okay, the fourth way, the culture is the unseen force that drives employee satisfaction operating results. Is it flags drift quickly? So Megan, we should probably start with what is the drift?

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, the drift is just that pull that we all feel toward what’s comfortable, what’s easy, what comes naturally, which is rarely aligned with how we want to show up and who we want to be and what we want to produce in the world. So this is the opposite of doing anything by design. It’s really the same thing as the default. And it’s really easy to be in a place of drifting when there’s not an objective standard for how we’re going to interact with one another and how we’re going to do this thing we call work together. And then you can end up, as you say, at a destination that you wouldn’t choose. In fact, you will end up at a destination you wouldn’t choose because by definition, drift is the opposite of choosing. And so I think that when you have this standard for how you’re going to do things together, you’re calling out the best in each other all the time.

And it’s really obvious when there’s a gap. When you make a decision, for example one of our values is unyielding integrity, and unyielding is a strong word. That’s not like pretty much integrity or more often than not. Unyielding is like, unyielding. And so if we drift from that, if we find ourselves in a position where we have done something that feels out of integrity, when you have a standard of unyielding integrity, it’s real easy to know when you’re not in unyielding integrity. It enables people on our team to throw a flag on the play or ourselves. And that’s a really good thing because you don’t find yourself way downstream way far off from the mark, you’re able to make a little correction and get yourself back on track very quickly.

Michael Hyatt:

Well, that’s the value really of boundaries. The reason every sport has boundaries where you know that you’re out of bounds or in bounds, is because that constraint makes the game easier to play. It’s also easier to spot when there’s behavior that’s not moving the ball down the field. People go out of bounds. So it’s critical that people know where those boundary lines are in our organization and values help to describe that, the behaviors related to those values, help flesh those out. We’ll get into that more in the next episode.

But again, it just flags drift quickly so that you can correct, because the worst thing that could happen to you is that you lose your culture. You somehow luck into a positive culture. Maybe you inherited it. Maybe you created it by accident, but then you drift away from it. You’re not quite sure what happened, but you know that the culture you’ve got today is not quite what it used to be and you’re not sure why. You would’ve spot that quickly, make course corrections and get back on track.

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, because otherwise what happens is toxicity and disillusionment set in for your people. And toxicity usually looks like cynicism, where people are saying yeah, I know they have those things on the wall, those framed values, but that’s not really what they think is important. What they really think is important is this thing over here. This is the unofficial set of values that they’re really holding us accountable for.

Then that’s disheartening to people. They become disillusioned. They thought they were incongruent. They thought they knew what the rules were that made them feel safe. And they went from feeling like they had an opportunity to play the best game of their life, to feeling like they don’t really know what’s going on and or who they can trust, and it’s just like every other place they’ve worked. And that’s when people disengage and they just do what’s required, and they stop contributing at a level of performance that you’d want. And that’s where you start to see your operating results drift from where you want to be.

Michael Hyatt:

So funny story. The other night, Gail and I were in a hotel, we were finishing up our sabbatical and we were in a hotel. It was like second to last night before we came home. And so we decided to watch some episodes of The Office. Oh my gosh. I’d forgotten just how funny and how good that was. But the culture, Michael Scott and his words about the culture versus what people were experiencing, night and day. And I think that’s part of what makes that show so funny is we’ve all been in that environment, where management talks a good game, but it doesn’t really filter through the organization and it’s not a reality. And that again drives the kind of cynicism that keeps you from extraordinary results, sometimes keeps you from performing at all.

In this episode, we’ve been talking about culture as the unseen force that drives employee satisfaction and operating results in four ways. First it creates felt safety. Second, it enables a sense of congruence or alignment. Number three, it calls out the best and number four, it flags drift quickly. Okay, Megan, any final thoughts?

Megan Hyatt-Miller:

Well, I hope that we’ve convinced you how important culture is, for not only creating a great place to work for your employees, which you will do if you take this seriously and really become expert at it, but also for the potential to use this as a growth strategy. This really is a strategy for growing your business that’s kind of sneaky in a way, because it’s not a lever that a lot of business owners know how to pull until maybe they’ve done it wrong. And you have the chance, I think, to really get it right.

This is why in our coaching program, Business Accelerator, we spend a lot of time talking about culture and not just talking about it, but showing you how do you build culture in your organizations? Where can you find yourself going off course and what can you do to correct it? And how can you truly be an amazing place to work that can attract the top talent that can drive the kind of operating results that you have a vision for in your organization. So I just want to encourage you, if this is something that you feel like you could use some help with, some mentoring on really proven strategy to develop in your organization, I want to encourage you to set up a call with our business consultants here at Full Focus. All you need to do is just go to businessaccelerator.com/podcast.

Michael Hyatt:

Okay. Thanks, Meg. Hope you guys have enjoyed this episode. Next episode we’re going to be talking about how you make all this operational in your organization. So until then, Lead to Win.