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Welcome to episode 257 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama . Today's episode comes from a listener question, and that question came from none other than the Reverend Lauren Richmond Jr. You might recall that last week's episode also had a shout out to Lauren, who is a fellow podcaster. He's the host of the Future Christian Podcast, and he's also an ordained minister serving in a pastoral role. His question is related to process versus content in organizational culture. He writes, There continue to be stories about progressive organizations having toxic/dysfunctional cultures. Some non-church examples that come to mind are the Ellen Show and also Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show. Both of these leaders and organizations would promote and hold progressive values, yet these values did not stop bad culture from happening. Is this another example of process versus content? And if so, what are good processes that healthy organizations might follow?

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Meaning an organization might have values such as inclusion and diversity, but if these values are not practiced or processed, they don't much matter. Lauren closes by writing, I'm also thinking that societiesally, we need to promote healthy process versus people agreeing with our values. I'm going to jump right into this, but I want to remind you that the reason I'm doing this is because Lauren emailed me at jack@christian-leaders.com. So if you have an idea for a future episode or you have a question about a previous episode, please connect with me via email. The existence of toxic organizational cultures are present across whatever spectrum you want to observe. While Lauren mentions two presumably progressive cultures, we have certainly seen allegations of the same at Fox News and varying types of corporate cultures, even my own football team, the Washington Commanders, under its previous owner. The phrase Culture eats strategy for breakfast is often attributed to Peter drugger, a renowned management consultant and author. However, there isn't a definitive citation linking the quote directly to him. Regardless, the phrase emphasizes the importance of organizational culture in determining an organization's success. Even the best strategies can fail if they are not supported by a strong and positive culture.

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In family systems terms, culture is process and strategy is content. And although culture is most influenced by the person at the top, it's also possible for self-differentiated leaders to positively influence a culture even if they are not the head of the organization. Of course, when the actual leader of the organization is highly toxic, this makes it less likely that anybody else can influence the culture through differentiation. On the other hand, when a non-anxious leader enters a toxic culture as the head leader, as the senior pastor or the CEO or the executive director, they can absolutely turn things around. It will take time, but their position at the top makes it possible. According to an article by Donald and Charles Schull and the MIT Sloan Management Review, the two most important factors that predict a toxic culture are leadership and social norms. To me, this is no surprise. Senior leaders set the tone for what is considered acceptable behavior both through their words and their actions. It is the lack of integrity that often supports toxic cultures. Leaders may espouse certain values, but their actions contradict what they say. It's what we do as leaders that speaks volumes, and this is what creates social norms.

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The norms creates surrounding togetherness pressure, and in healthy culture those pressures can be good. In toxic cultures, they're the opposite. When a leader enters a toxic culture, whether it's a congregation or organization, they can change things, but they need to focus on the right things. My wife and I met in at General Motors Institute in Flint, Michigan. At the time, all 1,000 engineering and management students, including my wife, To-Be and myself were all co-ops at General Motors. It's now Kettering University and has a variety of Co-op relationships across the corporate world. One thing that was part of our experience at GM was an intense and rather toxic culture. There was harassment of all kinds, and people routinely worked 30 plus years, retired, and then died of a heart attack or other fatal disease. The one thing about working there was that the pay and benefits were really good. We called them the Golden Handcuffs. Once you got into the system, even though you might hate to work there, the financial benefits kept you there. Fortunately, my wife and I left right after graduation from college to start a solar business in Florida in the early 1980s.

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What amazes me is that not long after we left GM, which was suffering not only from its toxic culture but from the high quality vehicles that were being manufactured in Japan, GM had to downsize, and they were offering a buyout that included a year of severance pay and health insurance. The point of these buyouts was to get older employees who are more costly to carry and nearing retirement to leave early. But I also knew many young employees who were begging for a buyout. We had one friend who was persistent and at age 23 was able to escape the Golden Handcuffs with a year of salary and health care. To me, this was clear evidence of the toxic culture at GM. In 2014, Mary Barra, a GMI graduate, became the first female CEO of GM, or any big automaker for that matter. She is credited with changing the company's culture through transparency and accountability. She inherited a crisis where GM had concealed defective Ignition switches that resulted in over 100 deaths. Barra publicly took responsibility for the defect, then created a team that met daily to address the crisis. They defined guiding principles based on GM's values, created a customer centric focus, and emphasized transparency.

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Of course, these things are easy to say and hard to do. Actions speak louder than words. Barra created a victim's compensation fund that had few limits. To avoid future crises and to improve both culture and execution, employees were encouraged to report issues and were rewarded for doing so. She also worked to expand diversity in GM's leadership team. I was surprised to read that in a 2018 global report on gender equity, GM was one of only two global businesses to have pay equality at all levels of the company and no overall gender gap. This is stunning to me that a behemoth old school manufacturing company could do this, but culture eats strategy for breakfast. Whether you are leading an already healthy organization or you are trying to facilitate the transformation of a toxic one, the question is, what are the things that you can do that will make a difference? In his book, The Speed of Trust, StephenN. N. M. R. Covey writes, trust is the one thing that changes everything. The lack of it can bring down governments, cripple businesses, and in my words, churches, and destroy relationships. Conversely, when cultivated, it has the potential to bring unparalleled effectiveness.

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Covey says that trust is the key leadership competency in the new global economy. High trust organizations are able to move quickly and adapt rapidly. Conversely, low trust organizations get stuck. When people are more concerned about covering their rears, whether they will be punished or that people will react badly to their ideas, they tend not to bring their whole selves to the situation. They tend not to be a non-anxious presence, and they tend not to self-differentiate. I believe there are five things you can do as a leader to facilitate a high trust organization and consequently, a healthy culture. First, focus on the mission. This is the self-definition component of self-differentiation. It doesn't take long for people to figure out whose best interests you are promoting. If you are focused on the mission, you put the organization first. If not, you're more interested in what you get out of it. When you are truly trying to discern where God is leading for the organization and for yourself as a leader, you will help create a culture where others will do the same. Second, be trustworthy. Do what you say you are going to do. Under promise and overdeliver.

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People will trust you when they know that they can believe what you say. This is integrity. It's when your actions are aligned with not only your goals and values, but with your promises. Third, focus on relationships. This is the emotional connection component of self differentiation. Show that you care about people. I believe this is where toxic cultures go off the rails. They are more concerned about results and/or the interests of a privileged few. This results in people being exploited or even abused. A key way to do this is to extend trust to others. This may seem counterint, because we're taught to believe that people must earn our trust. However, if we don't trust others because of the fear of being burned, they are less likely to trust us. When you show you care about others and extend your trust to them, they are more likely to be people who foster a culture of trust. As a pastor and a young parent, I often felt the surrounding togetherness pressure to be at every Church meeting and every Church function. But I also believed it was important to be at my children's important functions. It took me a while to build up the courage, but I got to the point where I could routinely say that I was not going to attend a meeting because my child had a game, concert or other important activity.

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What I found was that even though this was different than the norms and values for a pastor to be present at everything, people actually respected me because I was doing what they would do for their own family. Genuine care and concern for others helps create a culture where people willingly give their best efforts. When you combine this with a focus on the mission, you hold others accountable to doing their best, but not putting in a certain number of hours or being present in certain ways or following certain rules. In his book, The infinite Game, Simon Sinnock wrote, In weak cultures, people find safety in the rules. This is why we get bureaucrats. They believe a strict adherence to the rules provides them with job security, and in the process they do damage to the trust inside and outside the organization. In strong cultures, people find safety in relationships. Strong relationships are the foundation of high performing teams, and all high performing teams start with trust. End quote. When you show you trust others enough to care for themselves and for their families, as well as get their jobs done, you create trust and you create a healthy culture.

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The fourth thing you can do is embrace healthy conflict, which is disagreement for the sake of the mission. When you have a diverse team, you will get diverse perspectives. And when this is done right, it's been proven to get better results. Why? Because people don't take things personally and they're willing to work through their different perspectives to get to the best possible outcome. It doesn't mean that you'll always be right as a team, but it gives you a better chance than when people are being adaptive, that is, they're not willing to speak up or they're being reactive, that is, they take disagreement personally and get defensive or aggressive. One of my proudest moments as a camper retreat leader was during a staff meeting where I was the executive director and I raised the idea of doing a new type of summer program. Someone had suggested to me that we do a program for Boy Scouts where they could earn badges during the week. I thought it was a great idea, but the idea doesn't matter actually, because this is about the process and not the content. The idea could have been anything. After I shared the idea, excitedly, the staff literally went around the room and each expressed why they thought it was a bad idea.

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All but one spoke up, who also happened to be a member of our senior staff. I looked at them and said, You're not saying anything. They smiled and said, There's no need to. I'm proud of this because people felt comfortable with telling me my idea was dumb. It probably was. And the important thing here is that non-anxious leaders say what they believe while others the freedom to disagree. In this case, I was excited about an idea, but people were able to say honestly that they didn't think it was a good idea, and rightly so. Finally, the fifth and maybe most important thing you can do as a leader to help create a healthy culture is to take responsibility for self, and that means owning up to your mistakes. In another situation at the camp, we were faced with having to replace the flooring in the camp dining hall. Again, it's not content but process, but I'm giving you the content just to make the story more interesting. One of the ideas that came up was to actually put replaceable carpet tiles in the dining hall instead of conventional tile. Everybody thought it was a bad idea, but I thought it was worth exploring, even to the point of visiting another camp that had carpet tiles for 10 years.

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In the end, nobody was convinced except me, that carpet tiles were the right answer. But in this case, after quite a bit of prayer and consideration, I made the decision that that's what we were going to do and announced it at a staff meeting. One of our staff members wasn't at this meeting, and I had neglected to mention anything to them either before or after the staff meeting. The following week at our staff meeting, we were discussing carpet tiles in the camp dining hall, and this person was taken by surprise. They got very reactive and upset, and I believe rightfully so. I was able to self-regulate and pause in that moment and think about what was really going on, and I realized that I had been wrong in not informing this person personally, and so I owned it. I apologized right there and said it was my mistake and that I'll try to do better the next time, but that the decision still stands. It's about process, not content. Facilitating a healthy culture is about hundreds, if not thousands of similar incidents where the leader can function as a non-anxious presence. When you are committed to your goals and values and they are aligned with the mission of the organization and you show others that you care, you are leading with self differentiation.

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When you build trust, giving others the freedom to disagree while at the same time taking responsibilities for your mistakes, you encourage others to do the same. I believe when you do these things, when you function as a non-anxious presence, you facilitate a healthy culture. Getting to Lauren's thought about whether you can do this in the broader culture is another question. It's certainly worth trying. But I do know that you can do it within the organization that you lead. That's it for episode 257, a little bit longer this time, but again, something I hope you found useful and helpful. And if you did, please share this with somebody else who might also benefit. And don't forget to connect with me at thenon-anxiousleader.com or email me at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.