Unbound with Chris DuBois

feel like your team isn't jiving the way you'd hoped? Well, it's your fault. But today, I'm going to share how you can fix that and get your team more cohesive and driven. And you have ever seen your leader trying to get more from your business in life. Me too. So join me as I document conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. Welcome to unbound where today we are going to talk about culture and why no matter how much you want to you cannot delegate it to anyone else. This is the one thing that the leader truly owns in the organization, no one else can change it. Now, the reason that this is truly owned by the leader is because you're responsible for everything the team does, or fails to do. So you can get by in, like, for changing the culture, right? You can talk to your team and say, Hey, do you guys want to run it this way? Do you want to be more like this, but it's up to you to set that bar and hold people to the standard. If you slip on the standard, and you don't hold them accountable, now you're compromising the integrity of your culture. So it is the leaders responsibility to be able to maintain that bar. Right? These are the things that we do. This is why we do it. And so we are going to maintain it because this is what makes us different from everyone else. And you as the leader are responsible for like the hiring the firing, you know, if someone isn't a culture fit, you need to get rid of them. A lot of my interviews that I do the very first time I'm meeting someone, all I'm looking for is a culture fit, could this person come into our organization and actually be the type of team member that we want, then let's go look at everything else in the skills because you can train skills, right, you can teach someone how to how to market how to sell how to do anything else. But it's really hard to change someone's character, align their values or do anything, anything like that. So it's very important to know that every culture is unique, it's a it's a fingerprint, no one else is going to have that same feeling the vibe, you know how your team interacts. And it's because you have different people in that organization, you have a different mission, you have, you know, just your entire situation is going to be different. This is why I lean on dynamic leadership, for everything where we can say, Okay, let's take in all of these different variables and decide what actually needs to happen. So if we want to shape the culture, we need to be able to first look at what's going on around us what do we actually need in order to become that ideal, you know, team that we want to be, and then we can start working towards that. So quick story, when I took I took company command and an infantry OSA environment in the army. So what that is one station unit training. So basically, it is basic training before the infantry, so it's a little longer and it's very specific on running around shooting things and doing infantry type work. When I took the took over the unit right beforehand, my battalion commander pulled me aside and said, Hey, I really need you to help this unit, it is the weakest in the battalion. I knew a lot of the drill sergeants who are in this unit, right? I talked to him, like basic training units are generally smaller. And so you're able to actually get to know people. And and they're all just like, great guys. They're hardworking, they're focused. And so I couldn't figure out why is this unit not achieving? Why is it seen as the weakest. And so I kept watching for a while, right, even after I took over, and then I sat down with everyone and I had our first talk. And we kind of just discussed what what the culture that I wanted to to establish was, and first it was getting them to work together. And through that, getting them to own their results. And then I promise if we could do those I would be getting them home. Right drill sergeants have probably one of the most thankless jobs in the military where they they will put their their trainees to bed and then do their paperwork, drive home you know, get home often after midnight, go to sleep for a couple hours wake up three or four in the morning, drive back into work and then do it all over again wake up soldiers and go and and I feel like that's one of the quickest ways for these guys to burn out and not you know actually show up and do the best training for the soldiers. And so I want to make sure they get home they spent time with their families. They were doing the things even if they just took a day to like go go relax and do something that recharges them. I thought that was important so they could show up and do their jobs better. And so they were brought in, it was like it was a promise. And this is the type of organization we want to be, we're going to work hard so that we can play hard. But that working hard means we need to own everything. And we need to be able to work together to do it. And it took some time. And I, the strategy I took with these guys, because they were, you know, as a more lighthearted group was like, I would make jokes about how they weren't, weren't achieving, and I would do it in front of everyone. And then they started making those same jokes, and then they just naturally started to shift into doing things the way we were. And when I left that company, you know, after I think just over a year, when I had my sit down with a brigade commander, so not just battalion, right battalion has, we had six companies. And when I get the brigade now it's 30 plus companies, and brigade commander. So we had one of the top companies in the brigade. And so for me, that was a great win. But it really comes down to just establishing that culture, I didn't do any of the actual work in that unit, I just helped them get what they needed in order to do it. And so let's move into discussing culture versus climate. Right. So the culture is like your ideal, it is what you want that organization to look like. And it's something that can purely live in your head, right, you should get it down on paper so that other people can see it, and they know what they're striving for. But the climate is now where you're actually at. And the difference between those between your culture and your climate is called the culture gap. The bigger that gap, the more issues you're going to struggle with, it becomes very hard for your team to, to show up and do things, right. If you have a poor culture, it's often because there's a value issue, right, someone doesn't actually sync up with the organization's values. Or people just aren't going to feel safe. And so they're not going to share ideas, they're not going to contribute to the team in the way they could, if you had a very strong culture. What's fun about the culture too, is that people from outside, see this and they start to they can get excited, right? And it almost brands you with that culture, I had other drill sergeants asking me to come to my unit, so they could feel respected. And they could just focus on doing their job really well. And not just sitting around doing nothing, because someone told them they had to be sitting there to be present. Right. And so like, so that reputation spread. And that's to say, if you owe to an actual company, like a business, like having a potential hire, ie, come in, because they're excited, they've heard great things about you, they see what you're doing. And they're like, Man, I would love to be part of this. I love how your team interacts. And they just they want to join that. And so it's super valuable. So, so you need to focus on bringing your climate up to where the culture is. Now, a way that you can get after doing that, is through climate surveys. We did these in the army, everyone hated them, they're miserable. Because big army said, Oh, we're actually going to focus more on, you know, sexual harassment, and, you know, equal opportunity, things like that, which are incredibly important. Don't get me wrong, I fully support those initiatives. But for a lot of units, those aren't the actual struggles are having a lot of it is, hey, I'm not getting the resources, I need to be able to do my job, I'm not getting the training I need, I'm not just I'm not clear on what we're actually doing. And these are simple things that if a leader was aware that these things are happening through this climate survey, they could close that gap, bring it closer to the culture that they actually want, and they get help. So it's really important. If you're going to do one of these surveys, make sure you're asking critical questions, right? How do you feel about x or y? What are your biggest challenges, and then, through that, right, try to frame them in a way where you can uncover if they feel safe. And they matter that that last part, I'm going to do an entire episode just on that. But the if you can figure out if your team feel safe, and they feel like they matter, right, they are going to be able to show up and do their best work. And so you need a culture that says people feel safe and matter. When they you know, with us, because they are this type of person. I think Seth Godin, I really like his definition of culture, it's people like us do things like this, right? Some one person might not feel safe, or like they matter in an organization where someone else actually does. And so that's why finding that culture fit is is hard because you don't always know everything about the person while you're doing the hiring process. But you can actually flesh a lot of this stuff out by saying, Hey, this is this the type of team we are some companies. They work hard, very hard, long hours, right? And they want to it's because everybody enjoys doing that. And the people who are going to thrive in that organization are the ones who do that. There are other companies where it's like We are mandating, you know, paid time off, where you're just, you know, it's unlimited just go because we want you to be able to relax and have that work life balance, so that when you do show up, you can do your best work. So even if you're only working eight hours a day, right, that time is going to be super valuable. That's not a huge difference between, you know, some, some of the actual, like, working dynamics of those. But it does mean like you're gonna be attracting different types of people who could fit that culture. So really, you need to understand that owning your company's culture, your team's culture is completely on you. No one else can take that over for you. And so you need to continuously find the ways that you can strengthen it to move towards your ideal write down that that ideal culture, post it up, let people see it, talk about it, say hey, this is the type of team we are and keep getting people to hear that so that they get buy in and they keep working towards achieving that because they they want to be known as that. If you can do that. I think you're gonna find your team operates way better than it ever has. Alright, keep getting after it. deserve it.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai