How Leaders Think with Kenny Lange

Delise Simmons [00:00:00]:
I'm not really looking for. Can I make you happy? Am I making you happy? I want you to be supported. I want you to be encouraged. I want you to be safe. I want you to be challenged. I want you to feel like your voice matters.

Kenny Lange [00:00:18]:
Welcome to the how leaders think podcast, a show that transforms you by renewing your mind and giving you new ways to think. I am your host, Kenny Lang, and with me today is the Dalyse Simmons. She is the founder and chief culture officer, which is cooler than whatever your title is of the culture think tank. She helps leader create better cultures. Her work started at Southwest Airlines where she led the leadership university and then went on to help create JetBlue Airways and has worked with leaders across the country to build legacy cultures. Welcome to the show, Delyse.

Delise Simmons [00:00:55]:
Thank you, Kenny. Kenny Lang is in my ears and.

Kenny Lange [00:00:58]:
In my eyes every time. It's a ritual. I'm going to be disappointed the day that you stop making the reference.

Delise Simmons [00:01:07]:
Never stop, man. It's ringing in my head.

Kenny Lange [00:01:10]:
It does give me a unique intro that others have never given me. So I always appreciate that everybody else just sort of reads awkwardly from the bio sheet I send over. Not you. No, you just. You got your own flavor. Well, tell me, Delys, what is on your mind?

Delise Simmons [00:01:29]:
Well, it's a good question. I have been on the road working with a couple of different companies across the country, and I'm seeing some similar things that keep popping up. So, you know, I work in the area of values and how values influence your culture. And what I see is most every organization, they have values, right? They've got some. Some checklist and values that they did five years ago or whenever it was. And then I asked the second question, which I think is the most important question, is, do you have associated behaviors with it? And they kind of. Yeah, we do. And they read through it and it sounds like.

Delise Simmons [00:02:02]:
It sounds more like a cheer. Like, around teamwork, it's what are the behaviors? One team, I'm like, well, what. What do I do with that? So that's what's on my mind is how we get leaders to really turn those values and behaviors into actionable, demonstrable behaviors that people know what the heck that means. So not a cheer, not a slogan, not a chant, but a true behavior.

Kenny Lange [00:02:27]:
I love that. And, of course, like, there's huge overlap with that sentiment and some of the work that I do. So I'm always a fan of, like, well, what even does that mean? And how are you acting that out? How does that come to life? Right?

Delise Simmons [00:02:44]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:02:45]:
So if that has been sort of your mission, and I find most people have found identified, created, felt like it's a calling to get on a mission like that, usually because it's not prevalent, it's not a common way of thinking. So I'm curious, what do you see and what have you seen be the prevailing wisdom around values and either going beyond just, like, their slogans and their cutesy, but don't mean anything, what's leading to that? If it's so ineffective, why do people keep doing it?

Delise Simmons [00:03:29]:
I think they don't. I just think that we as kind of a collective whole, maybe from 20 years ago forward, mission vision values. Mission vision values. Everyone knew they needed to do that mission vision values exercise. It was just kind of this perfunctory thing that we did. Right. And I don't know that people really knew what the mission was supposed to mean versus the values versus the vision. So I think it was just an exercise that different people did different ways, and they're kind of left with this document that to some, they've done something with.

Delise Simmons [00:04:02]:
But to most, the mission has been meaningful, the vision, somewhat, but these values have just kind of have been sitting there waiting to be activated. And I don't think that you activate those values in any other way than fortifying them with behaviors, but meaningful behaviors that you can interview to, that you can performance manage to reward, to recognize to all of those things. And it's like taking your values and. And really turning them on so that they can go into the organization to do something.

Kenny Lange [00:04:35]:
I love that. Turning your values, like flipping the switch.

Delise Simmons [00:04:39]:
Flipping the switch. Right.

Kenny Lange [00:04:40]:
This one goes to eleven, so. Anybody? No? Okay, cool. I'll just sit with that.

Delise Simmons [00:04:48]:
I'm with you.

Kenny Lange [00:04:49]:
Thank you for identifying my eighties pop culture reference.

Delise Simmons [00:04:53]:
Yes.

Kenny Lange [00:04:53]:
So if one of the distinctions I've heard regarding values, um, and this is from a guy who runs a talent acquisition and consulting firm, is. He's stopped using the term core values. Um, and I'm. I'm fine with the term, but he created the distinction between stated values and lived values.

Delise Simmons [00:05:22]:
Sure.

Kenny Lange [00:05:22]:
Um, which is, I think, at the heart of what you're getting to is like, let's not just say these things, let's live these things. And I'm curious, do you see a hindrance in moving from. We've stated them, we've written them out, and now we got to turn them on. Is it a lack of clarity about what they are, what they look like? Do we not know how to catch people living these out adequately? Or is there something else at play that makes this leap so difficult?

Delise Simmons [00:05:58]:
I think it's kind of d, all the above. I think that if we, there's all, there should be a story around how these values were created. And if your story is our leaders went off by themselves on a retreat and came back and told us what our values were.

Kenny Lange [00:06:14]:
Yeah. Vision quest.

Delise Simmons [00:06:16]:
Yeah. So in that regard, they're not anyone's values. But again, that mission, vision values, we went off and we decided what we needed to be. Now, that might have been how they started. And if that's the case, then bring a group of people back together, a cross section of your organization. Revisit them. Find out if they're relevant for today. If they were, you know, if they were designed five years ago, ten years ago, they may still be very relevant.

Delise Simmons [00:06:41]:
But my work in Southwest Airlines, one of the reasons I bring it up ad nauseam is if you think about the valley, one of the values of Southwest is fun. And if you've flown on the Southwest Airlines airplane before, COVID nobody's been a whole lot of fun on aircrafts ever since. But you see the behaviors that the gate agents or the flight attendants engage with their flying public, and that's a behavior that aligns directly with the value of fun. And so that's what we want to do. We want to create values where we can pull these behaviors through and people can act and behave in alignment with that value. Fun's a good example. Funny for everybody, right? So it attracts people to come work for southwest that like to have fun and make light of a heavy situation, and it might turn away people that don't. And again, if we turn away people that aren't going to fit our culture and we attract people who are, then every hire stands to amplify our culture rather than dilute it.

Kenny Lange [00:07:44]:
I love that. And I actually recently, a couple weeks ago, flew southwest. Just there's friendliness. They're making some funny jokes. And like you said, there's a lightheartedness when writing out the values. One of the Patrick Lencioni talks about the three different values traps of being aspirational. Maybe we want to be that, but we're not there yet. The permission to play, which is where I think a lot of people get trapped, is like, we value honesty and integrity.

Kenny Lange [00:08:20]:
Well, like, would you ever, would it be countercultural to value lying and being two faced and then sort of like the founders values of like, this was maybe good when we started but doesn't serve us anymore? Correct is I would imagine if we're going to decide on these behaviors, if we're going to name them. Um, and a lot of the term I use, so if. If anybody, if I slip into autopilot at any moment, just say habits. If we're going to name those, then don't we have to get really clear and. And honest and vulnerable about our core values so that they are distinctly us versus. I could walk into a dozen businesses and they couldn't tell the difference between, you know, these were our values or someone else's.

Delise Simmons [00:09:13]:
Yeah. Not to suppose that I'm going to add to lyncionis body of work, but I would add in that values bucket, that differentiator. So what is it that makes us unique? So if we think about air, you know, commercial aviation as an example, where I grew up, you know, we were told again and again and again by Herb Kelleher, who was. Who we worked for at the time, president, chairman, CEO. And he said, we're not in the aviation business. We're not any business other than the people business. Right. So we've got plenty of other carriers that are flying the same or similar aircraft, the same or similar cities.

Delise Simmons [00:09:49]:
Our differentiator is that we are in the customer service business, in the people business, and the way we're going to do it is by having fun with our customers, with our passengers. So that was the differentiator at Southwest. We want to have fun with the. We want it to be a fun experience. Now, that doesn't make Delta, united, or it doesn't make them any less valuable of a carrier. It just, that's not their uniqueness. When you're on a Southwest Airlines plane, you know you're on a plane because you, every seat is first class, and you also know that they're probably gonna have a little bit of fun with you. So, yes, I think I want, in my organization for my values, not only to fortify the things that I believe in.

Delise Simmons [00:10:35]:
I don't want to go work for an organization that doesn't value integrity. But to your point, I'm not sure if that's kind of not table stakes from the jump. So what makes us unique? What are we about? What's our kind of rally cry? And that's the thing that allows people to bond together, to align and have that, that legacy culture that moves them forward in front of the pack.

Kenny Lange [00:11:02]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Going back to Lyncioni, just because he has so much good stuff on values. But there's one line that I use in a lot of my sessions, which is values. When properly implemented in an organization, inflict pain, which usually I get, like, a furrowed brow, like, wait, what? I'm curious if you think the being pain avoidant in leadership leads to these diluted values.

Delise Simmons [00:11:42]:
Yeah. Well. Cause the opposite of that is, what I see to be true is that when we do these values exercises, we often get down to the least common denominator of words and values that aren't going to offend anyone, but aren't really going to make us stand out either. Right. So, again, to your integrity, excellence, and inclusion and teamwork, which are fine, I want to go work for an organization that stands for that. But what else? What else are you that differentiate? What else are you that makes you stand out? And that's you. So keep those other values. They're.

Delise Simmons [00:12:20]:
They're, you know, they're valuable values. And I think that there. There might be a little more. Yeah, yeah. One size doesn't fit all. I went to go, I worked with an accounting firm the other day, and they're sweet people, super nice. And I told them enough of my southwest stories that they thought maybe we should include fun. And I just kind of looked at them.

Delise Simmons [00:12:42]:
I'm like, y'all are a lot of things, man, but I don't know that fun is one of them. And I don't know that I want my accountant necessarily to be fun. I'd like him to be more than meticulous. So one size doesn't fit all, but what's your thing?

Kenny Lange [00:13:00]:
There's not, like, this one best set of values that you got to chase after. What do you see from organizations that haven't pushed through? Like, what's really the downside? You've talked about, like, the potential upside and some things we need to do. And before we dive deeper into that, I'm curious, really, what's the damage that thinking this way about values as, like, well, okay, we got them. They're playing. They're boring. They're not us. They're somebody else's. We think we are supposed to be fun because southwest is amazing and we want to be like them, but that's not us.

Kenny Lange [00:13:42]:
How is that thinking unproductive? And what kind of damage is that doing to organizations?

Delise Simmons [00:13:47]:
Well, I think a couple of things is. It makes us believe that values aren't work when they're probably really not. So we assume we've done some work that we haven't done. The worst damage that I see is that we say we align to these values, but if they're that non productive, that people aren't aligning to them. So I don't know that it's damaging. It's just, it's neutral, right? Like, we didn't do that. We didn't do that. We didn't do the work that we said we did.

Delise Simmons [00:14:19]:
The damaging piece is if we, we put values into place, we pretend to activate them, but we give certain people a pass, they get a values pass. And if you've given one person a values pass, you've given everybody a values pass. And that's where I see the real damage that's done. The kind of vanilla. They don't really mean anything. And I guess the damage is it just, it makes your employees question the next thing you're going to roll out. Like, is this, like that stupid values thing that no one ever. So you just lose credibility as a leader.

Delise Simmons [00:14:51]:
I don't want to rule something out that I don't. That I'm not going to really get behind and put momentum behind it.

Kenny Lange [00:14:58]:
Gotcha. So this, this actually could do damage to initiatives that maybe are well thought out. Thought through could drive performance and benefits for everybody. But because they've lost credibility from this standpoint, suddenly the adoption rate and excitement, enthusiasm that are critical to make any sort of change. I mean, change management is the hardest part of any of this, in my opinion, but it keeps it from taking off. So that's sort of like, that's a long term. That's almost like an unseen. Like you don't realize the damage until it's done.

Delise Simmons [00:15:36]:
Yeah, and it's pretty insidious, too, because what happens is people just say, they may not say it out loud, but what the prevailing thought is if we just don't do anything, it'll go away. Just kind of nod and pretend. And then that authenticity of leadership is lost because they don't buy what you're selling.

Kenny Lange [00:15:55]:
I. I have had that same sort of thought. Unfortunately, it happened in a church setting. I'm just like, okay, here's another, another idea. Pastor heard from a conference or something like that. If you just keep doing what you're doing and it'll, it'll blow over and we can get back to doing our own thing. And, and me and a couple others, when we have that conversation, we weren't wrong.

Delise Simmons [00:16:24]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:16:25]:
But also, it was sort of a self fulfilling thing because we took that attitude, it didn't have the chance to take off either.

Delise Simmons [00:16:37]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:16:38]:
But we end up thinking, oh, we're right again. There's nothing here. When we don't see our own participation in the failure of a potentially a beneficial initiative.

Delise Simmons [00:16:49]:
Yeah, definitely a reinforcing loop. And then, you know, I see leaders. They'll come back with, we've started an initiative, and then somebody gets on a plane and sits next to someone and they read a book and went to a conference, whatever it might be, and come back and, you know, this is the newest thing that we've got to implement, and we let go of what we were working on, and it just confuses your employees. And the point is, there's good stuff out there. So that's where for leaders is. Let's find, at least for this year, let's figure out what we're going to do, and let's implement from beginning to end. Let's stay the course and not get distracted by all of the stuff that's out there and podcasts that, present company included. We've just got tons of good information out there, and I think leaders can get distracted.

Kenny Lange [00:17:38]:
Right. Do you think it's more about finding or deciding on good, good fit initiatives than just trying to find great initiatives? Like you said, there's tons of great things out there that you could do. But do you think it's more. The emphasis now should be more on finding the right fit instead of just good things?

Delise Simmons [00:18:08]:
I think it's good fit. I think that's a great place to start. And I also think that we get disenchanted a little bit. I see that. Blocking and tackling is the thing we need to focus on, and. But everybody likes the Statue of Liberty play, right? That's fun and sexy and interesting, and let's do a flea flicker. How about we just wrap up and tackle? Let's do that for a year.

Kenny Lange [00:18:33]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Delise Simmons [00:18:36]:
But that.

Kenny Lange [00:18:37]:
That does, like you said, that's not sexy. That's not, you know, but, you know, that's. That's the hard work.

Delise Simmons [00:18:44]:
I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell you the least sexy thing that I talk about, and I'm always afraid to lead with it. Cause I'm afraid people are gonna walk out of the room.

Kenny Lange [00:18:53]:
Cause you have no problems with me. I'm here.

Delise Simmons [00:18:56]:
Okay? So you know what it takes? It takes discipline. That's what.

Kenny Lange [00:19:02]:
Dirty word.

Delise Simmons [00:19:04]:
It takes discipline. And people like, oh, well, I don't want to do that. So it's. We had. We invited people at Southwest Airlines from across the country to come in and see what we did behind the scenes. Look and look at our culture. And whenever we did that, the people that, at the end, I would debrief them. What did you think? And every time we ran one of those courses, they would look at us and say, this looks like a lot of hard work.

Delise Simmons [00:19:32]:
Like, yes, great cultures don't happen because we want them to. Great cultures happen because we are committed, dedicated, and disciplined around the practices. That's the unsexiest thing I can say.

Kenny Lange [00:19:48]:
But I think it's one of the core truths of any, anything, initiative, organization, or person that's been successful. It one, it doesn't happen overnight, even though some people think it does or it could or it should. Stop it, just stop it. But it's the discipline. So what? Because people are resistant. I mean, you even said, like, when you're going and you're speaking and teaching and consulting and working with clients, you may not lead with that just because there's a lack of receptivity to it. What have you seen help break down people's resistance to that idea so that they can embrace it because it's for their own good. And to be honest, once they start to feel some of the momentum and results, it can really catch on.

Kenny Lange [00:20:48]:
Just like you work out. It sucks at first, but then you get used to it. And then you're like, I need the endorphin hit, and now you're just chasing a high. But what have you seen be effective to break that down? Because again, if it was easy, everybody would have a billion dollar business and six pack abs. But it's not, right. So it's all up here. How do you shift people's mindsets?

Delise Simmons [00:21:12]:
Well, success, to your point, does help. But when we see people, when we have people that join our teams and they're just a great fit, and we know, okay, that we need ten more people, like that person we just hired. So we systematize those hires, and we systematize the hires around the behaviors that we identified. So we create these values, then we identify the specific behaviors that support that value. Then we take those behaviors and we interview around them. Somebody's resume, whatever, I don't really care about the resume. It's a very slight interest to me. I want to take these behaviors out, and I want to find people that behave in alignment with the company that we're hiring for so that they're a good fit.

Delise Simmons [00:21:59]:
And that's what makes people go, oh, wow, I really see a difference now. The people we're bringing in are doing great things. You know, we don't have the lackluster culture, and it people accuse me, they're like, it sounds like you're trying to create a cult. Like, yes, I am.

Kenny Lange [00:22:15]:
You can't spell culture without cult.

Delise Simmons [00:22:17]:
Can't spell culture without cult. We're gonna put the cult back in cult.

Kenny Lange [00:22:20]:
There's. There's the title of this episode.

Delise Simmons [00:22:23]:
She puts the cult in culture, baby, but it's click, baby, but I like it. It's an absolutely benevolent cult, but a cult in that we bring people together that behave similarly, and it allows for diversity and equity and inclusion, because we're looking for people who have similar behaviors around these values. It crosses all sectors of humankind and that we're not looking for anything other than, do you behave in alignment with this particular value? And have you demonstrated that over time?

Kenny Lange [00:22:55]:
Right. So let's talk about the. The company, the organization that maybe they have. They've done the hard work to get truly unique core values. They hear this, and they're like, okay, yes, maybe we've left too much room for interpretation on the behaviors that map to this. You can't map all of them, but you could probably call out some common ones, some rituals we can all do together, some of those things. How do people go about selecting, identifying, codifying those behaviors, those organizational habits?

Delise Simmons [00:23:38]:
It's a good question. I think culture needs a budget, and if it has a budget, it probably has some team assigned to it. So we at Southwest, at JetBlue, and other companies that I worked with and for, we would create a cultured committee, a culture club, a culture team, whatever it might be, cross section of the organization that comes together on a regular interval, whether it's weekly, monthly, quarterly, whatever that might be. And when I talk to people about culture committees, I had a client the other day, and she said, yes, we have a culture committee. She's excited. I said, well, tell me how that's going. And her face just dropped, and she was like, it's terrible. And I said, why is it terrible? She said, because it morphs into one of two things.

Delise Simmons [00:24:20]:
It either becomes the celebration committee or the gripe committee, and they just kind of spin their wheels. So the way that we activate those culture committees or teams is first you identify the values, then you identify the behaviors. Not you, the culture committee, you. This cross section of the organization. Then the only thing the culture committee does is they take that list of behaviors and they integrate it into the total organizational infrastructure. How do we recruit? How do we interview? How do we reward? How do we recognize? How do we performance manage? How do we terminate? I want to see those behaviors every single. It's what I call a culture point. Every place where the employee intersects with the organization.

Delise Simmons [00:25:04]:
That's a culture point. Let's find the values and behaviors in that and then go to the next culture point. That's years worth of work for a culture committee. They don't need to worry about birthday parties and balloons. I mean, it's fine. Birthday parties are great. I'm not mean to sell like a downer. There will be no pardons here.

Delise Simmons [00:25:22]:
There will be no celebration in this culture.

Kenny Lange [00:25:25]:
Yeah, you'll be like Dwight when he tried to on the office, when he tried to run the celebrate a birthday party. It is your birthday.

Delise Simmons [00:25:34]:
Yes. I have felt like Dwight Schrute, a timer ten. Yes.

Kenny Lange [00:25:41]:
That's really intriguing. I love the concept of culture point. Like where all those little intersections because there are so many across an entire company. Something that comes to mind. I do a lot of work with remote first or totally remote or distributed teams. Are there any modifications or, or different approaches that you recommend in that arena? Cause you may get more of the culture points in a physical office, but you don't get the happenstance chance, sort of serendipitous encounters online.

Delise Simmons [00:26:27]:
Well, the first thing I would say is I would give kind of a little boost to those people who are remote. Because here's on the flip side, what we're seeing in record numbers, and that is leaders who are trying to get their teams together and people don't want to go. They're like, I love y'all, I love the company, but I don't. My free time is my free time. I don't want to go to your barbecue Saturday or your. They just don't want to go. So sometimes we lament, as a remote workforce, I don't get to have the barbecue. And we will lament as a, as an intact team, I could have the barbecue.

Delise Simmons [00:27:04]:
Ain't nobody coming. So I think it's. I want to reach out to my employees and say the way that we build this culture is by coming together and unifying under these tendencies, values and without the communication and building trust, it's just words on a wall, right? So I need to demonstrate those behaviors with you and you with me. And that's when we start to solidify. I mean, you and I have known each other remotely and then we met in person and it just, it helps us to understand each other better. And I would want to know from my team. So I guess my roundabout answer is, I don't think there's one size that fits all. I think the one size is ask your team.

Delise Simmons [00:27:45]:
Like, I know it might be kind of hokey that we need to get together for a virtual happy hour once a month. But let's get together for a virtual happy hour once a month.

Kenny Lange [00:27:54]:
Or.

Delise Simmons [00:27:54]:
Or you tell me, what, what. What would y'all like to do? And the answer can't be nothing. One thing. Let's just all choose one thing. And I'm not trying to talk about forced fun, because forced fun is not fun, but being deliberate about making sure that it's for the employees enjoyment and our employees aren't enjoying it.

Kenny Lange [00:28:20]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I like that. It is interesting about the remote not wanting to show up, and there's. There's a reason I'm remote. Um, yes. I I'd be curious. Do you recommend a number? Right. Cause you could get one of these committees together.

Kenny Lange [00:28:43]:
Everybody thinks their ideas are the best, too. Um, within this, you hope that there's some humility in the room, but everybody gets there, and you've got five people on this committee, and everybody puts forth. You know, I've got. I've got four. Four ideas. Okay, well, let's just keep everybody. So now you've got. You've got 20 organizational habits or behaviors.

Kenny Lange [00:29:09]:
And in my experience, you get past four things, and people stop remembering what those things are. It's hard to keep that with you. How do you help these things be, like, memorable, portable? How do they travel, the organization?

Delise Simmons [00:29:26]:
Well, a couple of things is one, I want to know, what are the biggest pain points? If pain points are low and or equal, then I like to start with the lifecycle of an employee. So we're all focused on the same thing at the same time. So let's start with, how do people hear about us externally before they. Before they really interact with us? Let's get our values there. Then the next step, how does an employee interact with us? Where are our values seen? There? And then what about when they come in? So I would do the timeline of the life cycle of an employee. And that way we're not focusing on 100 things at once. We're focusing on one discreet employee to employer experience.

Kenny Lange [00:30:10]:
I'm actually. I'm making a note of that, and I think I'm going to steal that and take that into a session I have coming up.

Delise Simmons [00:30:17]:
You're welcome.

Kenny Lange [00:30:19]:
Thank you. Yeah. This section of the session is brought to you by Delys Simmons.

Delise Simmons [00:30:24]:
Yay.

Kenny Lange [00:30:27]:
So I love that. I think that makes it much easier to map because you can get really into the micro, because you can just like in anything else, I think you could get into the weeds of this and then make it totally unusable. So would you talk a little bit about. Because you and I are data nerds, too. And one of the things I love that you and the team at Culture think tank are doing is bringing data and machine learning and AI thinking into an area that's maybe better known for being like, culture is soft and squishy, right?

Delise Simmons [00:31:09]:
Right.

Kenny Lange [00:31:10]:
It's the soft skills. And there's no real way to measure that or statistically improve it. Like, you could, like sales, or sales and marketing. And we got our numbers and our KPI's. Can you talk about y'all's work in bringing data into the soft skills?

Delise Simmons [00:31:29]:
What's the cool thing about the technology that we have now didn't exist five years ago, right. So we can do things now that we couldn't do. But the first thing that we needed to do in order to really quantify culture is have a good understanding of what culture is. Our definition of culture that we use is that culture is a collection of the behaviors of the people within a team, group, or organization. If it's a behavioral phenomenon, then we can track it, we can measure it, we can move it. So we look at your culture score as a collective of these behaviors. So we ask five questions. It takes five minutes for employees to fill it out.

Delise Simmons [00:32:07]:
And although we ask five questions, we're really looking for two things. How do you feel? What do you need from leadership? So why we care about how people feel is one of the best predictors of how someone's going to behave is to understand how they feel. So a frustrated, disappointed, unsupported employee is going to behave differently than a supported, happy employee? Right. So if I know how you're feeling, I can be prescient in how, what the behavior is going to look like. If I understand what the behavior is going to look like. I've just identified my culture issue. I want to understand how people are feeling. Now, this isn't a happiness index.

Delise Simmons [00:32:43]:
I start to sound a little jaded because I kind of say I don't care whether or not people are happy. I care if they're happy. I think happiness is a result. So I'm not really looking for, can I make you happy? Am I making you happy? I want you to be supported. I want you to be encouraged. I want you to be safe. I want you to be challenged. I want you to feel like your voice matters.

Delise Simmons [00:33:07]:
So those are the feelings that allow for employees to behave at this higher trust level. And if you happen to be happy at the end of that, that's fantastic. You happen not to be happy about it. My chasing it probably isn't really going to help, but you do feel the things that I can and want to influence leader. So the things that we hear, so we're asking people every single day, what do you need from leadership? And the three biggest buckets that I see on a regular basis, and again, we've got over 2 million data points in our system, is share what leadership is working on. So they want this strategic understanding of what's going on. And most leaders say we tell them all the time until their ears are bleeding with it. They, they're not hearing it enough.

Delise Simmons [00:33:53]:
So they want to know what leadership is working on. They want it holding people and teams accountable, that people are begging for accountability. Believe it or not, my question with the organization is always, they're telling you they want accountability. You need to ask them what that looks like in your context, because it looks different everywhere. Sometimes what I hear is, oh, my leader holds me accountable. He or she just doesn't hold everybody else accountable. So there's a fear or a trust.

Kenny Lange [00:34:21]:
Selective accountability.

Delise Simmons [00:34:22]:
Exactly. And then finally the third thing they ask for is tell me how I'm doing, that people are very hungry for feedback. So how's the organization doing? Hold people and me accountable and then tell me how I'm doing. That's what we hear. That's the drumbeat of what employees are asking of leadership.

Kenny Lange [00:34:41]:
I love that. And that I see that over and over and over again. So on your platform, like, you're gathering that information, say it's not happiness. Right. That could be a mindset. That could be a lagging indicator or of those things. Can you talk? Because I remember when you did a demonstration of the platform last year that you talked about some of the anxiety levels.

Delise Simmons [00:35:11]:
Sure.

Kenny Lange [00:35:12]:
Like, through coming through. And then after COVID and y'all had some hypothesis about the way the needle would move, and it didn't exactly behave according to how you would have expected.

Delise Simmons [00:35:24]:
Correct. So we've been gathering data around how employees are feeling, and we isolated anxiety during COVID because anxiety was so high, we thought what would happen is after COVID, that that anxiety would really drop. And it hasn't. It dropped a little bit from its peak when COVID was in its peak, but it really has stayed pretty steady. I think this is a. The biggest anxiety producer that we have. So we've got digital natives in our workforce, and they're riddled with anxiety. We partnered with two best selling authors, Chester Elton and Adrian Gostic, and they wrote a book called Anxiety at Work, and we use their curriculum and our platform.

Delise Simmons [00:36:05]:
It's a great book. If you have a employee, a person, an organization that has anxiety issues, it's a great read. But what we know organizationally is we can track and we can hold a direct causal line between really high levels or moderately to high levels of anxiety and things like high employee turnover, low employee satisfaction, low employee engagement. So if anxiety is high, it will cause performance issues in the organization.

Kenny Lange [00:36:37]:
Yeah. And measuring that over time, I mean, could be huge, because I think that can also speak to, like, what you were mentioning, safety. I'm big on, you know, the four stages, psychological safety. A lot of doctor Timothy Clark's work in that area of, like, I do need to feel supported. I do need the accountability, which does create safety. And this is a free plug that nobody, none of the listeners have to pay me for this. Children want accountability, too. Just, that's my free plug for the day.

Kenny Lange [00:37:12]:
It's probably because I was talking to Jenny earlier, and I'm all hopped up on structure for kids and how to help them heal. So if somebody's a leader is listening to this, and they said, okay, we want to make sure these values are being driven deep in the organization. We're living out of them. And so we have a rich, vibrant culture that is uniquely ours and uniquely us, attracting the right people, repelling the wrong people, like you were saying. They said, that sounds wonderful and beautiful. I don't know if I can do a big project and do all these things. Where would you tell them to get started if they just could take a baby step in the next 24 hours, little to no cost, just to get going down that road?

Delise Simmons [00:38:02]:
Well, I would. I would do some sort of a field test of your values. I would. I would poll my. My organization, hopefully not electronically. If we need to. If our organization is big enough, then we might have to. But if we can, you know, run a conversation or two and say, do these values still work? Is this something that we need to look at? And is there anything about these values? Because to yourself, you're in Lucione's point.

Delise Simmons [00:38:29]:
You know, there's values, and there's values we write on the wall and values that we adhere to and we live by. And if ours are just values that we had to go to our website to remember what they are or dig through a file to figure out what they are, then we don't have. Every organization has values, but whatever you wrote down on that piece of paper or is, you know, is written somewhere is not. Those are not the values that are driving your organizational performance. So that's what I would want to do. I'd want to field test my values and say, are they doing anything for us? Because if not, we might need to revisit it.

Kenny Lange [00:39:06]:
That's great. If somebody wanted to know more about you, your work culture think tank, where, where would you send them?

Delise Simmons [00:39:14]:
If you go to theculturethinktank.com, it's theculturethinktank.com. There's, that's where we, you can find us. And again, we do. Our culture think tank work is really a think tank, and we're gathering data. But then we can come in and help your organization to really supercharge your values and your organizational culture.

Kenny Lange [00:39:37]:
I love that. Well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and your wisdom with our listeners today. And to our listeners, if you got value from this conversation, I would appreciate a, like a subscribe a share, have someone else listen to this and get some help. Right? Like, if it helped you, why not pass that along and pay it forward? I would also be eternally grateful for that. But until next time, change the way you think. You'll change the way you lead. We'll see you.