Nigel Cassidy (NC): Hello and welcome, and we brought the podcast to the CIPD Festival of Work. And where better to explore what's proving a hot topic in business today, leadership and business culture. I mean, do your leaders set the tone or are they too keen to plough through your prized values when the pressure is on? Or maybe your organisation's way of doing things is so entrenched your leaders just fall in line. I'm Nigel Cassidy, and this is the CIPD Podcast.
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Well, it's great having this chance of meeting some of our podcast listeners here at the Excel Centre in East London. And this festival of work really is a kind of HR fever dream. Thousands of people, professionals, can see them almost as far as the eye can see in this vast space. People learning, meeting, playing with fancy AI gizmos, many looking for ideas to create environments to help their workers be the best they can be. In short, trying to create great business cultures. So, here's the question. Are leaders born or made? Are yours in the cultural driving seat? Or do they need help to keep in line with your established values and ways of working with each other? I've been asking some festival goers what they think.
Can I ask you, what does the phrase organisational culture mean to you?
Festival Goer 1: It's essentially the way people interact, the way they feel, the dynamics within the organisation, obviously depending on which level you're at.
Festival Goer 2: The impact of all the employees, how everybody works together, teamwork.
Festival Goer 3: It's essentially a common theme across a business, right? You want everyone working towards the same things with the same attitude towards it, bringing different ideas, but they've got a common thread to them, right?
NC: Would you say the organisation you work for has a strong culture?
Festival Goer 2: Yes, for sure we all work together as a team, everybody is passionate about all of our products and I think that's a key thing.
Festival Goer 1: I can't think of any organisation that wouldn't even know, quote unquote, a one-man band if you're in a workspace if you're doing work then of course it needs to have a strong culture, especially if it's going to survive.
Festival Goer 4: Because we're going through a big restructure at the moment, the culture is very kind of low, I would say.
NC: But is that instilled by the leaders or more just through the organisation itself and how people treat each other?
Festival Goer 1: I believe it's a bit of a spectrum. Obviously, the higher up in the organisation you are, the more impact you will have. So, yeah, leaders will certainly have the biggest impact.
NC: So, how do you support leaders to ensure that they do continue to spread a good way of working, a good culture?
Festival Goer 2: I think by having an open culture where feedback is possible at every level and ensuring that everybody works towards giving honest feedback and feels safe to be able to do that.
NC: Well, some views from festival goers here who are joining me now backstage, fresh from being on stage. Well, firstly, we have a speaker, a claim for her understanding of the day-to-day work implications for leaders wanting to boost their organisation's business culture. It's Beth Samson, People Director at Investors in People. Hello.
Beth Samson (BS): Hello, thank you for having me.
NC: And we've a leadership counsellor, investor, and entrepreneur who's advised the likes of Google, Novartis, and Tesco. It's Andy Ayim.
Andy Ayim (AA): Good morning.
NC: So, just for fun, let's just start with your own thoughts. Supposing you walk into an organisation, how might you know pretty quickly that it's got a good leader?
BS: Yes, I've got quite a fun example from a recent encounter that I had. So, I was shadowing a practitioner who was doing an investors and people meeting and he and I couldn’t figure out how to get in to the building of the client. So, we were wandering around looking a little bit lost and helpless. And we had multiple members of staff from that company offered to help us, to take us to where we needed to go, were very supportive and friendly, and then when we actually got into the interviews that we were doing with the different people there, leaders etc., we found that the culture itself was one that was really supportive and helpful and friendly. So, it's a nice indication of exactly how they were leading and managing right from that first encounter.
NC: And so those first signs are important. What about you?
AA: Absolutely for me is when the leader's not in the room, you know, like how do people show up? What are the conversations that I had? How comfortable are people just bringing themselves to work, feeling like they belong and feeling like they can contribute to conversations. So, I think sometimes the telling sign is actually how do people react respond in the moments where the leader is not in the room.
And in my last leadership position, it was very evident that the team were really good at getting along with each other but sometimes found it a bit awkward and difficult to have the harder conversations because of how nice they were with each other, which can sometimes be the shadow of that nicer culture.
NC: That's interesting. So, do you actually check them out if you're working with a leader, just see what's happening when he or she is not there?
AA: Yeah, that's when it's fun, isn't it, Nigel? Because that's when you see the true colours come out. Hopefully it's the same as when they're there, because if there is a difference, that also speaks to the culture, actually. And, you know, maybe you have a very directive leader who's prim and proper, and therefore I feel like I must be my most professional self when they're around, and then I can kind of let my hair down when they leave. And then the conversation is more of the leader than the people.
NC: OK, well, you have full permission to let your hair down in this next half hour. Now, which comes first, I wonder, chicken or egg, leadership or culture? CIPD identified leadership in an evidence review recently as one of the most important four main drivers in influencing culture, no great surprise there. Yet a soon to be published report found that organisational culture is key to developing good leadership. So, Beth Samson, surely we want great leadership, but we also want a great culture but there is this rather complex relationship between the two.
BS: Yes, ideally we want everything, don't we? But we can't change it all. I think that it's not as simple really, unfortunately, as giving you an answer of one or the other. Leaders shape culture. Culture equally shapes leaders. Leaders choose what they permit, promote and punish and that sets part of the blueprint for how people work. Equally, what I've seen in organisations is that the culture, either ensures the success of a leader or sometimes ultimately their downfall. So, I think the two things are quite reciprocal.
NC: OK, well, we'll go into them in more detail in a minute. Andy, watching you on stage, I kind of guess you're probably more interested in growing leaders than worrying about sort of definitions of business culture. But what do you think it is? I mean, put simply, I heard it once described as the worst behaviour in an organisation that will be tolerated. But I mean, what for you is a useful explanation of business culture as it relates to how people behave and how successful an organisation might be?
AA: Yeah, I think you used a key word there, actually. It's the collective behaviour, norms and rituals of an organisation that really shape the culture, right? It's how we feel when we work here. And I use the word feelings intentionally because I think sometimes we don't discuss enough about how our feelings really impacts our performance. If I come onto this podcast and I'm really nervous, I start shaking, quivering, my voice is croaky, and that's because I feel nervous. If I feel confident and I’m excited to come here, I'm more passionate. My tonality goes up. My body language, my hands get going. You can't see it, but it's happening right now. And that's the difference between how we feel and how we perform.
So, I think it's really important, actually, the feeling that you get when you're around the people in the room that really dictates and shapes actually how people feel in that organisation.
NC: And of course, we mustn't forget that with leadership, establishing the right culture is all about being a role model.
AA: Absolutely. And I think leaders need to understand their role as visible role models because their teams reflect their behaviour and the conditions that they set up for their teams. And a great example is, I used to live in San Francisco, where failure is like a badge of honour, whereas in British culture, we really look down on failure and don't want to talk about it.
But actually, we need to reshape our relationship with failure because what I learned through that process of work with entrepreneurs is that what we're talking about is really testing ideas in quick, cheap, and easy ways so we can kill off as many bad ideas as quickly as possible and have confidence about the ideas that we progress with. And if leaders themselves are not modelling that or having a wall of failure or having chances where we celebrate failure or promote someone based on failures, then actually it doesn't give permission for the team to fail. It's not really a safe-to-fail environment.
So, I think as leaders, what we do is just as important as what we say, because you don't want to create that gap as a leader where you say one thing, but we don't actually see that in practice with what you actually do.
BS: Yeah, I really agree with that. I think leaders need to see themselves as organisational influencers.
AA: Love that.
BS: They are constantly under surveillance and people are listening and watching to everything that they do. So, they need to be consciously considering how that shapes culture, exactly as you've said, because I've seen dysfunctional organizations where a leader has made a throwaway comment about something that the organization could try and do, and immediately once they leave the room, a project team forms, hours and hours are spent, you know, building briefs exploring this concept, and they'll come back to that leader and say, this is what we've come up with and they'd all say, I don't know what you're talking about because they’ve completely forgotten that they made that offhand comment. So, it's so important for them to be conscious of that shadow that they're leaving.
NC: And we do seem to be on point with this subject because, Beth, you were telling me beforehand that the culture and leadership question comes up quite a lot. HR people are quite concerned about it. And I wonder why that is. I mean, is there a rush of leaders out there showing a lack of empathy or respect for established values? I mean, what's going on? Why do we feel we need to support leaders more?
BS: That's such a good question. I think that in HR, we have a unique role because we are, you know, hopefully if we're doing our jobs right, a sort of trusted go-to for staff to share concerns, questions, maybe to highlight things that could be done better. Equally, we do that for leaders too. So, we kind of get this really privileged position of hearing both sides of the story. And I think what we've also seen historically, wrongly, in my opinion, is that culture is often attributed to HR teams to look after and foster and build when it is actually the responsibility of everyone. But as we've said, leaders have an outsized role in that. So, I think that's probably why we end up in conversations, as HR professionals often, about leaders and culture, culture and leaders, and what to do about the two.
NC: And I just wondered, Andy, would it help to focus a bit on what those leaders are actually going through at the moment? Because it's one thing to have a list of values and for an organisation to have a set culture, but It's another thing when a crisis hits, when decisions have to be made and people kind of could be forgiven maybe for forgetting about the right or best way of doing things?
AA: I think the context in which we're living in today, and Beth, feel free to chime in, is actually really complex and multi-layered because we have hybrid work, which we're all wrestling with, and return to work and what that looks like for each organisation. We have an intergenerational workforce with different needs that we now need to manage for and lean into. We're shaping culture in a remote and hybrid world, which we may not even have the tools to do. Leaders are expected to both be individual contributors and manage tasks as well as manage and lead people. So, there's pressure on that role.
And then you also have leaders contesting with what is difficult conversations sometimes around things like inclusion or Palestine and Israel. And they feel that they're compelled and they have to have the answer, but they're really difficult conversations. And then we've got the age of disruption with AI.
So, when we list all of these things out, that's a lot for any human to deal with and we have to humanise the conversation. So, when we talk about continuously supporting leaders, it's because the context of the world is continuously evolving. So, we also need to iterate, learn and continuously adapt and lean into that. And actually what we need with leaders is a more adaptable mindset, that growth mindset, that open mindset, that willingness to learn, because what got them to leadership may not be the necessary skills to get them to the next frontier or to the next milestone. Gallop did a survey where they surveyed 70,000 people across 52 countries to ask them, how would you describe the people that have the most positive influence over your lives? And by far, people answered with someone from their family or a manager at work. And the number one trait that they were looking for in a leader was hope. How many organisations are training their leaders to install hope into their teams?
The second thing was trust, then it was compassion, then it was stability. All of these are soft skills, right? But how many of us are intentionally creating learning outcomes linked to how do you unearth this leader's inspirational qualities, their curiosity, their supportiveness, how they nurture, how they empower, how they install hope? But these are the feelings that people are left with in terms of the impact and the impression that these leaders leave them with. That is the legacy. So, we need to do a better job of actually supporting leaders with honing those skills so they can leave those impressions and those feelings in the people that they lead.
BS: And I think hope is really a product of finding that balance between vulnerability and resilience. So, you're being open about what the challenges are and being transparent, so people feel safe that they know what those are. But equally, you're giving the assurance that it's something that you can cope with as a leader, as an organisation, as individuals, as a team and that’s where the resilience comes in. So, I think that’s so true, it isn’t a word that you hear very often in conversations about leadership, but it should be there.
AA: But it's funny because when you think about who represents a brand like hope, you think Barack Obama. Who represents a brand like vulnerability? You think Brene Brown. When you think about our leaders today, what does their brand represent as a single word? It's hard for us to describe. So, we need that leadership identity and that leadership edge, or else we're not even getting the best out of them.
BS: If I can jump in on a slightly nerdy segue, I mean it comes down to brain science as well, I think. You know, our leaders are under more pressure than ever. The expectations are really high. You know, maybe you've got shareholders that want returns as well.
AA: Absolutely.
BS: And our brains under pressure do tend to operate in a way which maybe isn't our best selves. Exactly. You see people who maybe did all the right things to get into a leadership position. But then when they're under this extreme pressure, those more negative traits emerge more and more and then they get into a spiral of where teams become disengaged. Maybe turnover increases they start feeling under more stress as leaders more pressure, they become maybe more kind of micromanaging, they get bad feedback they you know become more stressed.
AA: Absolutely.
BS: So, yeah it's a difficult time.
NC: You've described very well how things get out of sync because I mean everybody would agree that a good organisational culture is one where work has meaning, you know, where people are not just employed, they feel nurtured and feel able to speak up, and you would have thought Andy good leaders would want all those things, especially in a crisis. So, how come the organisation and the culture, the way an organisation does things, get out of sync?
AA: I think it's true to what you shared, actually. Like in the brain, if you look at some more neuroscience, you've got this amygdala, which was actually when we were cavemen and women, and we had this fight or flight mode when an animal was chasing after us, and actually we need to escape quickly. We live in a very different context today, but we still have that same chemistry in our heads right where it's like, actually what happens in those moments of stress or high pressure, every single leader feels like they haven't got enough time. Right? So, do you fight, do you flight, do you freeze? You know, everyone reacts slightly differently to that. And I think that's where it's really important to have the right rituals within an organisation.
And I'll give you two examples of rituals. When having a team meeting, doing something as small as a check-in is so important because context can shape perception. If I arrived in this team meeting and I'm yawning and I seem disengaged, and I'm tired. You could be misinterpreting me as being really rude.
NC: Or bored.
AA: If I share with you, or bored, but if I share with you that I've been up all night with my toddler and he's ill with the flu and I had to take him to hospital in the middle of the night. Suddenly you can get some grace and your perspective completely shifts because you have that context. So, rituals like that are the things that we need to honour even in high stress situations.
Another great ritual is something called a retrospective. Just once a month with the team, what's going well, what's not going so well and what could we do differently? Create a space to celebrate failure and link it to learnings. So, that you're visibly being a role model as a leader and creating space to have conversations to understand how it feels to work as a team.
So, these are the things that we should honour despite the fact that it's a highly profitable month or if it's a month that's really stressful, we should be consistent with those kinds of rituals so that there's a consistent experience from a leader regardless what team you're in.
NC: Beth, any thoughts on that?
BS: I completely agree. I think we talk about leadership and culture going out of sync and how that spiral can start. I think any virtue can become a vice in the wrong setting. So, that goes both for the cultural side of things and the leader. So, if you have a culture where people are, we've talked about this, super friendly, very supportive, that's a wonderful thing, that can be great for wellbeing. But when you need quick decisions made, or if there's been a mistake that needs rectifying, those qualities can become something that gets in the way.
Equally, as a leader, you can be very considered and analytical, but that can make you slower to make decisions, and then frustrations can rise. So, I think those can sometimes be the kind of kernels of where the issues begin.
NC: I can see or think of some other examples, maybe a leader who micromanages a team where in fact the team had hitherto organised things rather well on their own or equally, somebody could delegate a task but the team is not in good shape and just don't get things sorted. So, how do you begin to work to bring things back into alignment?
BS: I mean, I will answer your question, but I'll start by saying prevention is better than cure. So, I think you have to be so considered when you're looking at who you appoint as managers and leaders. You know, are they in sync with your culture, not just on a good day, but on a bad day? It's so important. But when issues do start to arise, I think that you have to go back to exactly what you said. You know, we're all human beings. What exactly is the issue here? Is it something that's happening in people's personal lives? Are there other forces at play in the organisation? Has the level of expectations on performance increased? So, I think just having that kind of curious, open mindset about what the underlying issues are.
NC: Does it work the other way around, Andy? Have you ever worked with a leader where you found that they've somehow been tainted by aspects of the culture that aren't so good? In other words, can the leader be formed by the culture and just fail to raise people's ambitions or expectations?
AA: Absolutely. I've got a retail client in mind. And retail is a really complex business because you've got supply chain, you've got farmers, raw materials, you have got to get things onto shelves and because of that, there's a perfectionist culture within this organisation. But one of their values is more around progress over perfection and experimentation but it's really hard to live out that value in reality for a lot of them because of this culture of perfection across all of their work. And what they're trying to figure out are what are the moments to honour that value versus the moments where we need to be more directive or strive for perfection. And they're thinking about it in the right way. It's contextual. It depends on the moment.
And, you know, in my former life, I was a product leader and I learned all about human-centred design and it's a lot of the work that I do today with leaders. And what I love about that discipline is it's all about people first. It's about empathising, stepping into the shoes of others and seeing things from their perspective and really solving for the root cause and the problem like Beth shared, not the symptoms. But in order to do that, I really need to understand how you're feeling, what's going on, what's working and what's not. And therefore, as a leader, you need to always have this scientific and artistic mind of hypothesis testing. What is the hypothesis that I want to test with this team member? And you're trying to prove or disprove that in the way in which you're facilitating your discussions with them.
And the great thing is about hypothesis is that it takes the weight off things because there's no negative outcome. If I prove that this is working, it's great. I'm taking a step in the right direction. If I disprove that it's not working, good. I'm going to stop wasting time, money and effort going down the wrong direction.
NC: It makes sense. Why don’t people do that?
AA: These are the type of mental models we need to learn, actually. This is how you have an adaptive mindset. This is how you lean into uncertainty and ambiguity by having these mental models that you can lean on. Who's teaching that leader how to be a great facilitator? Who's teaching that leader how to be inspiring, how to tap into their curiosity? Because when we get feedback from people on what they want most from leaders, it's none of the hard skills. It's not strategic planning or financial budgeting or project management. It's I want someone supportive, nurturing, encouraging, empowering. So, who's teaching them how to be those things? And that's what we sometimes miss out when we're supporting leaders.
NC: Well, clearly, Andy, you do that in your professional work personally, but how can HR people in general provide that kind of support to leaders?
BS: I think it's such a critical issue. We did some research recently and lots of people have talked about accidental managers. So, managers who are great at what they do technically and then somehow find themselves in management roles without any of the support or training tools that they need.
AA: So common.
BS: But our most recent research has shown that 33% of existing managers view the role as necessary but unappealing.
NC: Oh dear.
BS: Yes. So, I think you know, in terms of where we can support, we need to start by asking them the questions: what do you need? You know, where are the gaps? Diagnosing that at an individual and organisational level and then creating bespoke programmes to support.
NC: I mean, we've spoken as if all organisations have a prevailing ruling cultural style. I suspect there are some where there isn't a strong culture and others, including people we spoke to at this show, seem to have a very strong culture. And other including people we spoke to at this show seem to have a very strong culture and they're very conscious of it.
AA: I think, to be honest, whether you're conscious or unconscious, the culture is there. It's about the behaviours, it's about what we see, it's about how people treat each other, it's about how they operate in the environment. So, whether you've codified it or not, it's there. The good thing about actually, not having it written down as values and things is that it accepts the fact that it's continuously going to iterate and evolve. You know and then we're striving to hire people that add to cultural evolution and not just cultural fit, which is sometimes a mistake that we make. And I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who have this pressure of they're running out of money, they're trying to fundraise and they're hiring people for a need they have right now. And in 12 months’ time, they realise they should have hired someone that can grow with them and scale with them rather than the need that they had at the time.
At larger organizations, the same thing sometimes happens with managers. Where you hire them for that technical capability, but you realise actually we need some of these more softer skills over time. And sometimes you realise actually the only route into progression and earning more money to become a manager is, I inherit these duties that I didn't really want, but I just wanted to get on in the organisation and we just need to lean into those sometimes difficult and uncomfortable conversations. And maybe the solutions there needs to be an individual contributor track, or maybe there isn't. But that direct conversation is the conversation we need to have, even if it means losing people because at least we'll have the right people that are remaining.
NC: And you had a few organisations on stage at this Festival of Work. Were there any good examples that came to light there of the way that organisations tackle this and get their leaders to be on board with all this?
BS: I think one of the examples that was shared that really resonated with the audience, I could see people taking notes, was connecting senior leaders to other members of staff, maybe talent coming through, through mentoring, supportive programmes, which I think hugely benefits the individuals that are looking to progress, but equally massively benefits the leaders, brings them closer to the actual problems that are happening in the organisation, gives them that extra insight. And I think it also helps open the door to maybe constructive feedback about their leadership styles as well. It's an easier conversation to have if you've already got a relationship.
AA: Absolutely.
NC: Yes, Andy, what about that self-awareness? When you work with leaders, how aware are they of the power of how the organisation acts and what it thinks about itself and what its values are in practice?
AA: I think it comes down to the individual and this is why it's so important to meet people where they are. Because if we remove the titles, we’re talking about humans and individuals, and all of us our subjective and have different ways of viewing the world, operating the world and understanding the world.
So, unless we, you know, I talk about this iceberg theory of, you know, I don’t know if you’ve heard this iceberg theory where you have observable behaviours above the iceberg, but below that iceberg are the beliefs, attitudes and values that make up the person’s lived experience. In companies, sometimes we’re having surface-level conversations. We’re not actually getting to know people for who they really are. And you’ll be surprised as people that have worked together, leaders for 10 years and they learn something new in these instances where we actually have real conversations below that iceberg, below the waterline around actually like, who are you? Right, and as leaders, this is important because by understanding who you are in your context, it makes it a lot easier for me to spread the surface area of connection and connect on multiple points with you.
So, when we talk about inclusion and divergent thinking, we can't really unlock that to manage risk or see opportunity until we can tap into who people really are. And for different leaders, that’s different which is why I say subjective and individual. I wonder how a leader would know if the culture was wrong.
BS: Well, this is something that came up in my conversation with Jamie, Jamie Lang yesterday. And he started exactly with what you were describing. He said that he began Kandy Kittens with probably an unrivalled enthusiasm for sweet manufacturing and he became very frustrated that other people weren't so excited about that as he was, including the people in his team. And he said that his response to that was beginning to micromanage. So, because he was so excited, so enthusiastic, he wanted that control over the decisions that were being made and the actions taken until he realised that it wasn't serving him and he underwent therapy and discovered all this kind of deeper insight about himself, who he was, what his natural style was, and that enabled him to be honest and open and vulnerable with his team. And then that enabled them to be more open about the things that needed to change. It was from there that he felt the culture improved significantly.
AA: I love that example there because it starts with self- awareness, isn't it?
BS: Yeah.
NC: OK. So, a couple of tips then maybe from each of you how you make improvements in this whole area, how you support leaders better and that, that in turn will make the culture stronger. So, people will essentially behave in ways that make the organisation more successful?
AA: I'm going to borrow my first tip from Beth in terms of just that self-awareness piece and creating space for leaders to become self-aware because that's a continuous process through all of our lives. It's not a static one-off thing. It's every year we need to have space to reflect, think about what brings us energy, what drains our energy, what's going on inside and how it impacts how we show up on the outside.
The second thing is we need to, as leaders, just meet people where they are. And as HR practitioners, and people leaders, we need to meet these leaders where they are and understand how they're feeling, their stresses and their pressures, or it's going to be really difficult to design learning outcomes for them. So, we really need to meet people where they are.
NC: And with hybrid working, of course, that's not always as easy as it sounds.
AA: It isn't, but it removes the guesswork because I think sometimes we make assumptions and guess and get things really wrong rather than just having the conversation and understanding the context of where people are.
And finally, I think that the third thing is just, I think leaders need self-care to be a bit gracious. It's a hard job and it's a hard role and it's getting more and more complex, and we need to just acknowledge that and say it's hard and not try and make it out like it can be easy. It's a choice between hard and hard.
BS: I agree with all of those points. I think I'd add, potentially controversially, but I'll explain why it's not controversial in reality. I think having tough conversations with people as well, and by tough I mean being really honest and stripping things back.
So, if you're seeing someone in a leadership or a management role that isn't thriving, and we know that 70% of team engagement is due to line managers, you have to have that conversation with them. And sometimes that means that, you know, maybe they don't belong in your organisation. But I would say that nine times out of 10, they're in the wrong job. You know, you can make tweaks or like you've said, understand a little bit more about what's happening with them and support them and help them with that. But it starts by leaning into the issue rather than hoping that it will resolve itself because inn my many years of HR, things don't fix themselves, sadly.
NC: And, of course, being very aware that when we talk about leaders, we don't just mean the senior leaders. We really mean the line managers, the people at the sharp end.
BS: Yes, absolutely.
NC: Well, if I'm a leader with a to-do list listening to this, I've got several things on there. OK, well, with all those thoughts and ideas on culture and leadership, we have to take our leave from the CIPD Festival of Work. Thank you to our splendid guests, Beth Samson and Andy Ayim. Let me just leave you with these words on culture and leadership that I found attributed to the co-founder of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani. When you're building an institution, you're consciously growing something that will be beyond you. It will exist without you. Now, there's a legacy you can't put a price on for any leader of positive culture. Until next month, from me, Nigel Cassidy, and all the CIPD podcast team here at the Excel Centre, it's goodbye.
