Executive Podcast #320: Culture Matters with Jenni Catron (Part 1)

Perry Holley:
Welcome to the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast where our goal is to help you increase your reputation as a leader, increase your ability to influence others, and increase your ability to fully engage your team to deliver remarkable results. Hi, I’m Perry Holley, a Maxwell Leadership facilitator and coach.

Chris Goede:
And I’m Chris Coede, executive vice president with Maxwell Leadership. Welcome and thank you for joining. Perry and I are super excited for you to be listening to today, watching maybe on YouTube, have a guest in the studio with us who is like minded. We are dialed in when it comes to the importance of leading people and values and culture. And we’re going to talk about that today in just a minute. Before we get started, I’d love for you to download the learner’s guide or as always, Perry needs help with content. And so if you want to go and click on this podcast at maxwellleadership.com/podcast and then this episode, if you click on that, there’ll be a form there where you can say, hey, I got a question. I’m dealing with this leadership issue.

Chris Goede:
Hey, we would love that because we want to take and unpack for you something that’s impacting you, that’s going on in the field. That’s what we talk about a lot, is what our coaches and our facilitators are experiencing around the world. We want to bring those to you guys and let other people learn from it. Right. That’s how we learn best. So today’s topic is Culture Matters with Jenny Catron. And why we’re super excited about this is because I’m holding a book that has a title that we are very, very excited about. It’s something that we talk a lot about here that John Maxwell completely lives out.

Chris Goede:
This is. He talks about culture all the time. And Maxwell Leadership got to join in partnership with you to publish this book. And so I am super excited to introduce you to our audience, introduce our audience to you as well. This is coming in February.

Perry Holley:
February 11th.

Chris Goede:
February 11th. Yeah. So you’re going to be able to get this book in partnership with Maxwell Leadership about culture matters. So welcome. Thank you for being here. I know you run an organization, you speak, you got a podcast. And so tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us a little bit about what is going on in the leadership world, and then we’re going to dive into this topic, culture that you are super passionate about right now.

Jenni Catron:
Sure. Well, Chris and Perry, thanks so much for having me.

Chris Goede:
Absolutely.

Jenni Catron:
You guys are coaching me regularly through the podcast, so it’s really fun to be here. And just get to dive into some conversations that we do have so much shared passion about. I kind of accidentally landed in leadership and culture. Just didn’t think that those were going to be my passion points. And I’m sure we’ll tell some stories along the way that will reinforce why that became such a big driving factor for the work that I do now. But I did. I had the privilege of working in the corporate world for about a decade. Then I went into ministry world as an executive director for another 12 years.

Jenni Catron:
And then I launched a company called the Foresight Group. And like you guys, I just get the privilege of working with leaders day in and day out, helping them think through how do they become effective and healthy leaders, how do they build thriving and effective teams? And so that’s what my world looks like. It’s a lot of fun.

Chris Goede:
So you just flew right by. I spent time in corporate America and then also 12 years in the ministry and ended up talking about culture, leadership, a lot of other things. But real quick, before we jump into the content, are there a lot of similarities, if you look back between culture in the. We’ll call it for profit world versus culture in the nonprofit world? And if there are, just off the top of your head, what are your thoughts about the dynamics between the two, though? Because we have a lot of for profit organizations and business leaders and teams that listen to this. But. But we do have some nonprofit as well, because I think there’s a crossover. But I would love for you, I mean, you lived it both and now you’ve written a culture book. Just talk to that for real quick before we dive in.

Jenni Catron:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And really, at the end of the day, people are people. Right?

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Jenni Catron:
And that’s the. That’s the dynamic that we’re navigating, whether it’s corporate world or the nonprofit world, that people are people. They’re complex, they’re messy, they’re challenging to lead. And regardless of the environment, sometimes you might.

Chris Goede:
I’ve been trying to tell Perry that for a long time. I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. Yeah.

Jenni Catron:
So, yeah, at the end of the day, it’s just part of it and it’s understanding what’s my belief about how I want to lead people. And then how does that show up wherever I am?

Chris Goede:
So good. That’s so good.

Perry Holley:
Well, yeah, I was telling a group last week, they said this leadership would be okay if it weren’t for the people.

Jenni Catron:
That’s right.

Chris Goede:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
People are Messy. Let’s figure this one out. So I really enjoyed the book. Thank you. I got a preview copy. And so we do. We teach a lot on culture. It’s a big topic for our followers.

Perry Holley:
What I really loved is you put a framework in there. And I just wondered if kind of an operating system for culture. And I don’t think I had thought about it that structured before. But tell me a little bit about having a framework. Does it help you when you’re teaching and consulting in your work? Does it help to have this framework? Do people buy into that? Do they glom onto that pretty quick?

Jenni Catron:
That seems to be the thing that is the aha moment for people. I think most of us would agree culture matters, right? Like you should name a book that we should do that on purpose that time. But everybody agrees culture matters. In fact, there’s some research that said 90% of leaders believe that an employee engagement strategy will have an impact on their business. But only 25% of them have a plan. And so we all, the majority of us say, hey, we need to. We need like, you know, this matters. We need to do this.

Jenni Catron:
But only 25% of us have a plan. And that was kind of a aha for me is. And I’ll give you a little backstory by just. Because I think this might be helpful to our listeners as well. But I had really unique experiences starting out. I worked in the music business in Nashville was the corporate experience. And it was my first job out of college. Amazing team.

Jenni Catron:
I worked for this division that was part of a larger company. In fact, it was the biggest record company in the world at the time. But we were this small little division in Nashville that was fantastic. Like, amazing team, great leaders. I’m, you know, kind of thrown in the deep end as a young leader and just given lots of opportunity, lots of coaching and feedback and given this great experience to lead. Eight years later, we went through a corporate merger. They merged us with one of the other divisions of the company. And overnight the culture went from amazing to 100%.

Jenni Catron:
Like all of a sudden I like, hated going to work and I’d never had that experience. So I’m a spoiled, like 20 something. My first work experience is amazing. Yeah, it’s fantastic. And then I go to this other environment and I’m like, what has just happened? And then I stayed a year only because one of my previous leaders said, jenny, will you please give it a year? You know, he was one of. He was actually the president of the previous division and he was like, would you Just give it a year. And out of honor to him, I said, I’ll give you a year. And I still was like, I can’t do it like this.

Jenni Catron:
I’m not thriving in this environment. And then I moved to nonprofit, and I was the executive director of the organization. And I realized I am now sitting in the seat where I have disproportionate influence on the culture. Like, now I’m the one shaping the experience. And I’ve had these two really stark experiences. What do I do with that? So long answer to your question, Perry. But I started to just unpack this, going, what created those two different experiences? And I began to reflect on other things throughout my story in history where I’d had similar dynamics and I’d seen other leaders have the same thing. And as leaders, we want it to be about people.

Jenni Catron:
And yet. So that feels organic, and that feels like. And what I began to discover is that just like every other key initiative, you know, we build strategies for, like, our annual goals and plans, our mission and vision. We give tons of time and energy to put it on paper, get it mapped out, but rarely do we do that with culture. And I felt like that was the distinctive. So that’s what I began to work on and build.

Perry Holley:
And I love that. I think so many people we talked to could have the pro and con version that most of them have never seen the stark difference. They’re just in a culture that’s not that great. But you saw what a great look like, and then you knew what it wasn’t. So a lot of times we go in and go, what do you mean, that something’s wrong? I said, it’s not working. What’s not working? Our people. Oh, the culture. Everything’s not working.

Perry Holley:
And they don’t understand the difference between.

Chris Goede:
The two, and there’s no plan. I love your statement about. You said, I have a. Once I realized I was the executive director, I have a disproportionate impact on the culture leaders. Listen, I’m telling you, that is such a true statement. And we don’t think about it. And we go, oh, we have xyz. We got to do the P and L.

Chris Goede:
We got to ebitda. And yet we are the ones that are leading that have the most impact on what that culture looks like. And so it’s even more important for us to have a plan. The other thing I want to just stop on for a minute. You talked about the merger, and everything changed. Perry and I are in organizations all the time, and I’ll say this, I’ll say there are often three things that I’ve seen a lot of that impact culture right away. Number one would be unions. And then I just go, sorry, we can’t help you.

Chris Goede:
And I can help you with their team. Maybe not the culture. Second one is explosive growth, and the third one is mergers and acquisitions.

Jenni Catron:
For sure.

Chris Goede:
Yeah, it happens. There is one that’s going to win and hopefully the leader of the one that’s going to win is being very intentional about that and not just letting it happen, which we’ll talk to about in a little bit.

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Chris Goede:
I want to shift to, because this is another place where we are directly aligned is the importance of values. And we believe personal values, but also organizational values to be more than just something that’s on the wall.

Perry Holley:
Right.

Chris Goede:
It’s a big part of that culture development. In the book, you talk a lot about this and identifying and defining kind of the organizational’s core values. Why is that so important for a leader of a team or an executive director of an organization, whatever it might be, to start at that point?

Jenni Catron:
Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s interesting because I think values have gotten a lot of lip service over the last probably a couple decades of work. And I think in some ways we’re a little tired of them as leaders. Right? Like values, okay, we have them.

Perry Holley:
Didn’t we put those on a coffee mug already?

Jenni Catron:
Yes, we’ve already done that. It didn’t work. You know, I hear that time and time again. But I still am a deep believer. And you have values, whether you’ve acknowledged them or not. There are values that guide the behavior of your organization. And that’s the key. Right.

Jenni Catron:
The values that are shaping how we behave. So a lot of times the ones that are on the wall are not actually the values happening in the organization or even the values you hold as a leader and hold people, too. And so my conviction on it is we’ve got to get really honest about what’s really true. What are we maybe unintentionally or accidentally valuing versus what we aspire to value, and then beginning to put more language and more structure around that to give it a lot of depth and a lot more hooks for the employees to kind of grab onto and go, okay, this is what that means, and this is what that looks like. Because we’ve all seen the, you know, integrity, honesty, character, like, thrown on the wall, which we’re all saying, of course we want those things. But you got to go a little deeper to say, what is it that’s really critical and distinctive to us? Because that’s the other thing. It’s like, there’s plenty of things that every organization aspires to. You know, again, hopefully back to integrity, honesty, character.

Jenni Catron:
Like, those are things that we just want to be true. We need to vet those out in hiring. Right. But, like, what are the things that are actually truly distinct about us, and how do we more deeply embed those?

Chris Goede:
So how do we live that out? Right. That’s right. And as leaders, we talk about defining reality, financially issues, but you need to do it. What I’m hearing you say is we need to do that with our values as well. We need to make sure what is reality with the values that we’re living out, and where’s the gap between that and. I love what you said about the values. John has said oftentimes he’s just leadership sad right now because of what he would say is, we got a values problem.

Jenni Catron:
Sure.

Chris Goede:
Not only in the country, whatever, but in leadership. There’s a lot of people that have just said, I’m tired of these. We’re going to do this, and we have a values problem.

Perry Holley:
And so one thing I really liked about the book and why you want to get a copy of this is you offer a lot of tools and ways of thinking of things that people can really apply real time. And I thought one thing I liked around values, you kind of put together a values grid. And what I loved about it was we’re passionate about, you gotta determine what it is you stand for. So what is your core value? But not only that, the behaviors, the actions, and so you kind of put all that together. Can you talk us through the values grid and how a company could use that?

Jenni Catron:
Yeah. And I think this one evolved over time for me as I began to just kind of Workshop. Okay, we know values are important and then, but what, what gives them more life, more depth, more, more, you know, hooks again for the handles for the team to get to really take it in. So I, you know, you come up with your value. Just what’s that? What’s that core value? A big one for me is ownership. Right? I want my entire team owning what we do and how we do it.

Chris Goede:
Love it.

Jenni Catron:
But what’s the belief behind that? Right? Like, and that’s the next step I usually take teams through is like, okay, let’s come up with our list of values. The things that again, we think are kind of distinct to us. But then what’s the why? Why does that matter? Why is that important? One of the ones that we have at foresight is self leadership. And we say we have to lead ourselves well to lead others better. Like, if we’re not learning, growing, continuing to improve as leaders, how in the world can we invest in other leaders? So that’s the why? That’s the belief, then it’s the behavior. Well, what does that look like in practice? Now, I can’t account for every minute behavior of the team, but I can start to give a handful of, like, this is what this looks like. This is a commitment to continuous learning that we commit to. Every one of us is making sure we have the certifications or the training in the areas of interest we’re most passionate about.

Jenni Catron:
Or we have a commitment to an annual retreat as a team where we’re learning and growing together. It’s like coming up with those handful of things that say, this is what this looks like. This is how we play this out. And then the fun part is to give it the sticky statement, the fun phrase. Or sometimes it’s a story, you know, so figuring out there’s another one that one of the organizations that I led, we had a communication or a value of collaborative communication. Well, that’s a snoozer of a statement, right? Like, it’s like, woo. Collaborative communication. That sounds awesome.

Jenni Catron:
But we all know we all need it, right? So this was a organization with multiple locations and they were seeing the breakdowns between location to location, et cetera. So then we said, well, what’s the belief? Well, communication is an act of respect to our coworkers, right? Like, high communication is really showing respect for our coworkers. That was our core belief. Our behaviors were, hey, who needs to know? What do they need to know and why do they need to know it? If I ask myself those three questions, all of a sudden communication gets Better if I’m just thinking on behalf of others and asking myself a couple of questions, I will improve my communication. And our sticky statement was use your blinker. Because I told a story.

Perry Holley:
Where did I finish that? How did you get to that?

Jenni Catron:
We had an internal little story about my. I call it efficient driving style. Most people would say aggressive. I might be aggressive.

Chris Goede:
Maybe I’m married to one. Yes.

Jenni Catron:
Okay, so you get it.

Chris Goede:
There’s nothing defensive. It’s very offensive. Maybe literally and aggressive.

Jenni Catron:
That’s right.

Jenni Catron:
Right.

Jenni Catron:
So the team knew that we would joke about if we’re going to lunch together. They’d rode with me because we were going to get there first.

Chris Goede:
Did you hear that? First? I love it. Another thing we have in common, there’s a little bit of competitive, right?

Jenni Catron:
Yeah, there for sure is. There for sure is. So I was telling the staff this story and I was like, but here’s the thing, if you notice, I religiously use my turn signal, because if you’re moving fast, if you’re not communicating well, you’re gonna crash. Right? So right there, collaborative communication, this snoozer of a statement took new life.

Chris Goede:
That’s awesome.

Jenni Catron:
And so use your blinker became the way we said that value. And you guys, to this day, I haven’t worked with that team for, like over 12 years. To this day, I get emails from some of that staff saying, hey, using my blinker. Thought you’d wanna know this. And so that’s when values give life and depth to a culture and help employees really. See, this is how we show up, how we work together.

Perry Holley:
We were in Temecula last week. I love how they did a similar thing when we were going through their culture. But one of them was, can’t stop, won’t stop. And they said, how did that become their sticky statement from, well, you need to be persistent. We need customer service. We need every guest. We need to make. And we can’t stop, won’t stop now.

Perry Holley:
That’s their battle cry, almost. Somebody said, should we do this for this guest? Can’t stop, won’t stop. And then they. It puts legs on it, so they go to work with it.

Jenni Catron:
So it’s really cool.

Chris Goede:
So we in this room are very passionate about this topic, understand the importance of it, and we know that it’s going to happen one way or another. Our culture, it’s either going to happen by accident. Right. Like you talked about, or you can’t.

Perry Holley:
Not have a culture.

Chris Goede:
You can’t not have a culture, to your point. And so let’s go back a little bit and think about some leaders you’ve worked with or some reasons behind what stops a leader from designing a culture? Like, what’s the. Where they just don’t get over that hump. What is something that maybe they don’t even realize they’re listening right now. They’re not aware of it. But it could be a blind spot. It could not be. But what is that hurdle that’s keeping them from designing a culture?

Jenni Catron:
Usually I think it’s just busyness. I think it’s all of the other expectation and priorities that are pulling on their time and energy and. Or it might be a little like lack of understanding of what to do. Right. I think what I often see for leaders is they will, they will expect culture to be caught. So as long as you have proximity to that leader, then you kind of catch what they value, what’s important to them. And this is how we do things here. Right.

Jenni Catron:
But as soon as the team gets a little bit bigger and of course you’ve got more to manage, there’s more responsibility on your plate. You have, you have so much going on that it’s getting the back burner. And you’re just kind of hoping the things that people kind of accidentally picked up in some ways are going to filter to the new team members. Well, it never happens. And that’s why the plan is so important. Right. In that actually knowing, hey, here’s, here’s, here’s the system. Here’s how we make sure the things that are most important to us are actually replicated throughout the organization.

Jenni Catron:
But I think it’s. I think it’s usually just all the pressures of a million other things, everything else going on.

Chris Goede:
Yeah.

Perry Holley:
And I’ve noticed that I’ve been a senior executive, so our CEO put in a very strong core value statement. He knew what we believed in, had four or five things. We had a direction. The senior team, we were all bought in. We heard it every day. And then the people below us, they heard it from us. But it gets diluted.

Jenni Catron:
That’s right.

Perry Holley:
If it goes. And this would be the last thing when you probably need to wrap up. But really with you were saying, that is the front lines are really where I need it. I need them to feel the culture. I need them to live and breathe the culture because they’re the ones that are interfacing with our customers and our clients and our teams. Is there in this format you use, is there a way, do you have a way of getting it from all the way down through the organization.

Jenni Catron:
Yeah. One of the tools that we built into the framework is something I call the employee journey grid. I’m simple Values grid. Employee journey grid. Like not count of people.

Chris Goede:
I can do that.

Jenni Catron:
But it basically looks at all the key points in an employee’s journey with the organization, from even the interviewing and hiring process to onboarding, to performance plans, to meeting rhythms and where do our values and other things that we’ve defined are important to our culture. But I feel like values really are the anchors to defining culture and then you kind of layer onto that. But we look at all of those different steps of an employee’s engagement with the organization. Even two departures. Do our departures and how we handle departures reflect the best of who we are? Because that’s shaping culture for the team members who are staying. How they see us handle departures impacts their perception of leadership and trust of leadership.

Perry Holley:
I mean, they’re watching everything.

Jenni Catron:
So yeah, so it’s looking at that and going, how do I ensure that every employee at every level, at every stage of their engagement with us is repeatedly being reminded of who we are and how we work together?

Perry Holley:
Yes. Fantastic.

Chris Goede:
That’s so good. I want to wrap up and then I’ll throw it to you to put a bow on it for us. But this conversation exceeded my expectations. Like, it’s just great to get in a room and talk about this is what we’re passionate. Three of us is what we talk about all the time with organizations around the world. Before I wrap up with some thoughts. February 11, 2025, Culture Matters will be out and tell our listener listeners where they can find you. Like, where’s the best place just to connect with you or find you before I wrap up for us?

Jenni Catron:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I’d love to just say go to culturemattersbook.com okay, perfect. And there’s a bunch of pre order material. So if you pre order it before February 11th, you’re going to get the first three chapters of the book, you’re going to get a workbook, you’re going to get a masterclass, everything to kind of get you going on actually implementing the framework. But that also takes you to my website where you can just connect with me. I’m on all the social media channels at Jenny Catron.

Chris Goede:
So thank you, thank you for being here with us today. As I wrap up, I’m gonna give a couple of thoughts. You know, we talk a lot about values and understanding that and I think what we talked about today and even in the book, you’ll learn a lot more about that driving the culture. And a couple of things I wrote down was it’s our guide for decision making as a leader. Right? I heard you talking about, hey, our CEO, we got it as the leadership team. But then that that level had to get it. Well, that’s also with the engagement level of an organization too, right? Like the people that work for you. The engagement level is driven by you, not necessarily the CEO.

Chris Goede:
It’s the same thing with the values and the culture. We have to live this out at every single part of our organization because it shapes the behavior. It’s how we attract and retain talent. Right? Like, how are we showing up every day? Do people want to stay there? We have a phrase we talk about where we say how people experience you is how they then begin to expect you or how you’re going to show up. And by the way, that’s your leadership brand. And so hopefully that brand of yours is in alignment with the culture of the organization that you’re working in. Otherwise, we might be creating a word we don’t like around here, which is subcultures from where that organization really wants to be. So thank you so much for being here, pouring into us and writing the book.

Chris Goede:
There’s not enough content out there on culture and the importance of it, and we’re glad to have you. So, Perry, why don’t you close that?

Perry Holley:
What a great conversation. As a reminder, if you’d like to get those great offers that Jenny made, you can go to culturemattersbook.com and follow the directions there and you’ll get some extra downloads and some things you can use. If you’d like to leave us a comment or a question to learn more about our offerings or other podcasts in our podcast family, you can do [email protected] podcast we always love hearing from you. We’re very grateful you’d spend this time with us. That’s all today from the Maxwell Leadership Executive Podcast.

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