Keep Leading!® Podcast Episode 008 | Catalysts of Culture | Julie Ann Sullivan

Hello, everyone. This is Eddie Turner, the host of the Keep Leading Podcast. Today’s episode features a business culture expert. Her name is Julie Ann Sullivan. She’s one of my dear friends and she is going to tell us how visionary leaders can activate the employee experience. This is important in today’s organizations and we’re going to learn why it matters, right after this.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Keep Leading Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and leadership insights. I’m your host Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact.I am very excited about my guest today. She’s one of my favorite people. She’s a business culture expert who hails from the City of Bridges. I am excited about Julie Ann Sullivan.

Julie Ann, add welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks so much. You’re one of my favorite people too. So this’ll just be a love fest.

Well, thank you. Julie Ann, I was reading your bio and it’s so extensive. I’d just love that you tell people a little bit about your background.

Oh geez, it’s a pretty interesting one. I started off with a Bachelor’s degree in psychology and then I kind of ran away to the high sierras for awhile, seven years. And then I came back and got an MBA in Accounting and was in Accounting and Finance for thirty year. And then I didn’t want to learn one more aspect or one more bit of information about Accounting or Tax or anything related. So I knew I had to quit because no matter what you do for me anyway, to do it well you got to keep learning. So I quit and one day I decided “I’m going to be a professional speaker,” not knowing what that meant. I went down that road and I discovered due to my lifelong learning about human behavior combined with 30 years of understanding how businesses work, I had this great combination to go in and understand how businesses work from the inside out. That’s my story in a nutshell.

Well, thank you. So, when I met you, I did not know you were an accountant actually until I was preparing for the episode and read your bio and I went “She’s an accountant. She’s a CPA.” I knew you were smart and I knew were witty but I did not know that about you because you and I met at the C-Suite Network, we were part of the Founding 100 C-Suite Advisors.

Yes, we were.

And you and your great friends went on to produce an amazing book, you all put this thing out in like six months, I think, and it became a bestseller. So we’ve been operating in the same circles from that perspective and you have a couple of different podcasts you’ve produced, and you had me as a guest on your podcast. So we spent a lot of time together, including you show made the beautiful city of Pittsburgh and why it is indeed the City of Bridges.

Absolutely. Yeah, the podcast has really morphed and now I am speaking to C-Suite leaders about how they’ve already created and sustained great cultures. And my extensive research now is with over 50 leaders. So there’s a lot of good information I have now.

50 leaders. Can you tell us a little bit about that? I know that it’s like asking a mom about her favorite child but can you tell us that which ones may stand out a little bit more than the other, not necessarily your favorite?

Wow! Because there’s a lot of consultants I’ve talked to also along with that but with the companies, well, in my new book, I picked 14 of my favorites but I don’t know, it’s really hard to pick favorites. I would say one of them is Cheryl Simmons who is a CHRO from Maestro Health.

And for my listeners who may not know what that means, can you tell us?

Yes. So that is a Chief Human Resources Officer. Cheryl’s just a great person and she has built a great organization, a great culture from the time people step in the door to when they leave. They actually have parties for people who leave.

Wow! They have parties when I leave places too but it’s for different reasons.

Well, she was telling me the story that she really wants to nurture and grow the people who work in our company and sometimes they can get a promotion that they don’t have a space for them to do in their company. So she feels like “If I really care about them, why would I stifle their growth?” So they congratulate them on their way out. Now those people send them great new employees, great clients, and sometimes they come back.

How about that?

Yeah. So that one that I really like. Another one, and like I said, I won’t say any of these are my favorite favorites, they’re just coming to my head right now, one that isn’t in the new book Catalysts of Culture is a man named Ashley Winnett. When I talked to him, he was the Head of HR for GM Australia. And since we spoke, he is now the Global Talent And Acquisition Officer for GM around the world. I told them that must have been because of the podcast but one of the ideas they had was him and his CEO used to have monthly town hall meetings at their offices. And the idea about the meetings was that they wanted to talk about rumors that were going around the company so that they could address them instead of them being out of control and very difficult to kind of wheel back. And I thought that was a brilliant idea.

That is a brilliant idea. Taking control of the narrative, huh?

Exactly, and instead of thinking that doesn’t happen because we all know it happens all the time.

You’ve got to believe it.

Yeah. So those are two of my favorites. And I guess, another favorite would be Katherine Munson. She is completely transparent with the people in her workforce financially. I mean, completely transparent. They know all of the financials. And what she has found … I mean, they do so many wonderful actions within that company to create a great culture, it’s quite amazing.

Yeah, we got a chance to meet her at one of our events. So that’s great that you used her as a part of your research and got a chance to know her well. That’s wonderful.

Yeah. So what she has found by being transparent is people turn off the lights because they know what the electricity bill is and things like that or they’ll reuse something they would have normally thrown away. So those are just little but everything adds up. And what do those people feel like? They feel like they’re responsible for the company as a whole and that’s what you want.

That makes a big difference. So you’ve said the name of your book in passing a couple of times. We don’t we spotlight it right now. Give us the full name of the book and the subtitle this time, please.

Okay, it’s called Catalysts of Culture: How Visionary Leaders Activate the Employee Experience.

Wow! What a powerful title!

Thank you. Well, I started out in my career with employee engagement but that has really expanded to the employee experience which starts when somebody goes to a job site, whether it be on Indeed or on your own website, and follows through all the way to when employee leaves. Employees used to leave companies and they would say “Well, don’t burn your bridges” but now that holds true for the employer as well. You don’t want people to leave angry or upset. That doesn’t do anything good for your company or your workforce.

Absolutely. One of my mentors taught me that the customer experience will never exceed the employee experience for that very reason that you’re talking about.

That is absolutely true. In fact, I was on Shep Hyken’s podcast once and that’s exactly what we talked about, kind of like garbage in garbage out. Good culture. Good service.

Well, he’s definitely the customer service guru.

Yes, he is.

Wonderful. So what was the genesis of the book? Was it the research that you had done? Was it the podcasts themselves that you mentioned earlier, at some point you decided you we’re going to put these altogether? How did you arrive at this because you sprang away from being an accountant to your business experience? Tell me about that a little bit.

Well, last year I produced a book called The Blueprint For Employee Engagement and I really wasn’t going to do another book but I was very blessed to have a publisher come to me and say “We’d like to publish your next book.”

How cool is that?!

Yes. I wasn’t going to say “Nah, I don’t want to do that.” So I decided to share some of this research, sort to speak, of all these people I’ve talked to and I noticed that there were four attributes that all of these leaders had in common. And I’ve got to tell you with all of these leaders I’ve interviewed, I have never done the same industry or size of a company twice. They’re small. They’re big. They’re well known. They’re little known. They’re real estate. They’re digital. They’re selling signs, selling instruments, or attorneys and accountants. So they’re all over the place. So I decided to put together these four attributes to let people know “Hey, my whole thing is I want to share this information with others so that they can implement these ideas in their companies because when they have better workplaces, we have better citizens in the universe. So it effects all of us.”

Pretty nice.

So the book lays out the four attributes and then it contains 14 of the interviews that I have done. And it was really hard picking 14 but I’ve seven women and seven men.

So what about the four attributes? Can you share those?

Sure. The first attribute is listening. The second attribute is being open to new ideas beyond your own. The third attribute is being a lifelong learner not only for yourself but your entire workforce and not necessarily related to the work that you do. And number four is creating a safe place. That’s them in a nutshell. You have to read the book for the rest.

So I take it that LOLS is an acronym.

Isn’t that funny? I just thought out it the other day. I love that.

All right. So listen, open to new ideas, be a lifelong learner. And the S, I missed that one.

Create a safe place.

Safe place.

And that means physically, emotionally and spiritually.

Very nice because if I’m not feeling safe at work what’s the consequence?

Well communication is lousy, right? I mean that’s number one. If you don’t feel like you’re working in a safe place, you’re not going to step up and say “You know what, this doesn’t work.” That’s what happened at GM, right? Nobody said anything and then they have these billion dollar recalls. So that’s one of the things that happens. People can’t grow if they’re not in the safe environment because nobody’s talking to one another. Communication is really effected in a grand way when there isn’t this safe feeling. And I think that all stems from trust. And that is earned, right? You don’t walk in really say “Hey, trust me” and everybody trusts you. That’s not how trust works. And that’s not how people feel inside about “Ami I in a safe place? Can I really say “Hey, I’ve got a new idea, right?”” So creativity is crushed as well when you’re not in a safe environment.Now the physical is obvious but in this newest generation that’s coming into the workplace, that is going to be super key for them because they’ve grown up with the ‘Me Too’ movement and too many mass shootings. So that’s a part of the fabric of their soul. And so that’s going to become even more important. Every generation has their … I don’t want to say their issues, they have the life they’ve lived through, they have similarities that is different from another generation. So I’m not real big on separating the generations. I’m more inclined to find out what’s the commonalities and understand and respect what those differences are so that as a company or an organization we understand how to respect that and support that. And it’s going to be different for millennials and it’s going to be different for whatever this new generation is called. And guess what, there’s going to be another generation behind them and their worries or concerns are going to be different because the world they’re living in will be different.

Okay. Well, very nice.At this time we’d like to pause for a word from our sponsor.

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All right, we’re talking to Julie Ann Sullivan. She is a business culture expert hailing from the City of Bridges and one of my favorite people and she’s telling us about her new book Catalysts of Culture: How Visionary Leaders Activate The Employee Experience.

So can you tell us a little bit more Juliana about internal culture? What makes that so important?

Well, when a person walks in the door in the morning, even before they get there, their attitude about where they work really sets the tone for their entire day at home, with their family, with their friends, and with their colleagues. People work their best when they feel good about going to work, right? Are you one of those people that gets up and goes “Oh, it’s Monday. I got another week of work?” or are you excited – “Wow! I get to go to work. I wonder what we’re going to create together this week. I wonder what new facet is going to be introduced to us. I wonder what I’m going to learn.” And you can even here in my voice the difference between that but that’s how people come into the world every day, right? They have an attitude. Well, that attitude equals what’s happening production wise, what’s happening creativity wise, what’s happening connection wise. And when you lack connection within a company, it’s hard to grow. If you have people working in their little silos and never interacting with one another, your company is missing out on some great insights, not only that but through my work with laughter, as you may also know I’m a certified laughter leader and trainer …

No, I did not know that.

Well, let’s just put that out there, but in my training for that which is very science based, it’s been proven in research that many people who are happier also are healthier.

Many people who are happy are also healthier. I’ll buy that.

Yeah. So that’s another way that culture makes a difference because, again, it changes the attitude of the person and how they’re feeling every day. And when they’re less stressed, they sleep better and, overall, they have better health, which means they’re coming to work more often and they’re coming to work more often with a clear head.

Yeah, and it makes a difference not only for that individual but for the temperature of the culture, would you say?

Absolutely because everybody affects everybody. We all have been in situations where there’s the one person who brings everyone down and that can happen. Those toxic people exist. And a good organization knows how to remove those people or if they weren’t like that before, find out what’s created that so they can help them through it.

Have you encountered an example of something like that in your career or through one of the people you’ve interviewed?

Yeah. So there was a company and it was an auto repair shop but it was pretty big. It wasn’t like your neighborhood … And they had a supervisor that just was … He was a dream. He’d been in the business for the long time. He knew cars inside and out. He was a great mentor to new people who were coming up. And all of a sudden he just wasn’t doing as good a job as he used to. His supervisor didn’t know what to do and someone asked him “Did you have a conversation with this person?” And the supervisor looked at that person like a deer in headlights – “No, I never thought of.” And I know that sounds ridiculous but you’d be surprised how many times people don’t have conversations with people. Well, to make a long story short, they found out that this man had cancer and he didn’t want to tell anyone because he was afraid they would think he wasn’t doing a good job when, in fact, that’s what people were thinking anyway. The end of the story is everyone rallied around him, supported him through his treatments, helped him, drove him, sat with him and everything was great. He kept his job. He did what he needed to do. He took the time off because he wasn’t even asking for the time off needed, right? So when he should have been home resting, he was at work not working his best. And that was really the story – all that could have been changed by building a culture in which people can talk to one another.

Isn’t that something! So, the fear of …

Reprisal?

Yes.

I don’t want to say that. That’s kind of strong but you know what I mean. The fear of “Ooh, people will think I’m slacking because I have cancer.” Even I would say “That’s absurd” but it’s real for some people and we have to accept that. That was that man’s reality.

Yes. So the question is how many people are going to work with this same fear because of the company that they’re working for? How many people are hiding something. In fact, something my wife share with me that I did not know is sometimes women are forced to hide their pregnancies to a certain point because they have a similar fear. And I had no idea.

Yeah or there’s a lot of people now taking care of their parents.

Yes.

And being a caretaker is really difficult. I interviewed the president of a very large real estate company once in the very early days of Businesses That Care Podcast. And all of their workers are contractors, right? They can leave anytime they want. And what they did was they had a series of people come in and talk about areas that had nothing to do with real estate. So they had financial planners come in. They had people come in and talk about when your parents age. They had people come in and talk about kids and how to raise kids and better ways to raise kids and information they needed to know. They had people come in and talk about different areas of health, exercise, and food. So they were creating an atmosphere where those people who could leave anytime they wanted felt like they were part of a family – “These people care about me. They want me to be a whole being.” That’s what’s happened, right? We’ve gone from wellness to wellbeing. We’ve gone from employee engagement to the employee experience. The idea of leaving your personal life at home doesn’t exist anymore in good cultures. We know you’re a complete being and that’s who we want here.

Yes, we must bring our whole selves to work.

We do anyway.

So you make a good point and that is this new category of caregiver. And in fact I had a student this weekend and we were teaching a program and he talked about the challenge he was facing working on his graduate degree, holding down his job and carrying for his mother who he is now in the position of being the only child, having to make sure that she is cared for on a daily basis now as opposed to be able to pop in once a week and it definitely changes a person’s priorities and also, to your point, how they show up at work.

Absolutely, absolutely. It’s so important. Millennials came into the workplace and said “You have to care about me as a human being” and I love them for that. I don’t know if we have time but I can share a story with you about how I’ve been an early adapter millennial, if you like.

Sure, go right ahead.

So, in my days before I had any skills, I was working as the head maid in a condo complex in a ski resort.

Okay.

And I worked for a guy who was the most negative human being I’ve ever been around. I was born to positivity. It’s just a part of my nature. And we were going through what was going on in the condominium complex one day and I just looked at him, I was 23 years old, I had no money, I didn’t even have a bank account because I didn’t have enough money to have in a bank account, right? I was living beyond paycheck to paycheck. And I looked at him and I said “Bob, you’re the most negative person I know. You never have anything positive to say. If we discuss something and it’s working, you just move on. You just can’t wait to find something negative to say.” And he looked at me and said “Well, that’s the way it is. If you don’t like it, you can quit.” And you know what I did?

You quit.

I opened my mouth, and I said “Okay, today’s my last day.”

All right.

Because even then I knew that’s not a good way to live.

And did you regret the decision?

Heck, no. And I was being nice there.

Okay, thank you. We have a multi-generational audience.

So, no, I didn’t regret it at all, like I said. So when everyone started talking about millennials and they’re so difficult, I don’t think they’re difficult at all. I think they want you to care about them as a human being. And the boomers, because of their history, they were so glad to have a job that most of them, not all of them because I’m one too, most of them were so grateful to have a job, they just put their head down and did whatever but millennials lived a different life. And I love … I mean, I don’t think you can find even a boomer that would say “Oh no, I don’t want you to care about me as a human being.” You know what I mean? They brought something to the table that should be, and I don’t like to use the word ‘should’, but should be universal, in my humble opinion.

Well, I will take that. So, Julie Ann, as I think about what we’ve discussed, it sounds like that the overriding fame for our listeners to take away from today’s episode is that culture needs should part of the very fabric of the company and it’s something that people do every day. It is a journey. It’s not a destination.

Absolutely. The first time I ever did a keynote on employee engagement, I said “If anybody comes to you and says “Hey, if you let me come to your company for two hours, we can change your culture,” run as fast as you can.” And I was just thinking about that today because I have a client right now who’s imploding but they haven’t reached their bottom yet. They keep imploding a little bit more and a little bit more but they’re not ready to make the leap. And it made me realize how deep do you want your hole to get before you try and climb out of it? If it’s 2 inches deep, it’s a lot easier than if it’s 20 feet deep. Culture isn’t done overnight. In fact, the research now shows that it takes about 18 months for culture to really become the norm when you first start working on it. And people who have great cultures know that they constantly have to find new ways and have new ideas to continue to build their culture. And when you say it needs to be the fabric of the company, just like you come in and, let’s say, you have to fill out a form or there’s something, a procedure you need to do in your work, that’s how culture should be too. It’s not just a holiday party. It’s not just a summer picnic. It’s something that happens on a regular basis, something that people can count on. And those are the types of ideas I work with companies to come up with so that something is happening every day so that people are reminded “Hey, I work in a great place.”

I love it.So, on the Keep Leading Podcast, Julie Ann, we want leaders to have a plethora of ideas they can call from as they go about their daily activities as leaders. Do you have a word of advice or a leadership quote that you can share with our leaders?

There are, again, so many but I’m going to pick this one from Nido Qubein who is the President of High Point University and just an incredible humanitarian, a philanthropist, businessman, and just one of the brightest people that I know and he has a great way of making simple ideas great ideas. And his quote is “Don’t mistake the difficult for the impossible.” And I have at hanging in front of my face every day.

Don’t mistake the difficult for the impossible. I love that. Well, I believe that our leaders will benefit from those words of wisdom from Nido Qubein. Thank you for sharing those words of wisdom with us and thank you for telling us about your book. And your book will be going live, your first book that you’ve mentioned, Blueprint For Employee Engagement: Thirty Seven Essential Elements To Influence, Innovate And Inspire. It’s an international bestseller. It’s already on Amazon but when will this book be available, Catalysts Of Culture?

Catalysts Of Culture is ready for pre-sale right now at JulieAnnSullivan.com/Culture, to make it easy, and it will be released or you can go to Amazon and buy it there too but if you want to signed copy, you can go to my website. And it will be released on June 25th and I’m really excited about that.

I’m marking my calendar now. Wonderful.

Yeah, it’s going to be really great and I am very honored to have Jeffrey Hayslett write the forward for the book and I have wonderful endorsements from Marshall Goldsmith and Ken Blanchard.

You don’t play around, do you? That’s impressive, very impressive. We had Jeffrey on the podcast last week. It was amazing. Of course he’s larger than life. And, yes, I love Jeffrey. He’s the man.

Me too, love him dearly.

So where can my listeners find out more about you? You gave us the website for the book but what are other social media sites you live on?

Well, if you Google me “Julie Ann Sullivan’, you’ll find me all over the place but you can go to JulieAnnSullivan.com or you can go to BusinessesThatCarePodcast.com or you can find Businesses That Care on iTunes or Google Play, now I’m on Spotify, anywhere you listen a podcasts. LinkedIn, Twitter, all over the place. You can find me if you want to.

All right. We’ll make sure they can because we’ll put this in the show notes for those who are driving or whatever they’re doing as they’re listening to our podcast. We’ll make sure they have access to you, okay?

Great. Thanks so much. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you. Gland to be on your podcast.

Thank you Julie Ann. I’m so glad you were a guest today and we look forward to connecting soon.

Bye.

Well, that concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, the Leadership Excelerator, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.