The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:40:10
Kevin Eikenberry
If you think about, talk about, wonder or worry about culture, what it is and what you would like it to be, then you are in the right place. Stay where you are to gain new insights and ideas and you will leave inspired as well as enlightened. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders make a bigger difference in the world by growing themselves personally and professionally to help their teams, organizations, and the world be a better place.

00:00:40:12 - 00:01:02:11
Kevin Eikenberry
If you are listening to this podcast, you could be with us live in the future. When we're doing this and doing it on your favorite social media channel, I suppose there could be a channel that we're not on, and it would, so it wouldn't be your favorite, but you get the idea. You can find out when we're having live episodes, so you can join us and therefore interact with us, see them sooner.

00:01:02:12 - 00:01:24:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Like today's episode is not going to be live on the podcast. If you're listening to the podcast, you will have heard this like two and a half months after it was live. So you're going to get access to any and all of that. Just go to our Facebook or LinkedIn pages. Groups. Excuse me. You can join us at remarkable podcast.com/facebook or remarkable podcast.com/linked in.

00:01:24:16 - 00:01:49:15
Kevin Eikenberry
For those of you live, we're not going to be doing many of these lives for the next few weeks because we're getting ready to release my new book. And so this episode is brought to you by my new book, Flexible Leadership. Navigate uncertainty and Lead with confidence. It's time to realize that styles can get in our way, and that following our strengths might not always be the best approach in a world that is more complex and uncertain than ever.

00:01:49:18 - 00:02:09:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Leaders need a new perspective and a new set of tools to create the great results that organizations and team members want and need. And that's what flexible leadership provide you. Learn more and order your copy today at Remarkable podcast.com/flexible. And with that I'm going to bring in my guest who you are going to love because I already do.

00:02:09:17 - 00:02:41:15
Kevin Eikenberry
Her name is Laura Hammel. She is an organizational psychologist and ex Microsoft director and Ally Made co-founder, which is an employee experience software company. Through her firm Paris Phoenix Group. She advises companies on how to transform their cultures. She's also the host, a host at Happy at Work podcast. Her new book and the source of our conversation today is The Power of Culture Bringing Values to Life at work.

00:02:41:21 - 00:02:44:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Laura, welcome.

00:02:44:09 - 00:02:48:09
Laura Hamill
Hi Kevin, thanks so much for having me. This is going to be fun.

00:02:48:11 - 00:03:09:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Super duper excited. This meeting also gets the prize this year so far of the most colorful book you've had. So yeah, it's a lot to do with that. I'm so glad that you're here. So? So how do you end up? And I know this is your first book because we talked, a little bit about the journey that gets you to this book.

00:03:09:23 - 00:03:37:12
Laura Hamill
Yeah. Yeah. So it's a long journey. And really where it comes from is most of my career, I've been working for over 30 years. I'm an organizational psychologist, as you said. And so I study, work. And along that journey of my career, what I've really seen over and over again and really any topic I'm working on, any, any subject matter, you have to understand culture.

00:03:37:14 - 00:04:00:22
Laura Hamill
And so really, in so many ways, culture has been the thing that gets in the way of the work that I've done. And so I had to really start to study it because it was what was holding me back and what was holding the work back in a lot of ways. So it's been to me something that, has been like a little bit of an enigma, like, what's going on here?

00:04:00:22 - 00:04:22:16
Laura Hamill
What is that? The culture piece always stump us. And so because of that, I started to really study it and started to dig into it. And in fact, I I've had lots of chances to study it from more of a scientific or research perspective. Right. But then I also was a chief people officer, you know, that I lived it.

00:04:22:17 - 00:04:46:21
Laura Hamill
And so that's when it was just really hit me, is there's such a disconnect between the practice of culture and the science of culture. And so that's why I wanted to write this book. I wanted to really bridge that gap and show we can stay true to the science. But let's talk about what do you practically do? How can you practically operational like something that's so complex as culture?

00:04:46:23 - 00:05:02:07
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, that's, that's a that's a perfect way to say. And I think that's what this book does. And that's that's exactly, what we try to do with leadership in the broader sense is how do we make it? How do we take something extraordinarily complex and, and make it more practical and actionable? And what can we do?

00:05:02:07 - 00:05:20:14
Kevin Eikenberry
And I have to tell you that, I read a lot of books, for this show, among, along with other reading that I do. And this book delivers on that. We're going to talk about a lot of those things here in a second. But I want to get to like I have. I wrote a question and then I thought about another version of the same question.

00:05:20:14 - 00:05:34:20
Kevin Eikenberry
So I'm going to ask both. And then you can you can parse it out however you like. Sure. So, it looks like I froze there for just an instant, but here we are. So, the first is why is the why the word power?

00:05:34:22 - 00:05:35:15
Laura Hamill
Yeah.

00:05:35:17 - 00:05:55:07
Kevin Eikenberry
And the related question is, why has culture become such a big deal? Like, this is one of the buzzwords, right? If we're playing the buzzword bingo thing, it's going to be on everybody's card. So why is it such a big deal and why the word power? I think the answers are probably connected. So go ahead.

00:05:55:07 - 00:06:20:12
Laura Hamill
They're completely they're completely connected. So I wanted to call the book The Power of Culture for two reasons. The first reason is I have been really fortunate enough to work in a place where we we worked on our culture, and I felt the positive aspects of power, of culture, sorry, the positive aspects when it goes well, how amazing it can feel.

00:06:20:14 - 00:06:37:20
Laura Hamill
And this is one of the companies that I helped co-found that you mentioned in the beginning called linemate. We had something pretty amazing and pretty special, and we were really intentional about our culture. And I felt that. I felt how how beautiful that that can feel. And so that was that was one of the reasons why I want to call that.

00:06:37:20 - 00:06:58:02
Laura Hamill
And in fact, getting to your question, your point about how colorful the cover is, that's supposed to be a sunshine, because the sunshine kind of analogy is a perfect one for when culture is going well. Right? It's just it's radiant. It's life giving. When you have a culture that's that's positive. So that's one reason I wanted to power culture.

00:06:58:02 - 00:07:11:23
Laura Hamill
But the second reason was really about the role leaders play in forming culture. And I don't think we talk about power in organizations as much as maybe we should. And so the idea.

00:07:12:01 - 00:07:14:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Here, it's gotten some sort of negative.

00:07:14:12 - 00:07:23:09
Laura Hamill
Right. Completely. It's only we're only thinking about in terms of how power corrupts, which we know it does, can.

00:07:23:09 - 00:07:25:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Well or that it can.

00:07:25:02 - 00:07:56:21
Laura Hamill
And right. But it also can be an amazing, beautiful tool that we can use to help people come together and do really hard things together. And that's the part, that I really wanted to emphasize, too, is the role that leaders can play in. And a lot of my work, I see that leaders don't really understand that they don't embrace their own leadership and don't take advantage of opportunities to bring people together, to help people see something bigger, to help them feel empowered.

00:07:57:02 - 00:08:19:15
Laura Hamill
They they, they break them down instead of building them up. And so the role of power in forming culture is really an important piece of this, because leaders really have to be the first ones, the main ones talking about culture. From my perspective, they're the ones who people look to. They're the ones who've kind of made it in the system.

00:08:19:17 - 00:08:30:20
Laura Hamill
And so when somebody comes into an organization, they look to the people who've made it in the system, right? It's just sort of logical. Who are these people who've made it here? Let me look to them. Excited.

00:08:31:01 - 00:08:33:12
Kevin Eikenberry
What's the game? How do I play this game?

00:08:33:14 - 00:08:52:11
Laura Hamill
Completely. And, they learn a lot from people who are in positions of power. And what I worry about is that many times, people in positions of power don't understand that lots of almost everything they do and say and don't do and say is being interpreted through the lens of culture.

00:08:52:13 - 00:09:15:14
Kevin Eikenberry
On the. Yeah, I often say that, leadership isn't a power grab, but the most effective leaders have plenty of extra power granted to them. And, so yeah, I'm right with that. So, we've gone far enough, you wrote a book with culture in the title. We probably ought to get your definition because I like your definition.

00:09:15:14 - 00:09:25:15
Kevin Eikenberry
It's a little different than than many others is a little different than mine. And that's, which is totally fine, but I really want you to share your definition. Then I've got some questions about it.

00:09:25:17 - 00:09:48:02
Laura Hamill
Sure. So the the thing about culture, I think a lot of people come and say there's so, you know, nobody knows what the definition is. Well, there actually has been a lot of really great research and there's some really great perspectives, especially Edgar Allen, who was the grandfather of culture. And he really believed that culture was the underlying values, norms and beliefs of the organization.

00:09:48:04 - 00:10:23:07
Laura Hamill
So it's it's what's deep down and what is under the surface. And you can use the typical iceberg analogy, right? It's not the stuff on the surface. It's not the stuff you see. It's why we do those things. It's what's deep down underneath. It's the underlying meaning behind things. And I always want to use an example, if you think about just a super, very simple example of walking into a new company or business you've never been in before, you walk in and you, you go into the lobby and you really notice that it's busy.

00:10:23:09 - 00:10:53:06
Laura Hamill
There's a lot of people walking all around. It feels kind of frenetic. Busy is actually not the culture. What's the culture is? Why is it busy? So is it busy because people are excited about a new innovation, something really cool that's happening? Or is it busy because we're disjointed and there's all kinds of problems that are happening? Or could it be that we're busy just because being busy is what's valued?

00:10:53:06 - 00:11:25:10
Laura Hamill
Just having activity and without a whole lot of meaning is actually valued. So we don't know on that part. This on the surface of being busy is not the culture. What's culture is why is it that way? Why are we experiencing it that way. And so that's why it's it's really important for us to understand culture. And this is, this is also another reason why I wrote this book, because I think there's so many things that are so interesting about culture, just the very nature of it that causes us to be to have so many.

00:11:25:12 - 00:11:53:06
Laura Hamill
It's so hard and elusive because of its very nature. Right. So one of the one of the obvious ones is the idea that when you first start in an organization, you can see it. It's very obvious. But after you've been there a little while, you can't even see the culture. So you've probably you might have heard the idea of, you know, there's a goldfish, you know, that it's swimming in water, the water is the culture.

00:11:53:06 - 00:12:16:09
Laura Hamill
And and we become part of it. So much so that we can't see it anymore. So how do you study something? How do you change something that you can't even see once you're part of it? So that to me is just like one example, example of something that's so characteristic of culture and so interesting about it, and also what's makes it really hard for us to do work on it.

00:12:16:11 - 00:12:41:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So the phrase that you use, in, in the, in your official definition includes the word, the collective set of reasons why. And you've, you've now described that to us. And that's, I think the thing that, is super important about this book, because you've also just described something else I think is really important, that what culture isn't, even though you haven't said it.

00:12:41:23 - 00:12:56:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Exactly. And that is culture isn't climate. And yet climate is super important too. Yeah. So let's talk about that difference. Why the difference matters a little bit.

00:12:56:14 - 00:13:18:10
Laura Hamill
Yes. Oh most people Kevin, go ask me this question. They don't want to dig in this deep. I love this. So it's not most people. Let's just you're not most people. You're not I love it. So this is a really important distinction. And I think in we spend a lot of time in organizations at the climate level. So most employee surveys are asking you questions about climate.

00:13:18:15 - 00:13:48:06
Laura Hamill
So the easy way to think about climate is just the temperature. Right. What what does it kind of feel like here. There's a lot of good reasons why we care about that. Absolutely. But what's missing from that is what I mentioned before. What's down deep and underneath. So you can keep focusing at the climate level. But a lot of times what you'll find is that you can't change some of the things of the climate level because you're not addressing things at the culture level.

00:13:48:08 - 00:14:24:07
Laura Hamill
So you can think about things at the climate level being, things like, behaviors and practices and systems that you can that you can change pretty, pretty easily. But deep down underneath is, the culture, the the norms and the values and beliefs, and they really have to work together. So let me just give you an example so you can think about on an employee survey, we might care about whether or not somebody feels like they've had the opportunity to have to take advantage of a professional development, a class or a workshop.

00:14:24:09 - 00:14:46:19
Laura Hamill
Have you had have you had a chance to to work on your professional development? So we might ask that question over and over again in an employee survey or, you know, care about that and have some really cool tools that we offer up to people. But then when you dig in a little deeper, what you might find is that we actually don't have a growth mindset in this organization.

00:14:46:19 - 00:15:12:04
Laura Hamill
We don't actually fundamentally believe that people can change or get better or improve, or that it's okay to make a mistake or it's okay to try new things, right? So you can say you have all these chances to do these professional development things at a climate level, but at a cultural level, if we fundamentally don't believe that people can can grow, we've got a huge disconnect and so.

00:15:12:06 - 00:15:15:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Then even if we do offer them, something isn't going to make it if.

00:15:15:11 - 00:15:43:00
Laura Hamill
It doesn't make any difference. And this is what I just think is so interesting in organizations, we don't go there, we just don't go to the culture level. In most cases, we stay at the surface and we talk about our, really cool air programs. But we don't talk about what about the culture might be holding us back from actually having these things come to life in the way we want them to.

00:15:43:02 - 00:15:48:03
Laura Hamill
And so culture and climate really go hand in hand, and both or both are important.

00:15:48:05 - 00:16:11:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And one of the things that we do, we counsel clients on is as you're working on culture and climate, whichever or both of those you're defining, one of the things that leaders have to do is say they have to run decisions through that filter. Yeah, right. Because that's how we start to really change. Like, okay, well, if we're not going to if this isn't going to match the culture and climate, then why not?

00:16:11:21 - 00:16:37:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And and that's one of the ways that we find that helps get people to go a little deeper and figure that out a little bit. And so I really, really love this. Another thing that we are in alignment on, and I've written a lot about is, is the idea of aspirational culture. And you spend a good bit of time in the book talking about actual versus aspirational or aspire to you use both phrases.

00:16:37:21 - 00:17:03:20
Kevin Eikenberry
So yeah, talk about that because like, I'll just start here. I think there are a lot of CEOs and I'll talk about bigger companies, but I don't think it has to necessarily be a bigger company who would say, well, our culture is and what they follow with that is the yes, which is well, you know, there was this whole TV show called Undercover Boss where people figured out a whole lot about how the fact that what they thought it was, it really was.

00:17:03:22 - 00:17:04:12
Laura Hamill


00:17:04:13 - 00:17:09:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Talk about the difference, why that's important, why both are important for us to think about.

00:17:09:07 - 00:17:33:04
Laura Hamill
Yeah, absolutely. And I'm glad that at least they have an answer when they were talking about their culture that it's about, you know, I actually met a CEO. We didn't know his own company values. And so that's a problem. But to to your point, your culture is probably not the same as the values that are on your website.

00:17:33:06 - 00:18:00:04
Laura Hamill
And what is really important, I think, is for leaders to understand that, that there's a gap. Do they even have any understanding of how big that gap is for most organizations? They haven't really done the work to understand what is our actual culture right now. How would people describe what we really value here, and how does that compare to these values?

00:18:00:06 - 00:18:22:19
Laura Hamill
And that is the work, right? How do we close that gap? How do we make it so that there's more of a Venn diagram, an overlap between those two circles, between the culture we want to have and the culture we actually have? And, you know, even just the words we use sometimes I spend time, with people just helping people understand what our values relative to culture are.

00:18:22:20 - 00:18:46:02
Laura Hamill
Values, values. If you think about your company's values, this is a small set of the most important cultural attributes that we think are going to help us be successful if we focus on this small set of cultural attributes are the most important to who we are and who we want to be. And but it's also not our whole culture.

00:18:46:04 - 00:19:07:04
Laura Hamill
Right? It's there's much more to us than this set of five words. And so I think sometimes I have to remind people of that too. Right? There's a much more kind of comprehensive, bigger picture here. But doing the work to understand where we are now and where where the gaps are between where we are and what these values are, is really important.

00:19:07:06 - 00:19:23:03
Laura Hamill
I'm so glad that most organizations have at least tried to articulate where they want to go. From a values perspective, that's really great, but the real hard work is how you actually make that come to life, right? How you start. Yes.

00:19:23:03 - 00:19:24:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Here. Yeah.

00:19:24:10 - 00:19:51:15
Laura Hamill
And and most of the time we haven't really done that comparison of what we said we wanted to be these things. But where are we now relative to that? When I do that work with clients, what I find is that oftentimes there's 1 or 2 values that actually they're pretty strong. Like people experience those. They they bring those words up when they talk about the culture.

00:19:51:17 - 00:20:24:14
Laura Hamill
And that's really that's great. But what are those other words, those other values that maybe aren't consistently brought up or experience? What are we doing to make those come to life? And that's what I think a lot of organizations need to be thinking about, is the experience of the culture and how that actually is something that's real. I do this really simple exercise, and it's, and it almost feels like a little bit of a, like a, smoke and mirrors kind of thing.

00:20:24:14 - 00:20:45:14
Laura Hamill
But I have people and when I do workshops on these topics, I have people, come in and just give me like the top five words that come to mind when they think about their culture. Just top of mind. What are the things? Write them down. And then a few minutes later, after I talk about some of the things and come back to that and they say, okay, now what are your company values?

00:20:45:16 - 00:21:10:18
Laura Hamill
And I tell them that I'm not trying to like, make them feel bad. This is not culture values shaming. This is just like, do you even know them? Right? Which is really interesting. Do you, you know, know where to find them and you have a key card or do you look them up on your phone? And then when you actually see them and look at them, you know, do they, do you remember them?

00:21:10:23 - 00:21:34:15
Laura Hamill
And so that is that is a kind of an interesting exercise. But then what I have them do is now compare your company values to that list of the five words that you came up with earlier about what how you would describe your culture. This is a little really, really unscientific culture assessment. You can compare your current culture to the culture that you give a company's legacy.

00:21:34:16 - 00:21:53:00
Laura Hamill
And what's the difference there? Right? Do you see like, is there any overlap at all or any of the same words used? Or, you know, some people say is actually their opposite, like the words I wrote down were the opposite of our values? Yeah. So this is.

00:21:53:06 - 00:22:13:04
Kevin Eikenberry
There's there's the stuff of our values that overlap. I think about your Venn diagram, but then there are the ones to your point now that are the lived values aren't on that. But it's not just that we're not doing all of our best and all the ones that are listed, like we got stuff in our culture this one might even do your point.

00:22:13:06 - 00:22:14:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Opposite.

00:22:14:15 - 00:22:30:01
Laura Hamill
Exactly, exactly. And to me, there's some really pretty simple, straightforward work that organizations can do around that. I'm just being clear and more thoughtful about what's happening with their culture and how their values are really experienced.

00:22:30:03 - 00:22:53:03
Kevin Eikenberry
I knew, I told, I told you this before we went live that this could go way longer. Like I have heard of this stuff that I wanted us to talk about. We everybody, I'm talking with Laura Hammel. You need to get a copy of her new book, The Power of Culture Bringing Values to Life at Work. I want to I want to talk about a phrase that you use in the book.

00:22:53:05 - 00:23:10:23
Kevin Eikenberry
And, and then I want to I want us to talk about something that goes with it. So the phrase is cultural betrayal. Yeah. But then I want to I want us to go a little deeper on it, because I've observed some things that I think take us maybe the next step, or at least I want to talk about that.

00:23:10:23 - 00:23:14:04
Kevin Eikenberry
But first, what is cultural betrayal?

00:23:14:06 - 00:23:40:18
Laura Hamill
Yeah. So cultural betrayal is a label I gave to this thing that happens when a person joins an organization and they think based on the but based on the company website, based on the hiring process, that the culture is a certain way and, you know, even the videos that they can see on the website that might say, oh, look at I'm like really excited about joining this company.

00:23:40:18 - 00:24:03:10
Laura Hamill
Their culture looks amazing. They seem to value a lot of the things I do like. I can't wait to get there. And they get there and then they start to understand over time, the actually the culture that they're experiencing has nothing to do with the culture that they were sold. So they were sold something that's not what they actually received.

00:24:03:12 - 00:24:36:23
Laura Hamill
And you know, the word, the term culture, cultural betrayal can seems a little dramatic, but I actually think it describes how it can feel for a lot of people. It feels pretty deep, like it hits pretty deep, and it can cause people to feel this, this kind of sense of, resentment and withdrawal. And this is when I think I've heard a lot of people talk about how, employees don't seem to be coming to company meetings or asking questions in company meetings that they're starting to kind of pull back.

00:24:37:01 - 00:24:52:04
Laura Hamill
Well, this to me could be one of the reasons why. It's like I was ready to buy in. I was all excited, but then now I'm experiencing something very different, and I'm just going to pull back and and not be part of this. So there's like a faithful to it, right?

00:24:52:04 - 00:24:52:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Like,

00:24:52:16 - 00:25:23:16
Laura Hamill
Bait and switch. Exactly, exactly. And I think I've talked to so many different employees who've had that happen to them. And again, I think this is why, you know, so many companies have known that they're supposed to work on their values. They're supposed to have values. They're supposed to talk about culture in the hiring process. But the whole part about this actually being authentic and lived and real, is where a lot of companies are struggling.

00:25:23:18 - 00:25:46:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Here's the here's the thing I'd like us to talk about a little bit. Like I'm right with you. I totally think all that is right on. I love that label. I love that somewhat dramatic label because I think it's worth thinking about. And yet, if we're leading in an organization and we've done some of the kinds of work that you've described, like we've, we've we know where we are, but we know where we want to be.

00:25:46:10 - 00:26:06:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah. The question I would have is, aren't we setting ourselves up to have this culture of betrayal, not just with the new people, but even with people in the organization, you know, like, because this is going to take time to really move there. And it is all really ultimately always a journey. And so talk to us a little bit about what do we do as leaders?

00:26:06:19 - 00:26:13:19
Kevin Eikenberry
I mean, we want to we want to set that aspirational vision. We want people to see that's where we're trying to go. But we wouldn't we can't flip a light switch.

00:26:13:23 - 00:26:14:03
Laura Hamill
Yeah.

00:26:14:04 - 00:26:31:19
Kevin Eikenberry
So like, how do we how can you and I how can you help leaders listening and watching right now. Think about that. Like because if if we set a course, then we're setting ourselves up to automatically have some of this cultural betrayal. How do we deal with it? Yeah.

00:26:31:21 - 00:26:55:17
Laura Hamill
It's such a good point, Kevin. Right. Because this is long term work. This is a long term commitment. Commitment. And in fact it's never ending. It's ongoing. You have to keep working on it. Like anything that really matters. Right. There's no end. There's no end to it. I think a lot of it has to do with how we actually share the vision for where we're going and talk about that journey.

00:26:55:19 - 00:27:18:04
Laura Hamill
There's there's a lot about this that's around communication and, helping people see what you're trying to do, paint that picture of the vision and not thinking about this work as, you know, A11 one quarter and we're done. Or we rolled it out and it's good. There's work that has to be right. There's work that comes.

00:27:18:06 - 00:27:20:07
Kevin Eikenberry
That's all you're going to do. Don't even start.

00:27:20:09 - 00:27:46:00
Laura Hamill
I agree because you get this betrayal, right? Like if you're if you're only thinking about this as a project or a quarter thing, then yeah, might as well just let things naturally happen. They can happen because it can set it up to be quite, quite negative experience. But the idea though is that you can take steps every single quarter to make a difference.

00:27:46:00 - 00:28:08:03
Laura Hamill
And the idea here, and this is part of my book, is around this idea of the intentional culture circle. Right? All the things that you need to do, all the steps that you need to take. Thank you. They're in there and they're pretty, I think, simple and straightforward. The idea of how do you think about, helping people understand the behaviors that they need to exhibit?

00:28:08:05 - 00:28:33:01
Laura Hamill
And the behaviors are, one hand, they that feels like pretty tactical, but it's actually a very simple way for people to understand what you want them to do differently. A lot of times I talk with leaders and they're frustrated because employees aren't doing what they want, but they've never articulated it right. They've never described it. They've never shown people what they mean by it.

00:28:33:01 - 00:28:41:23
Laura Hamill
So we have to give those examples. We have to be clear about what does it mean to actually demonstrate these values. So that's one of the steps.

00:28:42:01 - 00:28:50:11
Kevin Eikenberry
But which takes us back to behaviors and your stuff about climate. There's there's there's like a whole nother show that we could do just on that and.

00:28:50:15 - 00:29:07:08
Laura Hamill
Completely we don't have time, but there's lots that you can do and lots that you should do. And it's not it's not impossible. That's what I feel like I just want to get the message across is you absolutely can take these steps and you absolutely can can make a difference.

00:29:07:10 - 00:29:24:08
Kevin Eikenberry
Which leads to Denise's question who sent it on, LinkedIn here. And she has how do people in the middle help? And I'm just going to expand her question a little bit more. And then we're going to start to wrap up our conversation. How can people in the middle help, help? How can any leader expand her question? What can any leader do?

00:29:24:08 - 00:29:27:13
Kevin Eikenberry
How can we help? What should we do? Where should we start?

00:29:27:15 - 00:29:52:00
Laura Hamill
Yeah. Anybody, any and especially anybody with in management position or a leadership position. Absolutely. Could be taking your company's values and talking about it with your team and saying, how do we how does this go for us now? What do you what's your experience of this? What are some things we can do on our team to make this more real?

00:29:52:02 - 00:30:12:02
Laura Hamill
What are some things that you feel like you don't understand about these? Having a dialog, having a discussion that doesn't happen in most, most organizations where managers talk about the values and talk about the culture they're trying to create. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for it to start to feel real through a team at a team level.

00:30:12:04 - 00:30:31:03
Laura Hamill
So the thing that I think and that could happen also with employees, I mean, I'm always because I really, truly believe in the role of power and in forming culture, I always hesitate to say we completely can create a bottom up, you know, change in culture. I, I just don't.

00:30:31:06 - 00:30:33:03
Kevin Eikenberry
Believe it's both.

00:30:33:04 - 00:30:43:23
Laura Hamill
Right. It has to be both. And I, I love when people in, in kind of frontline roles are trying to change the culture. It's just really hard, right? It's an uphill battle if you have people to.

00:30:44:01 - 00:30:58:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Has to be connected with what the senior leaders want to do. And then and honestly, senior leaders can't do it alone either, right? Like who owns the culture? We all do, right? Right. And yet there's a there's an absolute role for those with with the positional power that has.

00:30:58:12 - 00:31:01:18
Laura Hamill
Completely, completely agree.

00:31:01:20 - 00:31:18:23
Kevin Eikenberry
So a couple of other things. I'm going to ask the question that I ask everybody, but it's especially interesting for me to ask this question that someone who has a podcast called Happy at Work. So my question is this, Laura, what do you do for fun?

00:31:19:01 - 00:31:38:08
Laura Hamill
What do I do for fun there? Lots of things that I do for fun. I would say one of the biggest ones is, I like to lift weights and it sounds like it's not fun, but it is. I have so much fun lifting weights. So that's one thing. It's also I have to bring up my dog.

00:31:38:10 - 00:31:45:21
Laura Hamill
My dog is the most fun. I have a golden retriever, and if you can't not have fun with the golden retriever. So it's pretty much as a.

00:31:45:21 - 00:31:52:16
Kevin Eikenberry
Member of my team, Eric, who might be listening, who would 100% agree with you?

00:31:52:18 - 00:32:10:08
Laura Hamill
Yeah, I think that those are kind of the main things. We have a big yard, and I just like to putter in our yard too and play around in the yard. We're always like doing new little projects in the yard. So I think it's a little bit of that kind of easy things. But definitely have fun every day, right?

00:32:10:10 - 00:32:13:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Absolutely. What are you reading these days?

00:32:13:10 - 00:32:16:03
Laura Hamill
Okay, so I hope.

00:32:16:05 - 00:32:18:03
Kevin Eikenberry
You had something really good, so.

00:32:18:04 - 00:32:46:10
Laura Hamill
Well, I don't know. It's all it's all kind of geeky stuff. So I am working on a book proposal for my second book, and so I'm work at reading this book from this guy who I'm working on this book proposal A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. This is some serious deep culture, book. But what I'm actually rereading is the Fitz and Lenski leadership on the line and the, adaptive leadership pieces.

00:32:46:10 - 00:33:01:05
Laura Hamill
I I've read them before, and I love adaptive leadership. Because we're writing a book proposal on, deep change. So those are really important components of what we're working on.

00:33:01:06 - 00:33:03:09
Kevin Eikenberry
We which means you have a coauthor.

00:33:03:11 - 00:33:05:19
Laura Hamill
I do I do have a coauthor.

00:33:05:19 - 00:33:21:11
Kevin Eikenberry
We'll have a couple other conversation about that. So, but now the question right now because there's another book in the future, but there's a book right now. Yeah. You want to point people, Laura. Yeah. Folks, to get connected with you, learn more about the book, etc.. Give us a minute on that before we wrap up.

00:33:21:11 - 00:33:41:06
Laura Hamill
Absolutely, absolutely. So you can go to my website. So it's Paris Fenix Group. So Paris the city. Thank you. And that's actually just for context, somebody thought maybe I had offices in Paris and in Phoenix, which would be such a weird combination. It's actually my kids middle names. So I, I, I really wanted to start my company based on something that mattered the most to me.

00:33:41:06 - 00:34:00:08
Laura Hamill
And it's my my two kids, so it's their middle name. So Paris Phoenix group.com. You can learn more, but you can also, please connect with me on LinkedIn. I always like to build out my community under Laura Hamel and to buy the book you can go to anywhere that sells books like Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and Simon Schuster.

00:34:00:10 - 00:34:04:00
Laura Hamill
You've heard those places. Yeah, that my book is is there.

00:34:04:02 - 00:34:24:10
Kevin Eikenberry
The Power of Culture Bringing Values to Life at work with Laura Hamel? Before we go, everybody, the question that I want to ask you is the same question I ask you every single week. If you've been here before, most important question of the day is now what? Now that you've had the chance to get insight and ideas from Laura for the last 30 plus minutes, the question is, what will you do with it?

00:34:24:10 - 00:34:41:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Because if you take no action, it was really a very little value. So I have a bunch of notes that are mine. But really the question is what for you? Will you do that? You want to take action on? It's that that will make this a good use of your time. So Laura, thank you so much for being here.

00:34:41:18 - 00:34:45:14
Kevin Eikenberry
Such a pleasure. Even more than I expected.

00:34:45:16 - 00:34:49:04
Laura Hamill
Oh, thanks so much for having me, Kevin. We could have talked and talked. Think.

00:34:49:10 - 00:35:09:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Could have. And so, everybody, if you enjoyed this, if this is the first time you're here and you enjoyed this will make sure wherever you listen to your podcast that you subscribe because you don't want to miss the next one and the next one because this is the 480th one, and we're not stopping anytime soon. We'll be back next week, and I hope you'll be with us too.

00:35:09:09 - 00:35:12:02
Kevin Eikenberry
For another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.