Creating Us - Episode 113: Values and Culture

Join Shelbie and me as we discuss the importance of values and culture. 

Make sure you check out our NEW YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TTUSOLCD 

Comments/Questions? Let me know at Jason.Weber@ttu.edu

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Welcome to the Creating Us Podcast, hosted by the Office of Leader and Culture Development. I'm Jason, and I'm Shelby. And we're excited to be with you on this episode where we are going to talk all things values and culture. All right. Here we go. Shelby, how are ya?

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm doing good. Uh it's getting warmer outside, even though I'm wearing a long sleeve. So you know what? I'm going with it.

SPEAKER_02 0:36

Doing the same. And and I'll tell I'm just going to start right out of the gate for those that are uh listening. One of the things that um Shelby and I we were talking about is for our podcast, we wanted to also integrate the video element. And so this is our first one where we're actually going to be sharing the video. So if you're ever curious as to what it looks like behind the scenes and how we do this, um head over to YouTube, our YouTube channel. We'll put the link in our show notes. It's a new channel that we started, um, and you can watch this if you want. Or of course, you know, listen to the audio uh if that's what you prefer. Don't they say, you know, the people that you enjoy listening to the most never look them up because you don't ever want to put a face and a voice together or something like that? I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 1:17

Yeah, or or like don't ever meet them.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

Yeah, don't like yeah, don't ever meet your heroes because you know we're everyone's heroes. So anyways.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

I mean, obviously. Obviously.

SPEAKER_02 1:26

All right. So um, but with that, uh, YouTube channel. Shall we? Why why did we decide to go that route? What do we hope that becomes?

SPEAKER_00 1:34

So we're really hoping that that becomes somewhere that people go to and they can access all of the webinars. Um, we're still learning how to put all of the past webinars on, maybe not gonna be able to put some of them on, but we're hoping to put from here on out the webinars and the podcast that we're having. So uh really kind of like a hub for what's happening in our office.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Yeah, you know, so much of what we do, we record uh through our uh webinars, through our podcasts. And uh one of the challenges that we are that we're constantly working on is where do we post it? Where do we make it so it's easily accessible for anyone because all of our stuff is open to the public and we've got a lot of external partners that listen in and join us uh for our stuff. And so uh we're hopeful that this YouTube channel, while definitely late to the party, uh we're hope hoping that this YouTube channel is one of those ways that we can start bringing all of our content, putting it together where in one location, so it's easy for everyone to find. So again, check out our show notes, the link will be in there, and we hope that it's uh provides to be a valuable tool for you uh in in your leadership journey. So, what are we going to talk about today on our podcast?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yeah, so um I was on Pinterest and I found this uh what is this? Like what would this be called? Like a little like an infographic type thing. And it was about culture, and it was saying, you know, what people think culture is versus what culture actually is. And it it kind of got me thinking like we talk about culture all the time and like values, and so what is it actually like what do people actually think about whenever they think about culture? And so I'll go over this uh infographic just a little bit, but a lot of the times people think culture is about like the benefits of the organization, the the snacks that they provide, the yearly trainings, the company mission, and drinks on Fridays or whatever you have, you know.

SPEAKER_02 3:44

Wait, drinks on Friday? What am I missing?

SPEAKER_00 3:47

You're not invited. I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

That makes sense. Anyways, I'll let you continue.

SPEAKER_00 3:53

Um, but culture really, when we're talking about a culture of an organization, we're talking about, you know, how are decisions made? What happens when somebody makes a mistake? How is conflict handled? Who gets promoted and why do they get promoted? How are meetings run? How do we give feedback? What behavior gets rewarded, and what leadl leaders model every day. And so we're like, why don't we do a podcast over values and culture and how that all relates?

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Um, you know, I'm really glad that you did. It's it's very timely, it's very fitting. I had the opportunity this past weekend to work with our uh joint congress, our student govern government associations at each of our universities, uh, led by our student regent, Eli Heath. And I was able to talk with them uh really about empowerment, believing in who they are, but it connects. I see a lot of connections to what you were just sharing around values and culture because when we think about making the impact, that's really why we do what we do, right? And we think about our purpose. Our purpose is to build capacity and capability in everyone who uses our programs. And so ultimately what we're getting at is what's the impact that they are making as leaders, as individuals? And that's where I think and I worry we get lost sometimes, especially when we're talking about our values-based culture, is and I've seen this, I've personally lived this, having organizations that would have us come up and sign this big poster, and we're all like, what is it? And they're like, Don't worry about it, just sign it. And then we find out the next day when it's on the wall in this really cool frame, that's our mission, our vision, our values. And we had no ownership of that. We were just told. And it was almost like a check the box thing. Yeah. I it goes, it makes me go back to the is it right or wrong, right? But instead of worrying too much about that, I want to think about the work that we are doing, which is we want to create environments where an impact is made, where people feel empowered. And what we know is that in order to do that, we've got to think about the presence that we have. I I was doing uh some research for a different podcast that I was doing and uh came across this insight around leader presence. And I think again, it's really important for us, especially as you are comparing, you know, what people think versus the realities. And when we think about this idea of leader presence, we have to understand that it's one of the most powerful things that we have. When we think about the individual, what we're talking about is your tone, your curiosity, how well you listen, how do you respond to problems, how do you respond to mistakes, your presence. It goes back to that foundational question that we talk about, which is how do you want people to experience you?

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

So when we talk about values and culture, it's not just about checking a box. It's not just about creating a flyer, which we've got many of them in our lobby area, which are great representations. Ultimately, they're about leader presence, the presence of our people and what's the impact they're making.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Yeah. Well, and it goes back to, you know, whenever we do a value summit and we have the values poster, it's like, okay, we have them posted. Well, that doesn't automatically mean that you now have a values-based culture, right? It's like you actually have to live the behaviors of those values that, you know, become what the culture is. And so it goes back to what you were talking about. Like, how do how do you respond to mistakes? Well, maybe when a leader admits that they made a mistake, then the people around them can be uh, you know, feel safe to say, okay, well, it's it's okay to be honest here and admit that you made a mistake. But then you have a leader who hides the mistakes or blows up whenever somebody else makes a mistake. It's like sends a completely different signal to everybody that, like, hey, you're not safe here and you have to protect yourself. And so going back to how people want to experience you, how are you living based off of the values that you have, the behaviors, and you know, how are people experiencing you as a leader or as somebody on their team?

SPEAKER_02 8:42

Well, and and build on that. When they've experienced you, uh what do you want them to walk away with? You know, I think one of the challenges that we're running into here is it's an I versus a we. I in in what I had just talked about, I was very insistent on the I, on the person, on the individual. But the reality is when we're working with a team, we've got to think about the we. You know, there was a a great question that I I came across. And and you know, I I love questions because they really stop and make you think. Think about how we view things. And this this question was think about a conflict that you may have had. Maybe you brought up a difficult conversation, whatever it may be. When that experience is over, how do you want that person to feel? How do you want them walking away feeling? I thought that was a really interesting, it's a powerful question because it goes back to the power of choice, the power of ownership that we have and how we show up. But you brought up a point that I thought was really interesting, and I'd love it if you would expand on it around this notion of, you know, we do the we have these values, we post them on a wall, we we post them wherever. But what happens when those values are taken off the wall?

SPEAKER_00 10:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Talk a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00 10:09

Well, you know, it if you have values posted up everywhere, people assume that you are probably living those that way. But if they're taken off, is anybody gonna notice a difference in your culture? Like if those are not genuinely having an impact on how you are responding to certain things in meetings, how you are dealing with conflict, is it even meaningful if you're not actually taking like full advantage of living those values? If it's just a poster on the wall, it's meaningless. I mean, that that's the way that I see it. And you know, um, like for example, like uh integrity. Integrity is great, that's one of our values, but what does it actually look like? And how do you know that you're actually living it? And so if that's not on the wall, is somebody gonna be able to say, I know that this organization has integrity, even if it's not on the wall.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

I don't know. How do you Well it it goes back to you know what our former vice chancellor Steve Soslin would talk about? Uh you know, we we give so much credit to him in regards to bringing you know these values-based cultures, but he will tell you, you know, don't give him the credit. It's it's about the people, it's about the teams, it's about all of that, and it's the value of values. What is the value of values? We don't, and we shouldn't need a flyer, we shouldn't need a poster. It we know that leader drives values, values drive the behaviors, behaviors drive the culture, the culture drives the performance, right? And we know that's where success is gonna come from. And so if we don't have a flyer, would people know? We talk a lot about if you want to know what a culture is, just go observe. And that ultimately is what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:15

One of the challenges that we've run into, and I'm gonna kind of shift a little bit, but one of the challenges that we've run into in the past is using the values. You know, when we go through the process, and if anyone's listening and you're not familiar with our process of creating values, and it's something that we would encourage universities, departments, schools, teams, um, everyone to come up with values because there's not just one set, right? Values support values. And so if you had a value set, how does that support your team's value set? How does that support your organization's values set? Uh but one of the things that we run into is uh intention. Uh and as a leadership principle in and of itself, intention gets us in trouble all the time, right? We hear things where it's like, well, I didn't intend to upset you, I didn't intend to make you mad. But especially with our values, we have seen examples where people have used them in a negative context.

SPEAKER_01 13:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Listen, we are people first. What you did is not people first. Instead of saying, I'm curious, how do you interpret it? How do you define it, right?

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

The point I'm I'm trying to get to here is this idea of intention versus impact. There's a great statement that I heard, which is we judge ourselves by our intentions, others judge us by their experience.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Yeah. So my question, just in my head, I'm thinking, okay, one, how do we relate that to accountability? What you what you said is like holding people accountable to those values. But also, um, what do you do if you didn't intend to do something and and somebody else did experience you a certain way?

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Communication, period. Communication. We have to be open to communication. Um, Judith Glazer wrote a great book, uh Conversational Intelligence. I I love this book. But she talks about everything is created through conversation. For example, a leader may intend to be decisive, but people could experience them as dismissive. Maybe a leader wants to be accountable, but their team views them or experiences them as harsh.

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

Maybe they want to be helpful, but their team views them as controlling. Well, let's think about it. Think about the the balance we have: decisive versus dismissive, accountable versus harsh, helpful versus controlling. These are understandings. We've got to be able to communicate with each other to say, here's what I'm trying to do. Here's how I want to support you. Accountability means this.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

This is what it's going to look like. We've got to be able to align that together as a team. We've got to be able to talk with each other. And it goes back to that viewpoints model that I talk about all the time: assumptions, perceptions, and expectations. We only need to focus on assumptions at this one.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:23

If I just base my actions, my beliefs and everything off of assumptions, I'm going to be wrong all the time. We've got to be willing to talk, be curious, be open. But if we're not willing to do that, we're we're going to fall victim to this intention impact gap.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

And so with our values, we've got to be thinking about if we have them, if we say that as an organization, as a university, as a department, as a team, whatever, that we have these core values: selfless service, people first, community, integrity, respect, resilience, right? These are all different values that we pull. Then we've got to be able to continuously talk about what do they mean?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

Yeah. You know, as you're talking, it just makes me think about how so much of this is based off of trust. And so it's like trust either grows or erodes based off of, you know, your consistent action. So am I going to be able to trust you that you are being resilient? Am I going to be able to trust you that you are providing exemplary service? And all of those things are grown. The trust is grown based off of whether you are consistently showing that or whether you're consistently not showing that. And so it's all about those small moments.

SPEAKER_02 16:46

It's not well I would add to that too, is yes, trust is a part of it, but it's also there needs to be a relationship. So it takes time, right? How how long does it take to build trust? Oh, right. I mean, that that really depends on every situation. Same thing with our relationships, same thing, and and there's got to be a willingness there. If I'm not willing to listen to you, and I'm only comfortable making assumptions about your actions and your behaviors, it's gonna be really easy for me to make you what I want to make you. Oh, Shelby, Shelby was mean to me and she was rude. So she obviously doesn't do people first, she's not integrity. Don't look at her as the example, right?

SPEAKER_01 17:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:31

But yet is that a story I'm telling myself? We have to be willing. I just we've got to be willing to challenge our assumptions.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:42

And be open to the discussion of saying when you did that, that didn't connect. Tell me more. Yeah. Are we willing to do that?

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Exactly. Well, uh, you know, I I I love the intention versus experience. And it really is all of that how can we be intentional about the actions that we do so that people experience us a certain way? That's gonna be a question I'm gonna be thinking about.

SPEAKER_02 18:20

It's something that I think we owe to ourselves to be able to reflect on that question. Because again, there's power in control, there's power in choice, and that's an individual thing. You make you you. Our job and my focus is I want to make sure that you're the best version of you. I want to make sure every one of our leaders, every one of our team members is the best version of themselves. That requires we begin with self. Because if I don't know who I am, what am I doing? Right? You can't tell me who I need to be. You can offer perspective, you can offer advice, you can offer insight, but that's feedback. We get to decide what to do with feedback. And I I think as I think about this, it it really is about empowerment. I want people to feel empowered. I want people to feel like they own the experience that they have with others. They get to decide how do I want to show up? Some days are gonna be good.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

That's okay. I I don't know of anybody who expects perfection, right? I just don't want us to forget that we have ownership of that.

SPEAKER_00 19:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:41

And so I I want to make sure that I haven't taken us too far, kind of off our desired path here. You know, we started in we were talking about this idea of cultures, right? Or I'm sorry, values. When they're not on the wall, what does that mean? How do you connect this intention versus experience and what we were talking? How do you connect that back?

SPEAKER_00 20:04

Yeah. So when we're talking about intentions and the experience that people have, I'm thinking about the behaviors that you are living. And so then I go back to, you know, that's about you. But as a collective, how is everybody experiencing us? We are one culture. You either you have a culture, whether it's good or bad. It's gonna be one way or the other. Um and and so then kind of funneling that up to values and how values are are kind of like the start of how we can hold each other accountable to the behaviors that we all should experience together. You know, I don't think that made any sense at all.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

But it did, it did. And I would offer, kind of from my vantage point, our values are our community. They define who we are, who we aspire to be. Like we tell every team, no one's gonna be perfect at our values. Right. But we can we've gotta have what's our guiding light? What's our true north? That's what our values do. We say we want to be people first. We're not always gonna be people first. Well, that's why we define it and we come up with guiding behaviors. Yeah, I'm trying to do that. My intent is this. And if it's not, let's talk about it. We talk about resilience, we talk about integrity, we talk about community, we talk about all those things. This is what we aspire to be. It's a journey, it's not a destination, it's a journey. And our our meaning behind that, our community is growing and it's morphing and it's changing every day. Yeah, we've got to be willing to continue. Those conversations so we can keep that understanding going. It just makes me think about that model that I like to talk about, which is clarity drives confidence, which drives commitment. Our community changes every day. Our experiences, our emotions, our just all of that. So clarity and confidence need to constantly be in motion in the hopes that we're going to get to that commitment, right? Commitment comes when there is a shared understanding, when there's a shared alignment. That takes time. It takes practice. This is why we have team development models like um, oh shoot, now I'm blanking on the forming, storming, norming, and performing Tuckman, um, Tuckman's model, right? This is why we have all this, because we know it's gonna be present. And so the values which drive our culture, right? It's important that whether they're posted or not, they show up in everything that we do.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah. Uh, you know, like what are we paying attention to? What are we gonna be tolerating? What are we going to um, I don't know, what what rules are we gonna have around what is allowed and what what is not allowed whenever we're, you know, treating each other?

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Mm-hmm. I I come back to, and I think this is a good place for us to kind of bring this episode into a close because, you know, and I hope as you're listening, what you're seeing is that when we're talking about culture, we're talking about values, it's messy. It's not clean, it's not clear. We want it to be, we want to be able to identify shared values, but when we talk about its application and we start talking about what is our intention versus the experience or impact, it's messy.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

And and that's that's just reality.

unknown 23:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:49

And I think if we're okay, yeah, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

So I think if we're okay with it, it actually makes it easier. You know, what role does would does grace play, forgiveness play, as we're all just trying to navigate this, right? Um, these are questions that I hope prompt internal discussion and reflection. But I'll summarize it this way, and then Shelby, I'd love to know how you want to summarize this. But I go back to that question, how do you want people to experience you? And I think it requires reflection, it requires time and space for us to be able to think about how it connects to our shared values. And if those values, and by the way, when we do university-wide values, we don't expect every person to have a hundred percent alignment with it. That's our framework to say working at Angelo State, at Midwestern State, at TTU Health El Paso, at TTUHSC or Texas Tech or Texas Tech University System. Thankfully, there's only six, not like 20. Otherwise, that would have been a long list. But while you're working here, this is what we're aspiring. This is where we're trying to go. And we need everyone to bring their answer of how do you want people to experience me? We need everyone to bring that answer into the work that they're doing.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:11

How would you summarize it?

SPEAKER_00 25:13

I think, you know, it's really, really nice to have the beautiful values posters posted somewhere and in on the websites and in conference rooms. But the real question is how are those values actually showing up in how people behave every day? And how does that shape the culture? Because the culture is not just the words that you choose to talk to people and to um say how you feel, but culture is really what people experience whenever they interact with you, with your team, with the leaders of the organization. And so that's that's kind of how I would wrap it up is that how how do people experience you? What behaviors do you have? Do you exhibit that make the culture better?

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Cool. Well, I hey, for those that are maybe watching us on YouTube, that's it. Like that, that's how this all goes down, right? We're we're just having our conversation. But uh that's what I appreciate so much about uh these episodes. And again, my hope is that uh there were some questions, there were some insights that will prompt reflection and hopefully discussion amongst your peers. So with that, I want to thank you for listening to this episode of the Creating Us Podcast. If you have any comments or questions, please let us know at jason.weber at ttu.edu. Until next time, I'm Jason.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

And I'm Shelby.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Take care.