"An organization can only be the best version of itself to the extent that its people are becoming better versions of themselves."

In this special episode of Lead with Culture, host Kate Volman takes us through a reflective journey of the past year, discussing the most impactful insights from conversations with exceptional leaders and Dream Managers. From fostering self-awareness to building empowered teams, Kate highlights how leaders and teams can thrive by embracing discomfort and working toward becoming the best version of themselves.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• Why culture and self-awareness are key to personal and organizational growth
• How investing in your team leads to stronger connections and improved performance
• The importance of small, actionable steps toward achieving big goals

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Intro

(01:11) The Floyd Philosophy

(02:59) Investing in employees

(04:47) Reflecting on goals and satisfaction

(05:54) Cultivating a dynamic culture

(08:10) Overcoming challenges with creativity and resourcefulness

(11:49) Embracing purpose and patience

(13:59) Delegating tasks and focusing on strengths

(16:34) Discomfort drives change and inspires growth

Resources:

• Floyd Coaching
• The Culture Assessment
• Matthew Kelly’s Books

Connect with the Host & Floyd Coaching:

• Kate Volman’s Linkedin
• Floyd Coaching on Linkedin
• Floyd Consulting on Facebook
• Floyd Consulting on Twitter
• Floyd Consulting on YouTube
• Floyd Consulting on Instagram

The only way for us to change and get better and improve is for us to continue to feed ourselves new content, new information, new ideas that are going to help us wherever we are in our lives. Hey there. We have a very special episode for you today. We are going to dive into some of the meaningful conversations we've had with the incredible guests right here on Lead with Culture this past year. I can't believe another year has gone by. We did this last year and you all seemed to enjoy it. We just took pieces of conversations around personal growth, fostering a dynamic culture in your organization, and some insights to help you and your team grow. So we're gonna talk through some of that today.

You're gonna hear from some of the guests that we've had. You know, it'll be a good little refresher. For those of you who are joining us for the first time, our mission is to help people grow. We wanna equip you with actionable strategies to grow as dynamic cultures and support your people, support the people around you. So let's jump right in. Okay. We're going to start with the Floyd philosophy, which is an organization can only be the best version of itself to the extent that its people are becoming better versions of themselves. And by that, we have to all be working towards becoming the best version of ourselves.

And so Jennifer Fonseca highlights the importance of self awareness in relationships and challenges us to make every interaction a step towards personal growth.

I think we're all designed to belong, to feel connected, to be part of a community and with emotional mastery. It's not looking through the lens of like a feelings wheel, but really the state taking honest inventory and accountability for the state of our relationships with others. Right. And so I love it because we are in a culture that has become so transactional as opposed to transformational. And when you look at the Dream Manager Program as a life coaching curriculum and program, you know, when you're talking with someone and you're talking about their relationships, their state of their relationships, when you are interacting with someone, whether it's the grocery store clerk or whether it's your coworker or your family at home, are they walking away from an interaction with you better or worse? Are they becoming better versions of themselves after an interaction with you? Are you becoming a better version of yourself after an interaction with someone? And so that's one of the key reasons why I think it's so important, because the whole curriculum and program with the Dream Manager is becoming the best version of yourself. And so this is a great Way to do an honest examination of how am I in my relationships? Are they becoming better versions, and am I becoming a better version?

One of our incredible dream managers, Rebecca, she builds on this by emphasizing the ripple effect of showing your team members that you actually care about them.

What companies will find is that employees want to invest in their own lives. They just not sure where to start. They're not sure if the company is going to support them. They're not sure, you know, of accountability. They want to know that we care. I've had so many employees say, well, you know, you gotta say, kevin cares. Now I understand. So when employees know that you care about them and are investing in them, they will show up.

They will show up on time, they will show up differently, and it will help improve their lives and in turn, truly makes them better employees. So I think if there's a company kind of wondering, hey, will this work? I would encourage read the book, read Rhythm of Life, see how you feel. Because even though I wasn't sure I knew I felt differently after reading about the janitorial service in the book. That's how impactful it is. So if you open yourself up to it and the return on investment will be there, employees will stay, they'll feel empowered. They will feel as though now I know my company's invested in me, but now I have the tools to move forward. I can take this to my family. I can take this to my community.

Rebecca demonstrates how intentionally investing in our people lead to empowered teams and stronger connections. It's so important for us to believe in our people. And like she said, when your employees, when they know that you actually care about them, they show up at work differently. Now we're going to hear from Michelle Marquis, who encourages leaders to reflect on their goals and satisfaction.

What truly makes you happy? I feel like that's another big question to ask yourself. Like, how satisfied are you in your life? And look at all the different areas of your life, not how happy you are, but think about what does happy mean to you? Like, satisfaction? Like, where am I? Like, maybe you're close, but what would make it the ultimate? That's where your dreams are. Your dreams are right there. Because again, I talk to a lot of people and they're like, I don't have any dreams. And if I have a dream, I just make it happen. And I, you know, do this. And that's where I really push people. Well, what else? What else is it that you're really after? And if it's 10 years from now, what do you want to be saying about your life over the last 10 years.

So getting them back into that. Okay, yeah. So I need to do things right now to really influence where I'm going.

Her insights remind us to align our actions with our dreams, creating a purposeful and fulfilling leadership journey. All right, let's talk about culture and what it takes to cultivate a dynamic culture. Culture is at the heart of every successful organization. It's why we love working with leaders like you, because we know you care about building a dynamic culture where people love coming to work and accomplishing great things together. We work with leaders who know that feeding into their people, encouraging them and helping them grow and creating that coaching culture, doing those things is the only way for us to really grow and have a sustainable, thriving business. Ray Titus explains why culture is more impactful than even the smartest strategies.

What people miss in business is they always think it's the smartest person with the best strategy. And it really is the hardest working person with the best culture. So if you kind of line that up, that's who I am. That's what we've done as a company. We focus on culture and yes, we have good strategy and we have smart people. But if you were to rank, you know, I don't have a lot of Harvard graduates here, okay? But I have a lot of great people that are hardworking and they fit our culture. And so somebody told me that famous quote a long, long time ago, which was culture each strategies lunch, okay? And I never forgot that. And that's the key.

You put us up against somebody who's got even much better strategy, much smarter, a much better technology. And we're going to win because we have great hard working people with a culture that has been fine tuned and worked on for 38 years. And that's what I find. Most people in business don't work on their culture.

Ray's insights underline that hardworking teams aligned with a strong culture will always outperform. We have to have a great culture. In fact, we find hardworking teams at cultures that are thriving. Because when you have a great culture, you are able to attract those A players, those people that want to work, that want to grow, that want to get better, that want to be part of something bigger than themselves. They want to be part of that mission. Now let's hear from another dream manager, Brian Maglioco, who shares how his team overcame challenges with creativity and resourcefulness.

Were we perfect at it? Obviously not, because we didn't really even know what to expect. But I think as leaders, we grew a lot because we had to rely on each other. We had to rely on God. We had to trust in what we knew and how we could best serve our employees. But any clients that we had, whatever the clients were going to be at that time and be creative in trying to reuse the resources and the skills we had for something else. So trying to find a way to get motivated to get to work. And I remember at one point, probably during the lowest point, our EOS implementer at a quarterly meeting kind of said, hey, guys, there is like zero energy in this room. And he could feel it.

Obviously, we could feel it, but we were kind of at the point of, like, this is getting tiring, you know, like, how are we going to make it? But that was kind of like, I think the wake up call we needed, because I remember the rest of that meeting that we got creative. And that's when we started thinking, okay, what else can we do? So we started launching that. We're going to do branded interiors. And so trying to think outside the box a little bit. I'm glad he said that to us. It was not fun to hear in the moment, but he was 100% right. And I think it kind of helped our leadership team say, yeah, no, we got to get behind this and we got to stay focused and we will get through it, but it's going to be tough. And I would never say it was easy, but like you said, hindsight, always 20 20, looking back, it's like, oh, yeah, we did it, but in the moment, it was tough.

I would say every team has their challenges. And when you have great leaders who are able to come to the table and talk through what those challenges are, and you engage with your team to find solutions to whatever challenges that you're going through. You know, we all in business, we. We go through different seasons, we go through different experiences. And when you work with an organization and you work with a team who is ready to come to the table to bring their ideas, to have difficult conversations, to speak openly about what's going on and some of the solutions that we might be able to implement in order to help our business grow, that is a great culture. That is a culture that fosters communication. It fosters trust. When you think about the kind of culture that you are creating in your organization, what kind of score would you give it? If you had to rate your company culture right now, on a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you give it? When we actually take some time to decide where we are right now, with our culture, we can decide where it is that we want to go in the future, and our team can be part of that.

So as we're talking about culture, before we move on to talk about some other things on this episode, I just want to share the definition of culture. In Matthew Kelly's book, the Culture Solution, he says culture is the vision, values, systems, languages, expectations, behaviors and beliefs that increase or decrease an organization's chances of accomplishing its strategy and fulfilling its mission, which in turn increases or decreases how much people enjoy coming to work. Now, I know that is a lot. That is quite a mouthful. But really, if you break all this down, it is the essence of the organization. It's how people feel about the organization when they come in. Do they feel good about the mission? Do they feel like they are contributing? Do they feel like their leader has their back? Do they feel like they can go to their team members and have difficult conversations for the betterment of the organization? That's what we want to strive for in a culture. All right, let's talk about embracing purpose and patience.

Our guest, Joe Ciccarone, offers a practical approach to personal growth through small, actionable steps.

I would ask that person, whatever it is, and it's going to be individual. Everyone's going to have their own individual thing. What they're holding off on, playing pickleball, piano, guitar, learning Spanish, whatever it is, taking jiu jitsu. What's the micro next step? The simplest. If it's like I want to learn to play pickleball, Google pickleball courts in my area or Google pickleball coaches in my area, right? And reach out to that coach to set an appointment. You want to learn to play the piano. Piano lessons near me. What's the next micro minimal step you can take where it's not overwhelming, but you just want to get some momentum because you got to get some momentum going, right? It can't be like I got to climb the mountain to get any momentum.

You want to take the next micro step from there? I challenge you. What's the next micro step? Maybe it's like, then I'm going to visit the jiu jitsu school or I'm going to drive to the pickleball instructors court or whatever their center where they teach. And if you keep taking those next micro steps, six months from now, you're not going to recognize that aspect of your life where it was. You're not going to believe where it was before, because next thing you know, you're going to be in a pickleball league, or you're going to be playing Happy Birthday on the piano, or you're going to be on the jiu jitsu mat training twice a week. So I would just take that next micro step that you could do in 10 seconds.

Joe reminds us that momentum begins with the smallest actions, ultimately leading to big transformations. It's those small steps. It's doing the next right thing. Even when we feel a little challenged, even when we feel a little scared, just taking that small step. And when we take that small step, it produces some of that inspiration that we think is going to just strike if we're hanging out, if we're just waiting for the perfect time, Waiting for the right circumstances. No, the right circumstances. And the right time is now. And when we take action, we start to build the momentum and create whatever it is that we want to create.

Our guest, Joe Polizzi shares why delegating tasks and focusing on what you love can energize your leadership.

You can't just be patient. You have to build in patience. So make the decisions so that you can be patient. You might have to cut some expenses in some way, but I think a lot of it has to do with outsourcing enough time as a business owner so that you can focus on what you're great at. If it's four or five or six people doing some of those other things that's available today, which is great, setting your appointments, virtual assistant, you know, doing all the things so that you can focus strategically on the business and focus on doing the things that you love in the business, you're not always going to love your business. Although being a content entrepreneur, in my opinion, is the best business on the planet. Like, I think if you could be financially independent, work whenever you want to, do it with, you know, basically a cell phone, which you can with this business, this is fantastic. But I would say a learning would be write down all the things as a business owner that you are really good at or you love to do.

Those are the things that you protect and you do. You keep doing. I love to write, I love to speak, I love to host events. Those things I will keep and I will continue to do until somebody tells me I'm not good enough to do those jobs.

This strategy allows leaders to align their energy with their passions and strengths. So many leaders have a challenge delegating. Why is that? Because we think we can do it better than the people on our team.

Right.

But the moment that we let that go and the moment that we say, oh, they're Going to do it differently than me, but it's better to have someone else on the team do what you don't do well. Right? And this is where building a team is so exciting, because you get to build a team of people that have their own superpowers. You get to bring them on the team, and their superpowers are different than your superpowers. And so you give off this work that you don't even want to do, nor is it worth your time to do. And they get to run with it, and they love it, so they get to do what it is that they love that you don't love, and you get to move the business forward. So delegation is a huge part of leadership, and we have to know what tasks should be delegated and then find the right person to give those tasks to so it gets done well. And the best leaders in the world know that when you delegate that work that you thought only you could do, when you give it to the right person, they probably even do it better than you because it's their superpower. Okay, let's hear from Daryl Flash Gordon, who sheds light on how discomfort drives change and inspires growth.

Until we're talking about bankruptcy or until we can't pay the mortgage, then we step our game up and start to do something or better yet, in our relationships until we get those divorce papers, then we say, I'm gonna be a better husband or a better wife. Or until the boss says, here's a pink slip, if this happens again, I'm gonna have to let you go because you've been late five times. And then because we're comfortable, we're good being mediocre. And then we don't do anything. Or physically when we know we should be getting up and running, exercising, eating healthy until the doctor comes and says, listen, you have high blood pressure. If this continues, you'll have a heart attack in at least a year. Then I'm going to the gym and I'm going to work out. So all of those scenarios talk about none of us change until we experience a severe degree of discomfort.

Even better spiritually, how many times do we get on our knees or we say, God, if you get me out of this, I promise I'll pray every night before I go to bed and I'll go to church every Sunday. That's how we operate. We stay mediocre until something happens. And it's a shame that we have to move people. But the great leaders understand that, and they know what they have to do to people to get Them at their best.

Darrell reminds us that great leaders help others take action before they face crisis points. Okay, that was just a few of our incredible guests. Obviously, we can't highlight everyone, but if any of these guests resonated with you, I highly recommend going back to their episodes and listening to the full show. Also, this is a great opportunity to go back to some of the episodes and see some of the topics that are of interest to you, that can really help you move forward in wherever you are. We have lots of episodes with our Dream managers to talk about the Dream Manager Program. We have lots of episodes to help your personal and professional growth, talking about mindset issues and culture issues and people issues. And so we kind of go all over on this show from our dream managers to talking about building a great culture to, like I said, just insights to help you grow personally and professionally. So we hope that you love this show.

We really enjoy producing it for you and having our clients on and other leaders that we find in the world and that we meet with and connect with that are out there sharing really remarkable work and doing great things. We really feel so blessed at Floyd because we get to work with leaders like you who are intentional about helping your people grow, and you're intentional about your own personal growth and development. It's why you listen to this show and we don't take it lightly. So we so appreciate you. Okay, before we go, I just want to share a couple of sentences from this one section out of the Culture Solution because it really plays off of what we're talking about with learning and development and growth. It says, commitment to continuous learning. The less people read, the more boring they tend to become. And the less continuous learning is celebrated in organization, the more boring it tends to become.

Continuous learning is essential to a vibrant, healthy, dynamic culture. And the easiest and cheapest way to encourage that is with books. It is continuous learning, the cause that leads to continuous improvement, the effect. So there is a central principle that applies here and to so many other things when it comes to the success of an organization person or team and building a dynamic culture. Don't let what you can't do interfere with what you can do. And so I wanted to share a couple of those sentences because this is all about personal growth and development. And one of the things that we believe, especially when we do the work with our Dream Manager program, is that the only way for us to change and get better and improve is for us to continue to feed ourselves new content, new information, new ideas that are going to help us wherever we are in our lives with our coaching, it's always important for us to remember that we meet people where they are, we meet you where you are, and everyone is at a different phase. And there's different things that people need at different phases of their life.

So wherever you are, whatever you're doing, I hope that you use this podcast and whatever other podcasts you listen to or books that you read to help you discover what it is that you need to help you become the best version of yourself. Thank you so much for listening. We so appreciate you. Wishing you the most incredible 2025. I hope you had an amazing year, had lots of successes, is lots of growth, and you are continuing to become the best version of yourself. And if you lead a team to help your team become the best version of themselves. Thank you again. You are amazing.

And until next time, Lead with Culture.