Building a Christ-Centered Workplace with Mike Wheeler

Culture isn’t what you write on the wall—it’s what you live out.

In this episode, David introduces guest Mike Wheeler, an IT professional and leadership coach, who shares how he’s helped transform unhealthy teams into thriving ones.

Together they explore what it means to build a workplace that honors God, values people as image-bearers, and shifts culture through lived-out leadership, not lip service.

Mike’s story highlights how culture starts with leadership, why measuring the right things matters, and how prayer and feedback can reshape even the toughest teams.

This conversation moves from generational differences to healthy communication, offering practical steps for creating a Christ-centered workplace.

Redeem Your Business Today by the Following:

How can we honor God in our business?

By treating people as image-bearers with purpose and dignity.

One Challenge from Today:

Identify one behavior you’re modeling that shapes your culture—and commit this week to model it in a way that honors God.

More About Mike Wheeler

Website: coachmikewheeler.com 

Facebook: coachmikewheeler 

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Connect: coachmikewheeler@gmail.com 

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Culture is defined as a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institutional organization. Interestingly, ⁓ Webster used a sample of culture as a corporate culture that is focused on the bottom line. As Christians, I trust your belief systems controls your culture so that your focus is not on the bottom line of profit. ⁓ Culture in organization many times is unintentional and is defined by the business that is created and is not lived or is

defined and not really lived out. What you do though, what you do says more about your culture than what you say, because you can have these are my values, but what do you do? And so today we have brought on Mike Wheeler, who has lived out, living in various types of different cultures, and has been also an instigator in creating a better culture in the place of where he is at. So I'm excited to hear what he has to say about culture and glean some wisdom from his knowledge and experience. Mike,

⁓ to start off with before we get into everything, what is one way that you have found to honor God in our business?

So as far as honoring God in our business, I think you kind of hit it on the head. ⁓ Our Christian, our biblical worldview is going to be foundational to how we view people. They're not just ⁓ gears or cogs in the system, no. These are human beings that are created in the image of God. These are people that are born with a purpose and for a purpose. And with that in mind, if that's going to be the lens that you view people from or ⁓ really just your approach to humanity,

That's likely going to change exactly how you communicate with people and even what you communicate to those people.

Very good. So Mike, we've talked before, but give us a brief history of like your first job with the Navy and the Marines as a tech support and then as you moved on, just what moved you on from there and then like what was before and after things changed at that company, culturally wise.

Sure.

Oh, absolutely. So my background is IT. I'm kind of an IT professional by day, professional coach by night. And my first real job in the IT field was doing tech support for the Navy and the Marines. And anyone that's ever worked in a call center kind of position, they'll probably tell you it's not an easy job. Not just the technical piece, but just the various different metrics and measurements and...

⁓ really just how management will want to have control of so many different situations to ensure that numbers are hit. Well, that the environment I was in was no different, but eventually I moved on to more of a backline position, ⁓ beyond level two, not quite level three. And the management style was totally different. And, ⁓ the manager that I had at the time, he respected me. He actually talked to me like an adult, like in a professional.

That's nice.

And

so it, it was very different. was much more relaxing and it just made it an easier environment to work in. Well, as a fate would have it, there were organizational changes and our group was moved around and our manager that was performing so well was moved into a group that was not performing so well. And a new manager was brought in and to be kind of frank, the culture went down the tank and it went back to that previous style of management.

⁓ micromanagement, very controlling, ⁓ hitting metrics that really took away from what that bigger picture was. And that was ultimately taking care of our customers. Well, seeing that transition, like nothing about the job per se changed, but seeing when someone else is in charge, something, something shifted. And that was the thing that really sparked my interest in going and really just pursuing personal growth, figuring out like what exactly is a good leader.

Like what exactly does that mean? Well, fast forward so many years and my wife and I moved here to Texas and I ended up working for the competitor of that previous company that I was for a similar situation where I started out on the frontline of enterprise support and I eventually become a team lead and part of roles that are responsibilities as a team lead is to ensure that it's that there's a healthy team culture. Well,

Interesting.

Lo and behold, more cultural or organizational changes happen and I got moved into a different group. Well, this new group I was being moved into did not have a very good reputation amongst support. ⁓ one particular engineer told me, wait a minute, you're, getting moved over there. That's where they send the bad tax. So it's like, ⁓ that's awesome. On top of that, the overwhelming majority of the people in this group.

All right.

are native Texans. So the idea of some punk kid from California coming in and telling them what they need to do to do better, that didn't bode well with the natives. And ⁓ one of the hopes that my leadership had was I had come from a very healthy team. They were hoping that by moving me into this group,

Hmm.

So let's see what we can do to change the culture. Let's see what we can do to not just improve the numbers, but just improve the overall environment. And I was there for probably about three years and I don't want to necessarily take complete credit for everything that took place, but there was a very, very definitive change from the time before Mike to the time after Mike. ⁓ The numbers and the metrics went from night to day difference.

And yes, there's more than just me that contributed to that. But at the same time, I do kind of have to humbly pat myself on the back for some of the changes that did take place there.

Sure, yeah, and God does things and yeah, he works, but he uses you as an instrument and that's great. ⁓ So let's dig a little deeper into that unwanted tech group and the culture that changed. What are some of the things that changed or that you brought to the table that caused that culture to change?

One of the things I did was I tried to normalize feedback, but not just any feedback for the sake of giving feedback, but rather feedback for the sake of helping that person grow. Generally speaking, ⁓ what I tried to do was communicate what's called the WIFM, the W-I-I-F-M, what's in it for me. And getting to know each of these guys to figure out

Yep, I've heard that.

What are their career aspirations? What makes them tick? What drives them? And this particular group was multi-generational. In fact, we had four completely different generations at one point. We had Baby Boomers, had Gen X, we had Millennial, and we had Gen Z. All those generations, radically different. But there is one thing that they do all have in common, and that is they have their own desires, their own aspirations, their own goals.

And what I tried to do was finding out what makes them tick. What are they wanting out of me as a team lead? But what about their career? Getting to know them. And when it comes to the feedback, it's like, OK, you say you want to go to, let's say, backline support, L3 support, whatever it may be. These are the kind of behaviors that they are going to focus on and actually being specific to that person.

But of course, I can't give that kind of feedback if I don't know them. And that was one thing I really tried to do. And in fact, one, not one, but really every time I sat down with the various different people in the very beginning, the very beginning, if I sat down with them to go over their numbers, they assume they are in trouble. Like, well, no, I'm talking to you because I was like, Hey, this is just where you're at. And if there's a problem, let's talk about it. And if there's not a problem,

Hmm. Okay.

Okay, we're done. there's nothing here to talk about, then it's okay.

So that's the change, that's the normalization you're talking about as far as giving feedback, not just for a bad job done, but for a good job done as well. Yeah, very good. So when you look at ⁓ culture and you've went from that one to another group to another group to another group, and now you're over a bunch of different groups trying to help everybody going, ⁓ what are one or two elements that you think

Absolutely.

a leader could do to change their culture? Like if the culture is not doing so well, they like people to work together better, communicate better, whatever. Just to give some examples for our audience, what is one or two elements you think they could change or work on?

Mm-hmm. Sure. So something that a leader should do is put on the uniform of a leader. The uniform of a leader is thick skin. If you want to be popular, don't become a leader because there is going to be a time where you're going to have to make some tough calls, tough decisions, have some very frank and some very heart-to-heart conversations. You are not going to be popular.

⁓ At times and when I was initially brought into the support group man I was not popular at all because the established way of doing things it To be fair. I came in pretty hot and fast and I was very very direct and very concise with my communication Like hey, we are not doing this anymore when we talk to each other the the vernacular we use like whatever the situation is This is how we are going to proceed because anything other than that is not healthy

⁓ So I really had to really develop thick skin ⁓ and really not let any kind of negative interaction with an employee change how I interacted with them. If they didn't like me, like I'm not here necessarily to be liked. Like we're all here to do a job. But at the same time, I need to be open to feedback as well. So you need to have some pretty thick skin going into leadership. ⁓

As far as an encouragement for you, things to not do, I would encourage you to not be too attached with how things are done, but rather focus on the end results. And the reason I say that is because you can take a process or a policy that worked phenomenally in a completely different group. But that different group has different personalities. They may have different goals. No two people are exactly the same, even though we may have a similar foundation.

Two Christian men, you and I, we have a very solid foundation, but there are different values that you and I have. That's not bad. That's okay. It's okay that we maybe have different things that motivate us. So you can bring in a process or a policy, but don't get too attached to it. If it's not working, it's okay to change things up. It's okay to see how people are responding to it and even get feedback. It's like, Hey, I'm not sure that's going to work for our particular group because XYZ.

and then change it. As long as the end result is what it's supposed to be, don't be too terribly attached to how things are done.

Yeah, and that's a key thing in empowering people. It's like when you empower someone, I give you a job, it's better for me to tell you what my end result is I'm looking for and allow you to get there. Because if I tell you every step to get there, guess what? If you mess up and you don't reach a goal, I get in trouble. I can't hold you accountable because I gave you the instructions, but if I give you the end goal, say, hey, this is what it looks like, I can help God direct you and it's not a...

Win or lose is just a learning game to get there. So that's very good. And I appreciate you telling us what not to do. Because many times in life, it's stopped doing the negative things that are just as powerful as doing the positive things. You usually have to do both of them. ⁓ I'm interested though, you talked about different generations and how they work together or don't work together. I've not really experienced a whole lot of that. Could you just break down

real quick, the different way people work, or I guess, what's the conflict? What's the conflict with baby boomers and Gen X and millennials? What's the conflict and how can we overcome that?

I would say core values is potentially where there's conflict. ⁓ When you look at, let's say Gen Z, the youngest generation that's in the workforce right now, they're pretty fast paced. They're very pro technology. They're very open to feedback. They're very open to change. And in fact, when it comes to feedback, Gen Z is arguably the most dependent on feedback.

and not just a like a once a quarter, once a year kind of feedback. Like the baby boomers for the most part, like if they have a feedback conversation once a year, some of them, I'm good. At most once a quarter, more than once a quarter, okay, I must be in trouble. Is again, I'm making very broad painstrokes here. know, that it's not everybody, but generally, very generally speaking, when it comes to Gen Z, they're very much driven by that consistent.

Hmm, interesting.

frequent feedback, not necessarily daily. Some of may want it, but like being on top of it very consistently. And it means that you can give feedback in much shorter sessions. ⁓ As you get to the older generations, I would say that that feedback becomes ⁓ not necessarily less sought out, but it doesn't need to be as frequent. So with Gen Z, very frequent. Millennial, frequent, but not as frequent.

Gen X, not terribly frequent, boomers, ⁓ some of them are just not open to it at all. Again, very broadly speaking. And I would even say one of the areas of conflict there also is related to pace. Again, Gen Z, very, very fast paced. And as you work gradually through the generations, it kind of slows down just a little bit. And you look at the baby boomer generation, they're very driven by

Merit it's like I put in my dues. I put in the hours and You know it needs to be about rapport and respect. It's ⁓ Not necessarily military like but at the same time it's it's a little maybe a little bit colder for in comparison to the younger generations ⁓ Gen X is interesting because hardly anyone talks about Gen X and Yet, I want to say the majority of the workforce right now is Gen X ⁓ Gen X is I would say much more focused on

practicality. Like if it makes sense, it makes sense. Let's do it. ⁓ Millennials, they're more driven by purpose. ⁓ Just something about our particular generation. We don't want to do something for the sake of doing it. Generally speaking, we want to do something for a reason. We want to do it with a purpose. And ⁓ Gen Z, just being that younger, very technologically proficient generation, it's

they can kind of get bogged down with technology because all there's got to be a way I can automate this and systematize it. And sometimes it's like, no, let's just again, focus on the end result. Let's just get it done. Let's get it over with. Then we can work on making it fancy.

Yes, yes. ⁓

Yeah.

Do you, you may or may not, do you have an opinion? ⁓ So as the generations get older, like say the millennials get older or Z get older and the newer generations come up, do you think that they too will start to shift how they see things or do you think they'll keep that core values until they retire?

You know, that's a really good question because kind of deviating from the question a little bit, the term midlife crisis. ⁓ You look at the midlife crisis of we'll say the baby boomer generation. What did they do? They dyed their hair jet black. They got a motorcycle. They got a sports car. They did something to kind of relive their youth. But when you get to the millennial generation who are currently middle aged,

Our midlife crisis is are looking a lot different. We don't have as much expendable money. So what we're doing is we're not focusing on the thrill, but really focusing on meaning and purpose. when you look at, you know, just, me, I guess me specifically, ⁓ I'm technically middle-aged and I I'm shifting from it to professional life and leadership coaching. I'm pursuing a career that has a deeper meaning to me personally.

⁓ something else to consider are really just the events that take place. ⁓ look at that. We just recently had nine 11, not that long ago, where you were in your stage of life when nine 11 took place, really honed and shaped your worldview millennials for the most part, we were just barely getting started in life. I personally was in high school when it happened. But when, ⁓ if you were in your.

Interesting.

Of course, you and I, as brothers in Christ, we know that ultimately God's in control and there's no reason for us to be scared of technology. I have more opinions about that. We could talk about that at another time. Totally different subject.

Yeah, that's a different subject. And you know, it's really interesting

that they are trying to copy God. I mean, really, you know, God made you and I to think, to reason, to create, to do all these things. That's what they're trying to create. A smarter version of you and me combining all the intelligence of the whole world and throwing it together. But that's all they're doing. They're collecting all the creativity that's been around, mushing it all up and spinning out a really, what looks like a unique answer. But anyway.

Mm-hmm.

We digress.

Yeah, of course.

One last question here, not one last, but.

What are some first steps that we could take as leaders if we find ourselves in unhealthy culture and we want to move our business to a better culture? And that may have been similar to the former question, but yeah, what is the first steps we should take to ⁓ once you realize that we have a bad culture or we don't like how things are going, we want to instill some values and push them out. How do we get that? How do we do that?

Hmm. Sure.

would say let's first clearly define it. Is it a behavior issue that we see in the culture? Are we measuring the right numbers, are, or are we measuring the wrong numbers, which are then creating bad behaviors? What exactly is wrong here? And understand also, if there's a culture issue, it means there's a leadership issue. And

Great show.

the ultimately it's the leader that establishes the culture. ⁓ not only like clearly define what exactly a bad culture is, what exactly you're seeing that may not be working, but then look at yourself. Am I exhibiting this behavior? Am I the one that's actually responsible for creating this culture? In my particular case, I was just kind of picked up and then blah, just dropped into a.

Sure.

an organization I wasn't responsible for creating or cultivating, I was dropped into a situation where I was told, try and fix it. So for the most part, what I really tried to do was find the stuff that's not working. It's very easy to find, but look for the stuff that is working as well. from there,

Yep. Yep.

you actually show that behavior. Like what's the behavior supposed to be? Set those expectations in yourself first before you set expectations externally. Also, you know, we as leaders, we need to have grace too. Because no, nobody really likes change, especially if maybe ⁓ part of the reason for the culture issues, that person or a group of people may be around still.

And, you know, they're the ones that created this culture. Of course, they don't want to change it. Again, we're all human beings and created in the image of God. And we ourselves are in desperate and dire need of a savior and desperate and dire need of grace. And one thing that we could do, one of the most loving things we could do is reflect that same grace upon the people that we're working with, Something else to consider.

Maybe in a situation where you see a culture issue and man, I don't know how to fix it. Why it seems so deep, deeply ingrained, deeply rooted. And it's something I've never seen before. Seek out help. ⁓ one thing that's important to us as leaders is we need to network. We need to have other leaders that we can brainstorm with. Heck hiring a professional coach to help you kind of sift through your own thoughts and your own emotions about the situation.

And, and that was, there's a couple of things that I did, ⁓ in that group was I worked with my immediate manager and I asked her, Hey, gut check me on this. This is what I'm seeing. This is what I believe to be true. And of course my manager was able to give me more perspective because she had seen the kind of the overall history of how that group developed. It's like, ⁓ now I know why that behavior is here. Now I know what needs to be addressed and how to address it.

Sure, I think you threw out some gold there when you said if there's a cultural issue, there's a leadership issue. Because I see it so true and I'm talking to so many people and it's interesting. Jesus said, I want you to sanctify my disciples. Lord, sanctify them in that truth, that word is truth. And then he went on to say, for their sakes, I sanctify myself so that they also might be sanctified. And he's basically saying, I'm making myself good and perfect.

so that they can be perfect. And that's kind of what a husband does to the wife, a wife does to the husband. It happens the same in business where the leader sets the tone. Like you said, the leader sets the tone and it's not easy to say, I got a cultural problem here. ⁓ that problem's me. It's hard to say that, but a lot of times I think that's, it does come down to that, it really does. And the other thing you brought out is,

What is measured, what gets managed, sure it gets managed. And if you want your people to be happy and get along, but yet you measure them based upon output, what are they gonna do? They're gonna output even if it makes people mad. So yeah, if you want quality, you gotta measure based upon quality and not upon speed or whatever it is. ⁓ So yeah, you gotta measure the right things to encourage the correct right behavior. ⁓ Mike, this has been good. ⁓

Absolutely.

One final question, what is one simple step, practical step that we can take as leaders to begin to apply what we have talked about today in our business?

As cliche as it is, pray. it's something that, of course, in secular leadership circles, and maybe frowned upon, but, you know, we're Christians here. ⁓ Honestly, immerse yourself in prayer. ⁓ Actually, even Dale Carnegie, who was not a Christian at all, and studied all the various different world religions to try and find ⁓ principles that would

Absolutely.

be universally aligned. One of the principles he found was prayer. So ⁓ the first step forward, God, give me the wisdom. You know these people far better than I do. Show me what they need. And God, I pray that you speak through me, that you work in me and work through me to help these people achieve their goals. And just use me as an example.

No, I love that. James 1.5, if you lack wisdom, ask. And not only does he give you wisdom, he can also control people and instill people and change people. It's all that. That's why prayer is so powerful. Very good, I love it. Mike, thank you so much for your time and encouragement today. And friends, your next steps to put into practice what you've heard is to check the show notes. We're gonna have some links and sites to be able to contact Mike Wheeler later on. And also I encourage you to sign up for a weekly newsletter.

Absolutely.

Hahaha.

for weekly inspiration and for Bible verses about business success for you to read and apply and be inspired by. And friends, that's all we have for now. Trust you've been inspired to redeem your business, redeem your time, back and walk worthy of God's great name.