“Giving employees autonomy to create their own decisions for what works best for them creates that trust, which creates connection, which is ultimately going to create that culture that people want and need to succeed.”

In this episode of Lead with Culture, Zach Blumenfeld and Nick Lombardino, co-founders of CultureCon, explore how trust and connection form the foundation of a healthy workplace culture. They share stories and strategies from their work with leaders and organizations, offering insights into how workplaces can balance productivity and employee wellbeing. 

Zach and Nick also discuss how purpose-driven work is shaping the future of organizations and why encouraging autonomy and prioritizing employee wellbeing and alignment is more critical than ever.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• How trust and autonomy help shape a thriving workplace culture
• Why purpose-driven work is a growing priority for organizations
• Tips for hiring and retaining talent in today’s dynamic work environments

Things to listen for:

(00:00) Intro

(01:37) How CultureCon was created

(08:09) Autonomy builds trust and strong connections

(15:31) Purpose-driven work attracts and retains talent

(20:33) Identifying and nurturing team strengths

(26:42) Why hiring the right people matters

(31:04) Mentorship’s role in workplace growth

(36:00) Strategies for effective hiring and onboarding

(38:43) Why candidates should interview companies too

Resources:

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

Connect with the Zach and Nick:

• Zach Blumenfeld’s LinkedIn
• Nick Lombardino’s LinkedIn
• CultureCon’s Website
• CultureCon’s LinkedIn
• CultureCon’s YouTube
• CultureCon’s Instagram
• CultureCon’s X
• CultureCon’s Facebook

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

Giving employees autonomy to create their own decisions for what works best for them creates that trust, which creates connection, which is ultimately going to create that culture that people as humans want and need to succeed.

This is Lead With Culture. In this episode, you're never going to guess what we're talking about. Culture, culture and leadership, of course. I am so excited because I was joined by the co founders of CultureCon, Zach Blumenfeld and Nick Lombardino. They really value company culture and people so much so that they created this really wonderful conference. They have a mission. They believe that every individual, regardless of role, has the power to make work more meaningful for themselves and their organization. They create experiences and curate meaningful connections that empower individuals to become culture change agents.

Love this so much. We talk about company culture, we talk about the importance of really caring about your people, and we dig into leadership and some of the challenges and opportunities that leaders are experiencing today when it comes to building and growing their companies. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. Zach and Nick, thank you so much for joining us today. This is fun because we normally don't have two guests at a time, so, you know, we get double the fun today. We get to have talking about culture and leadership. And I was really excited to have you both on the show because of the work that you are doing around leadership and culture. You have a really cool conference that you throw called CultureCon, which I want to get into all the things culture and leadership.

But before we do, why don't you guys just share a little bit of background about who you are and also how you met and started this really cool idea of CultureCon?

Yeah, definitely. I can kick things off. So, yeah. Born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Nick and I actually went to the same high school. We were couple years apart, so we never knew each other. And years later, we actually found out that our grandmas went to the same high school together in Madison. So, yeah, lots of connections, small town Madison. So CultureCon started in 2018, but the idea happened way before then.

I had started a software company called Third Space, which was all about workplace culture, really focusing on personal and professional development and employee engagement. And before we had the software, we'd have these executive roundtables where we'd invite in folks to just like, really pressure test ideas and, you know, make sure we were building something that would help solve these executives kind of workplace culture challenges. And they would all start the same way. They were very quiet. And we'd kind of start with a leading question using buzzwords like tell us about millennials or Something back then, this was like in 2014. And it was the same thing every time. One CEO would open up and then another and another. It was like therapy session, almost talking about the good and bad of your culture.

And they would always be scheduled for like an hour, hour and a half. And they would always run late, sometimes go hours over, because people were so passionate about it. And I realized, like, with culture, it's such a humanistic challenge. Like, software can support your culture change, but it's not going to fix it. Like, there needs to be a human element to that. And so I pitched my co founders on starting kind of like a conference or some kind of event where we can kind of just like build on these roundtables. They wanted to stick with culture, but ironically, or culture software, but ironically enough, one of them connected me to Nick and we grabbed coffee on the square. And Nick was really the first person that I kind of talked about this high level idea with.

And we've been building it together ever since and had our first conference in 2018.

What really struck me about these focus groups and roundtables that Zach was hosting was when he told me that so many of these executives were, not only was it a therapy session, but it was also like a problem solving session among these individuals. And so somebody would come forward and profess this workplace culture challenge that they were trying to work through. And then other people in the room were so eager to want to help them fix that problem, like offering up, like, hey, I have tools, I have templates, I have connections that I'd be happy to introduce you to. And so I think to Zach's credit, he could just kind of extrapolate this a little bit further and was just like, what if we tried to create the container for more of these conversations to take place? How cool would that be? So it was an. I was an easy sell. It seemed like he did all the market research for me. So I was like, yep, let's do it now.

What were you doing at the time?

For me personally, I was working for a Madison based management consulting company named Farwell. So I was starting to build communities of practice around the peripheral of workplace culture. Some of the groups that I was building had to do with organizational change management. So so much of that had a workplace culture undercurrent to it. So it definitely felt like a universal kind of synchronicity that Zach and I met when we did, and we were both starting to build out these, let's just say, communities. So the timing couldn't have been better.

With all of these masterminds. And who doesn't love a good mastermind, right? Like, you get people together, you're like minded, you're trying to come up with solutions to challenges. And I love that you recognize that so many people want to support each other because that's what it's about. You're like, if I got through this time, I want to help somebody else with the ideas or the strategies that I used. And then knowing that that's going to come back to you as well, because this is what it is, right? This is business, this is life. So when you were dealing with so many different CEOs and a lot of the same challenges kept coming up, what were some of those? Like, if you had to pick like the top one or two that kept coming up over and over, what was that?

It's a good question. Yeah, to your point, like, a lot of the challenges were the same, but it was interesting because the way companies and leaders would go about solving those challenges were almost always different. And I think it goes to show, like, same challenges may have existed back in 2014 when we were having these roundtables that do today, but there's no like, recipe to success because every company is made up of humans that all have different values and ways they do things. And we're just like uniquely different. And so the way we solve those challenges, there may be some trends that are the same, but we have to go about solving those differently. And yeah, I think with the pandemic, like before 2018 and 2019, our conferences, a lot of topics included, like, we looked at employee engagement and surveys, how to like diagnose those. We looked at generations in the workforce, started talking about remote work. That was probably like the edgiest topic we had in 2018.

At our first conference, we had a panel of like, is remote work going to stick around? And then that kind of shifted to yes, a definite yes. And then after the pandemic, kind of post 2020, when we got back in person, I think our first conference was 2022. After that, we're talking about things like AI, employee wellbeing, burnout, DEI and still talking about the evolution of workplace models, whether that's like Holacracy or some of those organizational structures, hybrid remote work. We even had someone talk about psychedelics in the workplace to help with mental health. So yeah, the conversation has grown exponentially since, you know, my first roundtable back almost a decade ago now.

Yeah, you guys started in an interesting time because 2018, you only had a couple of Years before the world shifted and changed dramatically. When it comes to that conversation around remote work, what are you seeing now? Because as you just said, yes, that is a thing that we deal with. But we also see a lot of CEOs, a lot of leaders are saying no more remote work. We want you back in the office. You are more productive in the office. And then the struggle of more really talented people not wanting to go back to the office looking for remote jobs. So how do you see that conversation now?

I think it's very much still organizations and frankly, individuals still figuring it out. So kind of considering accountabilities, Zach and I take the position, as well as a lot of our speakers who have spoken to this subject over the years. It's the business's responsibility to understand how they do their best work. And then once they have a firm idea of how they produce their best work, is being able to effectively create the processes and the communications to be able to illustrate that to their employees. And that's not to say that the how they do their best work can't change. In fact, many of our speakers would say this is a continuous process of evaluation and understanding how you produce your best work, but then knowing what that is and making sure that your candidates and employees know how to succeed in that type of working environment. So that's kind of the accountabilities on the organizational side is really understanding how that best work comes to fruition then on the employee side, you know, for those of us who, let's say, are privileged enough to be able to consider what type of working environments work best, for us to really know where, how we're going to be able to show up and bring our best self forward in those types of working environments. So really asking ourselves, how do I prefer to work, where do I get my best flow state, how do I get the most out of myself and my team members? Is that an in person environment? Is it hybrid? Is it fully remote? So these are the conversations that are still all happening right now in our programming and then just trying to figure out how to better create those communication channels, those processes and those evaluation tools to really dial into how we do our best work, both on the organizational side and on the individual side.

Yeah, I love that. I love that you said it's the organization's responsibility to decide how that happens. Because I think a lot of people are not necessarily prioritizing around the work and doing the best work. So kind of being more intentional about.

That and knowing how to illustrate it too, like it's One thing just to say it, but to be able to effectively illustrate it with data so that employees can really understand that this is a genuine, Genuine thought and research and time has been put into this.

How.

And I think that's really crucial.

It's interesting how that we, after going through the pandemic, then there was a lot of burnout, and then we saw a lot of the great resignation, the quiet quitting, which, by the way, quiet quitting is really nothing new. This is. I feel like they coined the phrase and it became very popular. But quiet quitting has always been a thing. I mean, right. Like, if we're really honest. But it became very. People became very aware of it because a lot of dialogue was put behind it.

A lot of. A lot of workers were talking about it and being very vocal online. So what was that conversation around? Those types of conversations with team members and how they show up and do they even want to show up? And how do we get people that actually want to be engaged in the work that they're doing?

That's a really good question. And I was kind of thinking back to the last question, too, kind of mixing my answers together. But if you look on LinkedIn, like, I never see any backlash if a company says we're going to stick to remote work or we're going to, like, let our employees choose. The Backlash From a PR perspective, probably 100% or 99% of the time comes from, like, a company like Amazon, who's like, we're forcing our employees to come back in the office. And so I think it's like, if I signed up to work at a company that was remote or hybrid during the pandemic, and that's kind of what I signed up for, thinking I'm going to be able to do this, and then they demand that I'm back in the office. Like, employees aren't going to like that for the most part. And I think it's because, like, so much of culture is built on a connection. And connection is built between whether it's employee to employer, employee to manager to leadership level.

It's built on trust. And so you're kind of like changing what the employee signed up for at the company and not really creating trust, because at any time it's like, oh, they can just kind of change what I'm doing and how I work. So I think, like, giving employees autonomy to create their own decisions for what works best for them creates that trust, which creates connection, which is ultimately going to create that culture that people, as humans want and need to succeed.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it comes down to expectations, but it is interesting to see how many businesses are choosing to bring people back to the office and just that are convinced that that is the best way for people to work and seeing how that conversation is going to evolve. Zach, you mentioned that leaders dealing with challenges, obviously, every leader given the same situation, they might approach it somewhat differently just based on their experience. I'm curious, is there someone that came to one of the conferences, someone that you met, a leader or speaker that you thought, oh, my gosh, this was a really unique approach to how they overcame something in their business that you kind of. That stands out in your mind?

You know, I think one of the challenges of running the conference is that Nick and I don't get to sit in on many of the presentations. So I'm in the process of watching all the recordings back for CultureCon west, and almost there. We're very fortunate. We get so many awesome presenters and their stories. Whether they're a consultant or they work in a company, we try to get them to share, you know, actionable takeaways to so an attendee could take what they heard in this presentation and go back and make change in their organizations, you know, the next week and start somewhere, start small. One of the most powerful presenters I've seen was Jasmine Bellamy, who spoke at culture con West 2023. So this was last year, our first CultureCon west event out on the west coast in Southern California. And we were running around.

I remember there was, like, a problem where we couldn't unlock one of the rooms for a breakout session because we held it on a campus, and it was during the summer, so there wasn't a lot of people working there. And we finally got that figured out. And I popped into Jasmine's breakout room, and I saw, like, the whole audience was in tears and she was talking about being a loving leader. And now she's moved on from her position at Reebok to start her own business called the Loving Leader. And she just. She preaches about that concept. And I had never seen our audience in literally, like, in tears before. And it was so powerful.

The message she was sharing, I think just hit home with everyone in that room. It was a very impactful presentation for a lot of the attendees at the conference.

Oh, that's so awesome. Yeah, I read an article last year about the number one quality of a leader. I mean, look, there's gazillions of articles. They all have different ones, but the one that I read, it was empathy. And it was really a beautiful article because, I mean, at Floyd, our whole, the whole concept of Floyd is your organization can only be the best version of itself to the extent that your people are becoming better versions of themselves. And so it's about treating people like people, like knowing what their dreams are for their life and then helping them achieve those dreams. And so I love that. I love that title.

That's awesome. Nick, are there any kind of standout people or any like aha moments, Anything that you felt like, oh my gosh, this really stuck with me.

I think for me both personally and then also what we're seeing kind of as a growing trend in the world of workplace culture just revolves around purpose driven work. So now, multiple generations in the workforce, one of the big determining factors on whether or not they choose to work for a company or stay at a company is wanting to know whether or not they're making some sort of altruistic difference in the world, whether that's on a societal level or an environmental level, or both. So companies are literally having to reevaluate how they do business to ensure that they are making the world better in some way because they know that that is what's going to help acquire and retain the best talent. And so it's really interesting for Zach and I to see this unfold and how we do our own programming at the conference. And I would say to just get a little bit more specific, the way this is really taking root is how companies are adopting social entrepreneurship. So essentially carving out dedicated time and creating the processes for their own employees to ideate around. How can we help this company not only make profit, but simultaneously do something that's better for society or the environment. And what all the data is showing is that these are the highest performing organizations.

So there's a huge business imperative in companies wanting to shift more towards this purpose driven work and doing in a way that has to be felt authentic and genuine, not just trying to like greenwash and just put out messaging that says, look at how virtuous of a company we are with no substantial meat behind it. So I think for Zach and I, that's one of the most exciting developments of both the industry and how we're. We're moving our conference towards more of this social impact related topics.

You know, a lot. Most of our listeners are very purpose driven leaders. They care about their culture. I feel like when I talk to people that work for an organization or that tell me their friend works for an organization and it's horrible, they treat their people horribly. They Hate going to the office. I try to give them as much hope as possible because I'm like, there are companies and leaders in the world that actually care about their people. They are doing good in the world. They believe that they're making a difference.

They want to help people succeed personally and professionally. And so I know that there are so many companies out there. Unfortunately, there's also companies that don't necessarily see things like that. And so I love being able to spread this message. The people that are coming to your organizations, who are they, what are they? Or that are coming to conferences, who are they, what positions do they hold, what are they hoping to get out of it? And really what can they expect when coming?

It's really a hodgepodge, Kate. And this was the case when we started it. From year one, we have individuals who are business owners and C suite executives. Certainly a lot of, I would say the majority of the attendees have some sort of role that requires that they manage a team. So whether that's a marketing team, a finance team, whatever the department may be, that probably encompasses the bulk of the attendees that come. We have some individuals that represent hr, but I think a lot of people maybe think that our conferences, the majority are HR professionals, but actually that's actually the minority. So, you know, maybe around 15% actually work in a formal HR role. And then all the way down to individual contributors.

So what how Zach and I like to explain the value of the conference is we all have a vested interest in wanting to make work more meaningful for ourselves and for those that we work with. And so that type of mentality is not just owned by certain departments or certain organizational structures. That's an everything dynamic. And I think in recent years, the business imperative behind wanting to enable every individual within a company to be a steward for positive organizational culture has just become more and more clear. In fact, it's a lot of times that individual contributors are ones that carry so much influence over behaviors within an organization. And so the mentality is how do we encourage, how do we empower, how do we inspire every level at the organization to be a steward of positive change? And to quote yourself, Kate, earlier, I think so much of that has to do with making sure employees know that they can bring their full self to work and that their own personal values align with that of the organization. And then those things become so much easier. Especially if now the company is doing purpose driven work that is so in line with who they are that showing up at work and being your authentic self becomes so much easier.

And now you're somebody that is not only getting energy from the organization, but then you're also gifting that energy to others throughout the organization. And that's really, really impactful.

Yeah. One of the things that I love about just leadership, really great leaders, they are so good at identifying people's superpowers and they want them to shine, they push them and encourage them to take that even further and to give them that confidence. And I, and that's what I really love. When you have somebody that's truly focused, as you were talking about the people that are really focused on culture, they're focused on building a team. They're focused on like, there's such a difference between just, oh, I have to hire somebody to put them in the seat and oh, I'm, I'm bringing somebody to be part of what we're building. Like, I want to like that person. I want to believe in that person. I want to see the gifts that that person has been given.

So you work with a lot of leaders. Let's, let's play a fun little. We'll do a fun little activity. So if you are going to share with the listeners, okay, over the next six to 12 months, these are the top three qualities that would be important to consider improving over that timeframe to be a better, more courageous leader. We'll do three, actually, we'll do four. So we'll start with Zach. We'll go from Zach. Nick.

Zach, Nick.

I kind of touched on this earlier, but I think trust and transparency is number one. Yeah. Just being able to openly share your challenges and then decisions and kind of like Nick talked about, like, use data to show like, hey, my employees, you know, are saying this and maybe an engagement survey about working remote or whatever it may be changing up our values or our mission to be more aligned with who we are as a company and the people that make up our company. So like being transparent about the decisions you're making and just trying to create as much trust as possible with your employees and your teams.

That's definitely number one.

Yep.

I agree. A close second perhaps would be continuous learning opportunities for employees. I think that's a really, that's a really interesting topic to explore when considering AI adoption. Moving forward is perhaps how AI can be this powerful conduit of self directed learning opportunities for individuals within companies. The more we can empower individuals to understand their own intrinsic motivators and strengths and how they want to grow within a company to have a powerful tool set that can really help drive out those learning pathways. I think could be a massive, a massive difference maker.

Number three, you know, one of our values is human connection. And I think that as an organization, CultureCon, and I think that the more like connection focused initiatives and things we can do within our organization is really going to help build culture. And, you know, that could be things like, you know, going out and volunteering in the community or social activities with teams, mentorship programs internally at your organization, but using that connection to help build stronger teams and departments and ultimately better organizational cultures.

Before you go, Nick, who does this really well, because I, you hear all the time the people talk about, I don't want to go to this workplace, I don't want to go to the work function, I don't want to go to the holiday party. I don't want to. It's like, this is work. I don't want to deal with these things. But then there's also people that are like, no, we want to go and like, do a ropes course or I have a friend who, his company is fully remote, so twice a year they go, he gets an Airbnb and they go to this really cool place and they go hiking and they do fitness classes and kayaking and all these different things. And it's, it's awesome. And they love it. The team loves it.

So who, if someone's listening and they're thinking, man, like, we're, we've been trying to get people together to have an experience that everyone's going to enjoy that, you know, we're not going to, it's not going to cost us an arm and a leg to do, but something that can really help us connect everyone on the team, especially because there are so many more hybrid working companies.

This is not going to be a surprise to anyone, but Zach and I recently got to participate in Zappos, had their 25th anniversary party. And it was, it was a party. So Zach and I flew out there and part of us going was to actually interview a lot of the employees to try and get a better understanding of what this secret, what this secret sauce is. So I can tell you from that particular event and seeing how excited, grateful, engaged their employees were to be there. And these are people that came for sure, all over the country. I wouldn't be surprised if there were people that traveled from across the world to be at their campus in Las Vegas. When we went around and kind of did these, these videos, there's one prevailing theme that came out was just like a lot of these people consider their co workers like deep friends, friends that they did not have prior to working at Zappos. And so opportunities to have not only birthday parties, but what.

Whatever type of organizational pop up to foster connection. They are so invested in going because that's. It's with their friends. And that's like, that's not something that's easy to come by. And I know in talking to a few of these people that Zapo still has hard shit that they have to navigate, even as, like, the beacon of organizational culture that a lot of us look to. But they rally to this hard work because they have their people with them. And it's like, I'm with my friends, these people I can trust. We can do hard stuff together, and then we can get out.

We can get out of these hard bubbles from time to time and be able to celebrate these accomplishments as a team. So whether they're trivia nights, whether they're birthday parties, you know, that list goes on and on, but it seems like it's stemming from deep rooted relationships among team members.

Yep. My advice would be hit her, hit our friend of Rio, and go take a tour of Zappos.

Oh, yeah. I mean, they definitely know how to do it. And you know what? It starts with them with hiring. You know, they have a really great hiring process, and when you hire people and you're bringing somebody into it goes back to the expectations that we were talking about. Right. If you hire people and they know what kind of culture they're getting into, I feel like it lends itself like, you know, that's the kind of culture they have. It is more family. It is more of, like, you are able to make some friends there.

I mean, look, it all starts with hiring. It depends on the people that you're bringing into the organization. You have to get the right person on board first before they're not going to adopt. Some of the things that you find that is of value to you, if that's not brought up in the interview.

Process, you nailed it. Yeah, Kate, like, none of what we're talking about happens by accident. Like, there has to be extreme intentionality, starting with the candidate experience process and recruiting and onboarding and orienting into the organization. So, yeah, that's. There's a lot of work that goes into it on the front end to make that a reality. For the final fourth takeaway, I think I would get back to intrapreneurship. Just the idea of being able to place a high value on diverse perspectives of the employees that work within your organization and creating the right structures and dedicated time to help Ideate together to create more value, you know, not only for your own economic gain as an organization, but if we want to take that more altruistic angle, that there are people in your company that have causes and passions that are very important to them. So wouldn't it be cool to try and find a way to not only help benefit the company from a profitability standpoint, but simultaneously do something that's really important for the world at large? So I would say that's probably number four.

All right, the solid list, you guys.

What we forget, Kate, what else should be on the list?

Oh, gosh. Well, considering what I do for a living and the program that we have, I mean, really, it's asking. And it kind of goes into what you were just talking about, which is knowing your team members, dreams, knowing what their dreams are, asking your team members, what are your dreams? I'm fascinated by how many leaders really don't know the dreams of the people that they are working with and when somebody's coming to work with work for you. You know, people don't come to work for organizations because they like you. And they don't. They don't come because they. They like the organization. They may really, really like you, and I hope that they do.

And they may really, really love the organization and the mission and vision, but they have dreams of their own, and they believe that if they join the organization, they're going to be able to fulfill their dreams. And so the success of an organization and the success of your people, they're linked together. And so how do we not. I mean, how can we expect that our people are going to show up highly engaged, excited about the mission, vision, excited to achieve really big things together if they don't even have that for their own lives? And so many people are. Are living that way, especially today. Right? People. It feels like a lot of people. There's a lot of heaviness in the world.

There's a lot of people that have stopped dreaming. There's a lot of people that are just trying to pay the bills and make ends meet, but they've forgotten how to dream. And so no matter where we are in our lives and no matter what challenges we're facing, we have to have that hope. We can't give up hope. And we have to have dreams. And that's. That's really important. And I just, I love so much because again, we get to work with some incredible leaders.

And so when I get. When we get to hear stories of leaders that are so excited that their team members are buying their first home and getting married and going on that trip that they've talked about for years and years and sometimes leaving the organization, they had a dream of starting a business or going and doing something completely different and to be able to say, hey, I was part of that person's journey and helping them get there. You know that when you have that type of culture, when you have that type of organization that really supports your people, you look businesses. Well, we can't do anything in business without the people that are running the business that's real care about our people. So yeah, all right, that's a good list. I like it. Going back to continuous learning, the rockstar people that we want to work, work with, they are continuous learners, right? They want to grow, they want to get better. What would you recommend? Besides of course going to CultureCon or some conferences out there? What are some things that people can do, Whether it's maybe some books that you've read that you want to recommend or something specific that people can start to do.

I was just talking about this with, with a friend yesterday. I think one of the best things that ever happened to me personally and professionally from a continuous learning and growth standpoint and really just networking in general, was finding something that I was uniquely interested in learning more about and then building a community of practice around that myself in a way that was peer driven. So a lot of people start out by saying like, hey, this is a thing I'm interested in. Maybe you do a little bit of research online, see if there are any existing communities that you could tap into, and if there isn't, or even if there is, to yourself say, hey, what if I started this thing and started the process of finding other people who share the same interest with me and then kind of building a community around it. And so I've done this over the years in past lives and boy, it's actually shockingly easier than you would think to get that ball rolling. Finding people who also share that same interest, creating the right structures to make the group kind of self governing, have different experts come in from every month or every other month and kind of give their own perspective and learnings. But then now you're leveraging the group's connections and the group's wisdom altogether. And so I always like the idea of like exposure being a huge conduit to continuous learning.

And then obviously how that exposure can gift you not only education, but new experiences which all fold into an individual's learning and growth. So that would be my recommendation is the, you know, Consider doing it yourself and building. Building a group around an interest that you have.

Yeah, I love that. I would say something that has stuck with me since my first job out of college was mentorship. My CEO of my first company very quickly, like kind of took me under his wing and just kind of like showed me the ropes. I mean, I was 21, fresh out of college and working in an industry I no experience in. And so just like being able to get to know someone, especially at that level in their career on a deeper level and consider him like a friend more than a boss. And just like always coaching me on how to handle tough situations and still someone that I keep in touch with to this day. And we haven't worked with each other in over a decade. I feel like that's what it should be about.

Like it's. It's about those connections and having someone who has more experience than you and kind of paving the way and helping you through difficult situations and celebrating the wins with you as well. Super powerful. And I think we need more of that in the workplace.

Yeah. What are your thoughts around book clubs and do you have a particular book that you really loved? Maybe like one of your favorites this year?

Nick, we were talking about that one book at the start of the call. Oh, I think it's actually in your background there. What's that one called?

That's called do what you love. The author's name is Kate Volman. You can buy it where you get any books? Yeah, I can share a book that both Zach and I read this this year. It's called Wrong, Wrong Fit, right fit by Dr. Andre Martin. Dr. Martin has been a chief learning officer and executive at companies like Google, Target, MarsCorp, Nike. So he's.

He's been in some pretty big brands over the years and he dedicated a little bit over a year of going out and doing interviews with individuals and with companies to understand how you find best fit employment. So his book is kind of a report out on these are the things that organizations should do from their own accountabilities and ensuring that there is a right fit among their candidate experience and obviously employees and then things that employees should really consider. You know, frankly, I would even say candidates like what you should be evaluating as somebody who's looking for new opportunities to ensure that it's the right fit for you. And this is kind of getting back to the comment earlier about like, for those of us that are privileged enough to have the time to be able to understand what are our unique skills, what are our passions, what are our intrinsic motivators, and how do I leverage that to understand what companies are the best fit for me? And so it's kind of like this cool dual accountability thing. And when those two spheres intersect, that's when you have the right fit. So that would be. That would be one of my recommendations.

Oh, I like that. That goes right into the hiring process, which I feel like is one of. I feel like that's one of the challenges that come up the most with a lot of our clients. I mean, Matthew Kelly, who wrote The Dream Manager and the Culture Solution as well as, like, 40 plus other books, just, he's a crazy maniac author who is so brilliant in his writing, but his books. So the book the. He shares the six principles of a dynamic culture, and principle number four is higher with rigorous discipline. And I can't tell you how many people come to us after reading the book, and they. And we always ask them, you know, which principle really resonate with you most? It's a lot.

Principle six is grow your people by creating a coaching culture. So those two are always, like, way up there. Yeah. Especially the people one, because it's. It's getting the right people. Zach. Around people and leadership. What are some of the overlying themes of those conversations around people and hiring and what people are doing to.

To make sure that they're finding the right people?

Yeah, definitely. Something that stuck with me for a couple years now. Going back to Zappos, I connected with them. They came to our first conference, and then I flew out there and took my first tour in 2018. And talking about their onboarding process, it's so unique because it's very rigorous. They, like, force you as the employee to kind of, like, interview the company along the way, even after you get hired, to, like, make sure you want to work there. And it actually ends with, like, an actual graduation in the Tony Hsieh Theater now. And it's a big celebration.

But before that, like, the last step is. And I don't know if they still do this, but they used to pay you to leave the company, which I thought was so unique. And it. It's true because, like, the cost of turnover is so high. So if I. If I give someone a couple thousand dollars and they take it, that means they're not working for the right reasons for my company. And it's going to save me tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on their level, to have that employee eventually turn over. So I think that's really unique.

And I saw that question in a Employee engagement survey. My buddy sent me, I think two years ago or a year ago. And it was like, if you were to receive an offer for 25% more of your salary, would you take it? And I think that says a lot about your culture and your people, is like, yeah, you can probably go make 10%, 20% more if you look hard enough. But is it worth it? Like, do you like your company enough to turn down those higher offers? Because you have a great culture, you like your manager, you like your leaders, you have friends at your company. So many reasons. I think that's really interesting stuff.

That's such a good example. I never realized that Zappos had, like. Part of their methodology is having the candidates, like, take time to interview them. Because that was like one of the biggest learnings too, I had from the Wrong Fit Right Fit book is that as candidates we have this confirmation bias where when we're going through the recruiting process, we ourselves are creating. I shouldn't say not everybody, but oftentimes people are envisioning, like, this ideal state of how that company is operating and envisioning yourself wanting to work there to the point where you're willing to overlook really important questions to help qualify if this is the right employment Fit fit for you. So really, like, it can feel uncomfortable sometimes because you feel like you don't want to ask a question that's going to be in some way negatively impacting your candidacy. But really knowing what the right questions to ask are so that you know that you can hit your flow state working within that organization.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's so important. You know, I. Over the years, I. Because I look, I've made hiring mistakes just like anyone else, and it's not fun. And because of those, I really. The way that I approach interviews now, I do it very differently, obviously, the work that we get to do because more and more of what we've seen and experienced. But I am brutally honest with people.

Like, this is who we are. This is what you can expect. You know, this is, you know, especially if someone's like, you know, we're a small business. Some people are coming from corporate. That's a very different. That's a very different opportunity for that person. It's a different environment. It's.

It's. They're not going to have the. That same. Like, we don't have a huge HR department. We don't do things the way that you might be used to in a corporate environment. And so to just lay as much out as possible so that people know very clearly what to expect. Because I read a lot about how, with the OR onboarding process, how important it is, which obviously Zappos is the premier, right? Like they're like the best of the best. So like one of the best companies to mirror.

But it's always interesting to me how people, they get so excited. You get a, you get a new role, you think it's the right fit, and then you get there and you feel like, wait a second, if they don't have a great onboarding, you're like, what am I doing here? And you automatically have that almost like buyer's remorse, like, what have I done? Did I get into a bad situation? So to have all of those things in place is important for those leaders that are listening. So we share. There's three qualities that we look for in a person. So if, if a leader is listening and they're like, okay, they're really thinking about their hiring process during this conversation, they know they might need to strengthen it. They probably do. Most people don't have a great hiring process when they think about the candidates that are coming in. What are three qualities that you think are important for leaders to look for in an individual when hiring?

Curiosity, I would say, is actually easily in my top three. I don't know if it's the number one, but individuals that you can tell are asking the right questions early on. I think that illustrates not only that they've done their due diligence in trying to understand your company as best as possible at the stage that they're at, but also the curiosity. I mean, you want people working within your company that are willing to question, like, what if we did this? A little bit different type of thing. So I always, I always love the personality trait of somebody who's just genuinely curious.

Yeah, I like that too. Kind of going off that a little bit. I usually don't look at resumes too closely. Like, I don't care where people went to school or even if they went to a college, but I do look at their experience and I like to look for people that have had some kind of taste of entrepreneurship because it probably does force you, Nick, to your point, to be a little more curious. You can be a little more nimble, you can pivot faster potentially. So I like looking for that experience or working for an early stage startup because they usually are able to do a lot more. Like if I was just a salesperson at a large company, I'm very narrow focused in that area. But if I work for a small startup or an entrepreneur Myself, I'm able to touch all aspects of a business, and I can bring a lot of that experience to the role that I'm looking at.

I've always personally also liked the. The personality trait of humility. I think it's a good grounding lever for all of us is being able to say we don't know what we don't know, and we're open and curious to different lived experiences and perspectives. And the people that I always had the best working relationships with in the past are people who are just genuinely humble. Right. And that's not to say that they're not. Humility doesn't mean that they're not incredibly driven or accountable. Right.

It's just kind of that practice of accepting that you don't know what you don't know and you're eager to want to. Want to learn and grow. So I've always loved that trait.

Awesome. All right, so before we go, since we have talked a little bit about dreams today, what is your dream for CultureCon? Where do you see this going? Where do you want? I mean, still, it's still new, right? You guys only started a few years ago, and, you know, it's still in its phase of you're really building and growing. You just built out CultureCon west, and this is exciting. So what do you. What do you see for the future?

Yeah, I think for us, and what really drives Nick and I is just like seeing other people find their flow and learn and grow and change their culture of their organization on an individual level, change themselves and, you know, that influences the culture of their organization. And one thing that's been really cool, as we've grown as an organization, we partnered with a firm, employee experience firm, out of the UK called Fauna. We launched a piece of research called Work Possible. And it goes right into what you're talking about. The question we asked over 5,000 people was, what is your dream day at work? And it was really interesting. Like, we're not asking them, like, okay, if I could quit my job, win the lottery and move to Majorca, like, that's my dream day. We're like, in. In your role, like, what is your dream day at work? And a lot of the topics we talked about really influenced that.

Like, onboarding was a big part of that. Opportunities to engage with leadership, employee wellbeing programs, performance management. So there's a lot of cool data that came out of that. And so I think that's kind of what we're doing at CultureCon is like, how can we give you the Tools to make work like your dream day, like every day, your dream day at work. And so that's been really cool to see those results come in and try to use that in our programming. As we start to schedule our 2025.

Event series, we've been very fortunate to be. Have been able to kind of grow these containers, these conferences where people can come together and learn and connect. But to Zach's point, it's like, what are the, what are the peripheral tools that we can bring into these experiences that really help uplift the content and the connection? So Zach's describing like global research. So that's, that's like really exciting for us is being able to lean more into the, into the research side. And then something that we launched this year that we're going to continue doing next year is our first industry specific event. So we have an event called the Edgov Summit and that's intended for individuals that work exclusively in higher education in government. And this was actually an ask of us by our audience over the years is people identifying that like, hey, when we come to this industry agnostic event, the connections are amazing. The spirit of shared accountability is great, but as far as the content goes, there's only a smaller percentage of things that we feel like we can realistically bring back into these public sector environments and be able to deploy.

So that's another thing that Zach and I are excited to, to grow in the future as more of this hyper focused content for more unique working environments.

Awesome. Oh, that's really cool. Yeah. There is something, there is something to be said about that, that we've worked with quite a number of schools and as there are many challenges that are the same. Right. Like if you're building anything a business, nonprofit. You know, I used to work with a lot of nonprofits and they used to talk about, well, we're not a business. I'm like, no, you are a business.

Like you are. We need. Yes, you're a nonprofit, but you, you're. You have to approach it in, in that same way. But, but that's interesting. So that's cool. Well, good luck with, Good luck with that. That'll be fun and exciting.

I'm very excited to get more involved with CultureCon because this is the world in which we live in too. So I'm happy that we got connected and I'm so grateful that you guys took some time to hang out with us today. Thank you so much for being here. We appreciate it.

Thanks. Is ours, Kate.

Yep. Thanks. Great being here.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. And more importantly, I hope you got at least one idea or strategy out of this conversation to help move your business forward, to help your people grow so that your company culture grows and becomes the best that it can be. So people, people really love coming to work and accomplishing great things together. If you are interested in learning a little bit more about coaching and what coaching will do for you and how we can help you develop and build that great culture, whether it's through developing a better hiring process or creating a coaching culture or just helping focus on the mission, vision and values of your organization, we would love to have that conversation with you. We work with a lot of organizations with their culture, coaching, and we would love to be able to serve and support you. So you can go to floydcoaching.com and someone from our team will chat with you. We'll just jump on the call, see where you are today, where you want to go, and if we might be the right fit to help you and your team get there. So we look forward to having that conversation.

Go to floydcoaching.com as always, thank you so much for listening. We so appreciate you. Until next time, Lead With Culture.