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Nathan Whitaker: What Uncommon Leadership Looks Like · Uncommon Impact

• 0:01
  Nathan Whitaker: Welcome to Uncommon Impact.
• 0:03
  Nathan Whitaker: I'm Nathan Whitaker and today I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts with you, things that have come up in some of our prior episodes, things that I've been thinking about.
• 0:12
  Nathan Whitaker: Just want to talk for a second about culture.
• 0:15
  Nathan Whitaker: The guests we've had so far, we've had four guests.
• 0:18
  Nathan Whitaker: One is a head coach, one was the vice president of a university department, one was in the front office of NFL teams for years.
• 0:26
  Nathan Whitaker: And then one is an athletic director at international schools and has moved from country to country to country.
• 0:32
  Nathan Whitaker: And I was thinking about my guests and my initial guests with this idea of culture in mind.
• 0:38
  Nathan Whitaker: And I created that assortment in part because I wanted to get their perspective.
• 0:42
  Nathan Whitaker: Because we've got a head coach who could really do a lot, do a lot directly to set the culture of the organization that he's in.
• 0:52
  Nathan Whitaker: He's been a head coach for the last 20 some odd years before that was on staffs as an assistant.
• 0:57
  Nathan Whitaker: So a couple of decades of really having a direct hand in setting the culture.
• 1:02
  Nathan Whitaker: The vice president of a university department can't set the culture for the university as a whole, but certainly can help set the culture for his department, but has to work within the constructs of the overall university, what they're trying to achieve, what they've got, what their mission is, but he also can have some say in creating it within his department.
• 1:24
  Nathan Whitaker: Then we get to the NFL executive, and there we shared a little bit, Samir talked a little bit about the challenges of having a head coach or an owner who either sees things differently or wants to do things a certain way.
• 1:38
  Nathan Whitaker: And so what do you do when you're not only able to set it than what you do when you find that sometimes it's maybe running contrary to what you think the culture should be, how people should be treated, whatever the issues are.
• 1:50
  Nathan Whitaker: And then also threw in Kent, because of the international aspect, because we're dealing with cultures within culture.
• 1:57
  Nathan Whitaker: It's one thing to look at it and say, okay, here's what we did in this setting, and I'm going to a new place, and I would like to adopt some of those practices.
• 2:04
  Nathan Whitaker: I'd like to change some things, I'd like to make sure this works.
• 2:07
  Nathan Whitaker: That's all important, and that all should be done.
• 2:09
  Nathan Whitaker: But then also doing it within the framework of, okay, there are different norms here, possibly, different values, different things I need to understand when I come in.
• 2:18
  Nathan Whitaker: True of any organization, right?
• 2:19
  Nathan Whitaker: Every organization is different.
• 2:21
  Nathan Whitaker: The makeup is always different, in no small part because people are always different.
• 2:26
  Nathan Whitaker: So we have to keep an eye toward that.
• 2:28
  Nathan Whitaker: That was part of why I thought Kent's observations about the larger culture and the culture within a culture resonated and made sense.
• 2:34
  Nathan Whitaker: Because at the end of the day, culture matters.
• 2:37
  Nathan Whitaker: It's a buzzword that everybody talks about.
• 2:39
  Nathan Whitaker: Maybe there's a different word we should be using.
• 2:41
  Nathan Whitaker: But I think that it's a buzzword that everybody talks about because it's so important.
• 2:46
  Nathan Whitaker: We've been in settings, at least I have, and I'm guessing most of you have too, where the culture was lousy, where either there was a spirit of fear or something like that.
• 2:57
  Nathan Whitaker: I experienced that in one of my jobs where the head coach was setting the culture, and I had what I thought would be a welcome change, and it was brought to me by the players, and I talked to them about it, and they kept raising this as hey, is this something we can do?
• 3:13
  Nathan Whitaker: Is this a change we can make in how we operate?
• 3:16
  Nathan Whitaker: And people kept telling me, the head coach has set everything in motion, don't ask him.
• 3:21
  Nathan Whitaker: He's got everything exactly like he wants.
• 3:24
  Nathan Whitaker: He makes sure that he knows exactly what is going on, and so really it's a culture of he tells us what to do and we do it.
• 3:32
  Nathan Whitaker: And I said, Well, I think this actually is going to make us better, and realized at one point that maybe their assessment of the culture wasn't fair, but that it was a culture of intimidation and people didn't want to go to him.
• 3:44
  Nathan Whitaker: So one day I walked up to the head coach and I said, Hey Coach, there's this issue that's come before me, and here's how we've done it, and here's what the players are suggesting we might do to tweak it.
• 3:54
  Nathan Whitaker: And he threw up his hands and he said, Why would I care?
• 3:57
  Nathan Whitaker: That's great.
• 3:58
  Nathan Whitaker: Anything that makes your life easier, anything that makes the players' lives easier, anything that better gets us ready to play our game on Sunday, great, let's do it.
• 4:06
  Nathan Whitaker: That's not something that's central to how we do things.
• 4:09
  Nathan Whitaker: Let's absolutely make that change.
• 4:10
  Nathan Whitaker: But in that overall culture where people were afraid to ask and to do things and realize that sometimes it's not a culture that was necessarily put in place, right?
• 4:19
  Nathan Whitaker: That it's one that we embody, that we found, okay, probably shouldn't do that, but we make assumptions and we think that maybe there's something in place that isn't.
• 4:28
  Nathan Whitaker: And so it took me to kind of get a little nerve, go talk, and realize that, okay, these assumptions are wrong.
• 4:34
  Nathan Whitaker: He actually did welcome input and thoughts and questions.
• 4:38
  Nathan Whitaker: Another thing I ran across in one of my other organizations was not necessarily that culture of fear or intimidation or nervousness, but it was just kind of, it wasn't necessarily aloofness, but maybe just a lack of cooperation and not necessarily overt, just kind of assumptions again being made where people weren't communicating and talking.
• 5:00
  Nathan Whitaker: And so there were assumptions in place.
• 5:02
  Nathan Whitaker: And so I was working in football operations, I was doing salary cap stuff, scouting stuff, and then also all the football budgets fell under me.
• 5:10
  Nathan Whitaker: So whether it was scouting or equipment or coaching or player costs or whatever, ultimately I submitted budgets to the CFO, accounting, the owners, and we worked through those and figured that out.
• 5:24
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, we had, and I can't remember the issue anymore, but we had something, some charge that regularly came up.
• 5:29
  Nathan Whitaker: And it was either a consultant or some sort of equipment that didn't factor in neatly into like the weight room or whatever it might be, but something we were using on the football side.
• 5:39
  Nathan Whitaker: One day I'm walking through the accounting department, and somebody got up the nerve to say, Hey, can I ask you a question about whatever this recurring expense was?
• 5:48
  Nathan Whitaker: And I said, sure.
• 5:49
  Nathan Whitaker: And they said, Well, we really don't have a bucket to put that in.
• 5:53
  Nathan Whitaker: And so we've been putting it here as this cost, and so we've just kind of been carrying it forward and then taking out of this, and if times the budget, whatever it may be, they were trying to figure out how best to categorize it and what it was for.
• 6:08
  Nathan Whitaker: And so I sat down and I said, Oh, okay, that totally makes sense.
• 6:11
  Nathan Whitaker: Here's what it is, and I talked through it all what we did for it, why, why we had it, why it was an expense.
• 6:18
  Nathan Whitaker: And they realized what the where it would go and where it was best appropriated and how to account for it.
• 6:24
  Nathan Whitaker: And so I felt badly that these folks had been doing this for at least months, if not the last year or so, and trying to figure out and every week was kind of a what do we do with this and where do we put this and how do we assign this?
• 6:36
  Nathan Whitaker: And they just said at one point, one of them said, you know, we didn't want to bother you because we know that we know better than to bother folks in the football side of things, and it was just a minor question.
• 6:46
  Nathan Whitaker: And I found myself laughing and I said, we are not splitting the atom, right?
• 6:49
  Nathan Whitaker: We are not curing cancer over there.
• 6:50
  Nathan Whitaker: Feel free to come in and interrupt us and we'll figure this out together if it saves you time and and we can make everybody's lives easier.
• 6:58
  Nathan Whitaker: So it wasn't a culture of fear or oppression or anything like that, but it was just a culture of thinking, well, they've got their thing to do and I don't want to bother them.
• 7:06
  Nathan Whitaker: And sometimes those cultures happen when we don't pay attention.
• 7:10
  Nathan Whitaker: We've got to make sure that we're being intentional about the culture we want to create and what we want to do.
• 7:16
  Nathan Whitaker: One other thing I wanted to talk about, this idea of communication and connection.
• 7:21
  Nathan Whitaker: And you heard Donnie Jones talk about connecting, that communicating is not enough, that connecting is what's necessary to make sure that we're working together.
• 7:30
  Nathan Whitaker: Samir talked about disrespect being a real problem, disagreement not.
• 7:36
  Nathan Whitaker: And what's the difference between disrespect and disagreement?
• 7:38
  Nathan Whitaker: Well, at some level, there's some sort of connection, right?
• 7:40
  Nathan Whitaker: It's hard to disrespect.
• 7:41
  Nathan Whitaker: I can do it, but it's harder on me to disrespect somebody that I've got a connection with, right?
• 7:47
  Nathan Whitaker: I understand where they're coming from, I understand what their lives are like, I understand how they've been working with me in the past, whatever it may be.
• 7:53
  Nathan Whitaker: And so if we disagree, great, we're gonna disagree on the principles, we're gonna disagree about whatever the issue is, and hopefully that's gonna make the organization better.
• 8:01
  Nathan Whitaker: Disagreement is healthy, as Samir said.
• 8:03
  Nathan Whitaker: Disrespect is not.
• 8:05
  Nathan Whitaker: And so if I can keep it focused on the principles, if we've connected and I'm not gonna turn it into people and create some sort of ad hominem attack that I'm attacking you, the person, instead, we're gonna figure out the principle and where our disagreement comes through that.
• 8:21
  Nathan Whitaker: Kent talked about this connection in terms of questions, that he may know the answers, he may know the answers to the culture he wants to get and the way he wants people to communicate, but he tries to create connections by asking questions.
• 8:35
  Nathan Whitaker: That is, if something comes before him, he may say to somebody, hey, I heard you talking to a student this way or a parent this way.
• 8:42
  Nathan Whitaker: I think I know where you're trying to get.
• 8:44
  Nathan Whitaker: Have you ever had somebody phrase it that way?
• 8:46
  Nathan Whitaker: What was your response?
• 8:47
  Nathan Whitaker: Do you think there might be a better way?
• 8:49
  Nathan Whitaker: Or if this is where we're trying to get and we want buy-in, how could we maybe handle that in a different way?
• 8:55
  Nathan Whitaker: Is there some other way we could tackle that?
• 8:57
  Nathan Whitaker: Something else we could do in trying to figure that out?
• 9:00
  Nathan Whitaker: How should we best go about that?
• 9:03
  Nathan Whitaker: And he says he has a variety of questions that he'll ask, that he'll trot out for different situations, but just a way to try to connect and to help people get there without him having to dictate.
• 9:12
  Nathan Whitaker: Yes, I can communicate, I can tell you what to do, but if I can connect, and if that somehow this resonates with you and it becomes your decision when you hear it and say, yes, if I had been told that, I would be defensive.
• 9:23
  Nathan Whitaker: I wouldn't want to hear it, I wouldn't be open to it.
• 9:26
  Nathan Whitaker: Oh, but if you invite me to walk alongside you, then maybe I do take some ownership, they take some ownership, and he moves forward in that way.
• 9:35
  Nathan Whitaker: And then Matt shared about connection with this wonderful idea of tell them now.
• 9:40
  Nathan Whitaker: This idea that people help us from time to time, that people serve roles in our lives.
• 9:44
  Nathan Whitaker: And so often we don't say anything until the funeral comes along.
• 9:48
  Nathan Whitaker: And so we're just trying to work through life and we're just trying to do our thing, and we forget.
• 9:53
  Nathan Whitaker: Hello, Fezzik.
• 9:54
  Nathan Whitaker: This is my cat, Fezzik.
• 9:55
  Nathan Whitaker: He's got three legs, and he is awesome.
• 9:58
  Nathan Whitaker: And he often likes to help me work.
• 10:01
  Nathan Whitaker: But how we do things matters and whether or not we share those things with people who help us.
• 10:09
  Nathan Whitaker: There are people along the way who've played a role in our lives, and are we giving them a chance to realize that while they're still there to appreciate it?
• 10:19
  Nathan Whitaker: A beautiful lesson.
• 10:20
  Nathan Whitaker: Tell them now.
• 10:20
  Nathan Whitaker: Make sure that people know the role they've played in your lives.
• 10:24
  Nathan Whitaker: Again, this idea of connecting.
• 10:26
  Nathan Whitaker: How are we, as leaders, as people who want strong teams, as people who want to live significant lives, building an intentional culture where we can work together and then doing so in a way in which we build real connections that last and that matter, whether it's with Fezzik or the people we work with.
• 10:47
  Nathan Whitaker: Some days he's my uh strongest team member here as I work alone from my office.
• 10:52
  Nathan Whitaker: So here's something you can do this week.
• 10:57
  Nathan Whitaker: Think about your organization.
• 10:59
  Nathan Whitaker: It could be your work organization, it could be something you serve at a church, scouting, whatever it may be, a community thing, Rotary, whatever your organization is, your team is, and think about what are people experiencing?
• 11:13
  Nathan Whitaker: What really matters when it comes to culture?
• 11:16
  Nathan Whitaker: Because again, at the end of the day, the culture is not what we- the big words in a speech or the things we put on the wall.
• 11:22
  Nathan Whitaker: It's what people experience every day in the small things.
• 11:25
  Nathan Whitaker: Culture is built day by day in the little actions, the little comments that we put together over and over.
• 11:32
  Nathan Whitaker: It's one thing to say I'm always there for you, but my door is closed most of the time.
• 11:35
  Nathan Whitaker: Or it's one thing to say I'm always there for you, but I'm looking over your shoulder at whoever's coming down the hall that I can talk to next.
• 11:42
  Nathan Whitaker: But am I really listening?
• 11:43
  Nathan Whitaker: Am I really interacting?
• 11:45
  Nathan Whitaker: Am I really whatever it may be?
• 11:47
  Nathan Whitaker: So think about what your culture is and what really matters.
• 11:50
  Nathan Whitaker: Is there something missing?
• 11:51
  Nathan Whitaker: What's critical to you?
• 11:52
  Nathan Whitaker: Is it honesty in your organization?
• 11:55
  Nathan Whitaker: Is it trust?
• 11:56
  Nathan Whitaker: Is it accountability?
• 11:58
  Nathan Whitaker: Is it a sense of caring?
• 12:00
  Nathan Whitaker: Is it a sense of excellence to make sure that we're excellent in all that we do?
• 12:04
  Nathan Whitaker: Whatever it may be, take a look at that and think about what really matters.
• 12:08
  Nathan Whitaker: Now think about, and this is a hard question, is there a gap?
• 12:12
  Nathan Whitaker: We want honesty.
• 12:14
  Nathan Whitaker: Are we free to share with each other what's going on, ways in which I might need help in the sales department from somebody in marketing or in development or in manufacturing or whatever?
• 12:25
  Nathan Whitaker: Are we able to figure those things out together?
• 12:28
  Nathan Whitaker: Is the culture reinforcing what we need?
• 12:31
  Nathan Whitaker: So is there something you can do this week as you move forward to strengthen that?
• 12:37
  Nathan Whitaker: Can you reach out?
• 12:38
  Nathan Whitaker: Can you ask somebody?
• 12:41
  Nathan Whitaker: Can you notice?
• 12:42
  Nathan Whitaker: Leading by wandering, can you just pay attention to what's going on?
• 12:46
  Nathan Whitaker: And then finally, that critical skill that sometimes we're not always very good at, at least I'm not.
• 12:51
  Nathan Whitaker: Can you listen?
• 12:53
  Nathan Whitaker: Not just hear, but can you listen and understand what somebody's saying and what they're trying to get at?
• 12:59
  Nathan Whitaker: That's my charge to you this week.
• 13:00
  Nathan Whitaker: Is there a way in which you can strengthen and understand and reinforce the culture and any gaps there might be in where you are versus where you want to be?
• 13:12
  Nathan Whitaker: Have a great day.
• 13:14
  Nathan Whitaker: Hope you enjoyed it.
• 13:15
  Nathan Whitaker: Hope you found some worthwhile takeaways.
• 13:17
  Nathan Whitaker: Thanks for being a part of Uncommon Impact.
• 13:19
  Nathan Whitaker: If you've liked this or the other episodes, we'd love it if you'd give us a like, a five-star rating, subscribe, tell a friend.
• 13:26
  Nathan Whitaker: Very much appreciate it.
• 13:28
  Nathan Whitaker: From both me and Fezzik.