CHAPTER 15
Create a (Positively) Contagious Culture. Live It.
If you build it, they will hum.
A contagious culture is simply a bunch of contagious yous being together.
You’re contagious, present, and using your superpowers. Your relationships have new awareness, and your leadership has new range. Now we move into impact. If you’re living Parts 1 through 4 of this book, impact is easy. It’s happening. But is it sustainable? Is it real? And how do a bunch of contagious yous do it all together?
While this book is about you, we ultimately want to bring all that you’re doing back to creating a contagious culture.
I spoke with organizations that have been integrating this work during the past few years, as well as revisited some I wrote about in Contagious Culture. Where are they now? How’s this work been integrated? How’s it grown? What works? What’s been simplest? Most powerful? What’s surprised you? Where else has it shown up?
I had many questions, and they had many answers.
I received 16,000 words of input from 13 organizations and 19 business leaders that were willing to share their stories, and provide best practices, wisdom bombs, and outcomes. In this chapter, I’ve compiled just some of their gems. (You can access more from their interviews in the Contagious You Resource Kit offered in Chapter 16.)
Hats off and hearts up to these organizations that continue to lean into the soft stuff (knowing that it’s titanium) that makes their organizations, families, classrooms, students, patients, employees, and customers thrive even more.
With that, here we go.
Common Themes
In our discussions there were recurring themes with every person and organization. These themes boiled down to “beliefs and mindset” and “tools and principles.” Before we dig into their stories, here are some of the most common.
Best-Practice Beliefs and Mindset
Almost every person I spoke with shared some form of belief, experience, or mindset frame in the following five areas.
1. Simple awareness, being present, knowing we’re contagious, “seeing” people, acknowledging and honoring them, and taking a pause were part of the magic sauce that got them started and made this work real.
2. Taking care of themselves really did make them better for others. (Modeling self-care for their people was essential to making it contagious.)
3. Being a positively contagious culture didn’t just stay at work—it followed people home, impacting their marriages, kids, families, and other aspects of their personal lives.
4. Little things mean a lot. It’s often not a huge overhaul or initiative that’s needed. Sometimes it’s simply owning (and shifting) presence, connecting with intention, being kind, and/or choosing to integrate one idea at a time that makes the most real and sustainable changes.
5. It’s a journey. Creating or changing culture takes intention, time, and practice. You’ve got to do the work, and the work starts with you.
Best-Practice Tools and Principles
I asked everyone I interviewed what tools or principles they found most useful, impactful, and easiest to implement in this work. The following nine showed up repeatedly:
1. Presence Reboots and Energy Checks
2. The Essential You (values, vision, purpose, and the bubble)
3. Changing their relationship with “self-care” and “self-kind”
4. Accessing (and staying connected to) intention
5. Using the Five Steps to Intentional Impact Framework and the IEP Sheet
6. Energetic Xylophone and reframing
7. Naming it and assuming good
8. Gratitude, curiosity, contribution, and service as state shifters
9. Conflict navigation, agreements, clean feedback, and creating healthy containers
The following sections tell their stories.
Case Studies, Shares, and Words of Wisdom from the Trenches
Please note that with all shares in this chapter, the words, learnings, and perspectives offered here are through the lens of the participants and organizations that shared their experiences. This is not a promotional chapter for me or the work; it is an offering of different ways of applying the content. This chapter also offers perspectives from other humans and organizations that may be similar to what you’re going through, finding resistance in, or working on in your own organization right now. This is an important point for this chapter.
My intention for including these case studies is simple: it is to honor the care, effort, and experiences of each person sharing what was true for him or her, as well as to serve you in your own journey and application. Some organizations may have done a full IEP integration for years; others may have only read Contagious Culture, downloaded free tools, and attended (or hosted) an event. In all cases, the quality of their results and their experiences is reflective of their care for humans; their wisdom and heart in business; their willingness to dig deep and explore the ideas of contagiousness, ownership, impact, and the principles offered in this book; and finally their authentic application and due diligence in using the content as it resonated for them.
May their honesty and generosity serve you beautifully.
IDEO
IDEO is a design and innovation firm devoted to creating positive and disproportionate impact through design. If you read Contagious Culture, you know that IDEO and I go way back, having worked together since 2007. They’ve integrated this work into their organization in many ways; it’s become a part of their language and processes, and they continue to integrate and practice as is authentic for their culture.
How do the people at IDEO create and be a positively contagious culture, not just do it? They live it. IDEO live their core values, stay connected to purpose, enroll their workforce and clients in what they stand for, and do phenomenal work. As a result, IDEO is one of the top firms in the world with a reputation for being a beautiful place to work and an organization that is honest and smart and in service of our future.
For this book I met with Duane Bray, Partner and Head of Global Talent, to understand the firm’s success. In this ever-changing world where we’re moving faster, innovation needs to be bigger and smarter, and we have more stress and demands than ever. How is IDEO not only keeping up with it all but thriving?
The Power of Ritual
IDEO found that nourishing its culture through ritual has been powerful. Duane talks about the power of ritual for storytelling, gathering people together in real time to share, transfer knowledge, and build an ever-evolving sense of community. The people at IDEO have rituals that are designed at a higher level such as “Fireside Chats” (conversations where they get real-real), their “Weekly WOW” (a weekly sharing of cultural inspiration from all studios, for all employees), and other location- and IDEO-wide specific rituals. They also have more grassroots rituals that happen every week such as “Make Time” where someone hosts and brings a topic, and people build something together. Making time to make and connect outside the context of day-to-day project work and take a minute to be together creates more community and brings teams back to the grassroots of identity and culture. In the case of IDEO, that means focusing on the culture as makers. The talent team devotes time to making rituals, stewarding, and creating conditions for people to model healthy and authentic behaviors and have a collaborative culture that celebrates the uniqueness of each person and the essentialness of the collective whole. When you look at the Essential You in the IEP Model, you’ll see how these kinds of activities add to the identity of the organization as well as the core values of each member.
Another ritual? Project spaces. IDEO’s work is project-based, so people are constantly beginning and ending new projects, building and completing teams, and building identities for the next project. This means they have to be facile, be present, and work together to truly honor the work, each member of the team, and the collective magic of the team as a whole. One of the most important cultural rituals, which goes back to their origin as being made up of designers and makers, is in creating the identity for the projects and workspaces. People name the project team, create agreements for how they’ll work together, and design the team’s workspace. The workspaces are unique to each project and range from flashing bright lights to album covers to artwork to drawings to anything the team fancies will reflect the energy and intention of the project. Building the identity of the team; staying connected to ritual, values, and each other; and being intentional about how they want to show up together builds a stronger sense of community, which ultimately creates a stronger culture and better results for their clients.
Showing Up and Managing Ambiguity
But . . . with all of the rituals and structures that are put in place to support culture and their becoming, none of them are as powerful if people aren’t showing up well.
Duane shares:
The success of our rituals and practices has to do with role-modeling and making the space for each other. This is a really important point; people look to leaders and each other trying to get signals as to where things are going, how they’re doing, and what’s next. IDEO is a place that has a high degree of ambiguity and we’re not going to take that away—the organization can’t be made much simpler because that would defeat its purpose (ambiguity is necessary for innovation and making). But what we can do is give people the clarity to navigate in that ambiguity. Part of navigating ambiguity is in how leaders model, show up, and set the conditions. How people are being seen, how people understand that they are being seen, and helping them figure out what they need in order to be successful is essential to the being of our culture. This is also where our core values come in—they help identify and activate what we need to do and be in order to be successful.
In other words, the people at IDEO celebrate ambiguity and makes it work for them in service of the best results and project outcomes. And they reduce ambiguity (and help people navigate it) as much as possible when it comes to leadership, giving people the tools to navigate career growth and design, to collaborate and work through conflict more powerfully, and to show up well.
Tools and Principles
When asked to reflect on some of the most meaningful effective tools, ideas, and principles integrated from this work, Duane shares there are specific tools that have been helpful, including the basic philosophy of being contagious and creating your experience that can be game-changing. Being present, naming it, building agreements, and conflict navigation (through externalization and partnership) have been some of the core practices made most integral to their culture:
You and I may have a conflict but instead of talking about “you versus me,” we take the conflict and look at it and say, “Do we agree that this thing is there?” This combined with the ability to stay present in the conversation, name it, be in service of each other (and the issue at hand), and honor our agreements in the process have been core to effectively navigating the tensions and ambiguity often necessary in pushing edges, building teams, and making new things.
He also offers that there’s another side to the IEP work that’s more philosophical and that doesn't require you to go through a whole bunch of deep, deep courses or training or practice:
You have control over your experience. Period. You can share with somebody in one discussion that if they take responsibility for their experience they can decide what they want to create. They can decide to have a good relationship or not. They can decide to be successful or not. It’s a conscious contagious act. As soon as I even surface the idea that I am at choice and have a decision—I think and show up differently. If I’m modeling this, others are more likely to do the same in their own way.
Having worked together for years and having embedded these ideas into their culture, Duane says, they’ve found that they can make a quick impact with little effort:
Within five minutes of a conversation with someone who holds these principles, you can get something practical to start with right away. All of the other tools and practices can come over time, but it’s actually an orientation of having agency over your own experience that is what’s so powerful. As soon as people realize they have that, that unlocks a lot. This stance of ownership and agency is also contagious, so the more we live it and be it, the more it becomes a part of who we are.
Experience Creates Culture
As we close our conversation, Duane offers one more thought we can take with us:
I think that the premise behind Contagious You is that taking a moment to prepare for how you’re going to show up determines how people experience you and the impact you can have. That’s the part that’s so important for me—that I choose to show up. I could say nothing in a meeting, but people could have a powerful experience of me because of how I’m choosing to be in that room. A lot of people don’t realize that it’s not what you say, it’s how you show up—and that’s what’s creating the culture. Your observable actions and the IEP you go into that room with are what people experience. The experience is what makes the result.
Large Financial Services Organization
Chris Burt is an Executive Human Resources Leader in a large financial services organization. To honor the organization’s corporate guidelines, we are unable to name the organization. However, its story is powerful, and so I want to include parts of it here. The story Chris shares reflects the courage of doing something different and the impact possible when a large organization, traditionally focused on tangible results, numbers, and hard data, decides to embrace the “soft stuff.” I’ve pulled excerpts from our discussion, leaving Chris’s words intact as he tells his story and how using many of the ideas and principles in Contagious Culture and Contagious You have supported him and his organization in creating a more positively contagious culture.
What Inspired You to Embrace the “Soft Stuff” and Create a Positively Contagious Culture Using This Content?
Chris shares:
For years, business trainers have built curricula and models to inspire great individual and team leadership. In many respects, these models are brilliant, and have been skillfully delivered by training gurus in businesses around the globe—lots of “doing” and “skills building”—with minimal effect. The leadership gap in many organizations is wider than it has ever been. These models and the method in which they are delivered often don’t stick. While participants may enjoy the content, and even intellectually grasp its significance, upon return to a workplace built around the status quo, the lessons fade. Little changes.
My experience across three decades suggests that people are simply overmanaged and under-led. Many business professionals have become supermanagers with superpowers to deliver results, do work, and manage projects, timelines, and budgets. But their leadership x-factor that taps into the individual discretionary effort of those working for them is lukewarm at best. The corporate “go-to” is often just to get them more and more training. The hope being that if “we train them, the results will come.” Hope is a wonderful thing, but it’s a lousy strategy for driving interpersonal change and translating that change into an improved business outcome.
Each in its own way, the leadership training models are valid and the delivery is entertaining and engaging. Yet something is still missing.
Enter IEP. The whole experience from my personal perspective “end-runs” traditional training models by creating experiences that drive “being” and ultimately translate into “doing.” It seems esoteric, but I can only say that IEP in our organization got into people’s work experiences, providing them with a new framework, which drove new behaviors and ultimately better business results. IEP meets people as they are—wherever they are—and changes context for work and life. In a world of shrinking resources and ever-increasing business demands, it’s proven to be the most effective method of tapping into the wonderful power of “discretionary effort”—that unique thing that can be given or withheld to achieve above and beyond results.
What Are Some of the Most Useful or Meaningful Ideas, Tools, or Principles You’ve Integrated to Make Your Culture Better?
Chris offers:
The idea that we are contagious and that our presence is our impact has been very important for us. I got this from reading your first book, but then, in the live session, there were two exercises in particular that were especially poignant for my team and me. Both were experiential and in the moment, working in collaboration with someone else (mostly in silence), and had me truly experience the energy I put into my team (or partner) and that they put into me. This highlighted for me the extraordinary power of my own Intentional Energetic Presence, and the impact it can have on my ability to drive business results.
I’ve realized that people’s brains are hardwired to decode the energy and presence I transmit. If there is the slightest hint of insincerity, of hidden agendas or inauthenticity coming off me, I will limit that team’s ability to operate at their best. They may be skeptical, cautious, or ambivalent and simply do nothing as result. Conversely, if what is coming off me includes hope and possibility, a sincere belief in the team’s ability to achieve whatever it is I am asking of them, they will exceed my wildest expectations. These experiences, and the experience of using the principles in this work, have made me aware that the thought bubble above my head—which I think no one can see—actually speaks more than the words coming out of my mouth. And if they are in conflict, the team will pick up on it and results will be lukewarm at best.
More specifically, I’ve found great use in many of the tools, especially the ones that help us reboot in the moment and show up with intention. We’ve all had the experience of “not feeling it” on the job. We’re all over-scheduled and likely have a backbreaking workload on any given day. I have been truly surprised by the power of Bubbling Up and how useful the Energetic Xylophone has been to help improve my energy and the energy of those I lead.
For example, many of us have meetings scheduled one after another with no break in between. Suppose my meeting at 9 a.m. doesn’t go well, and is immediately followed by a meeting at 10 a.m. where I need to show up as motivational and inspirational. I could (and if unchecked, likely will) carry the negative energy from my 9 a.m. right into my 10 a.m. Because I don’t want to do that—no one intentionally wants to be the guy that sucks the air out of the room—I can now take less than a minute and reset between the two meetings.
Often this exercise happens on the elevator ride to my next meeting. I acknowledge my energy from the 9 a.m., set an intention for my 10 a.m., and show up more congruently than I otherwise would have. The beauty of this is that it’s authentic and it does not mean that I need to be “fake happy” at my 10 a.m. Strangely though, simply setting a new intention actually does raise my positive energy and enables me to be the most genuine version of me, which will significantly increase the likelihood that the desired outcome of my 10 a.m. will be achieved. It is this kind of “radical authenticity” that brings out the best in me and in those I lead. This exercise for me has proven to be the x-factor that has kept my leadership authentic—focused on business outcomes and not dependent upon the roller coaster of my day.
What Impact Have You Seen?
Chris says:
My organization had to scale up quickly and deliver on many enormous business outcomes. We did what most organizations do: hired the best and brightest; set them to work on tasks; and managed budgets, timelines, and resources along the way. A couple of years into this undertaking, even as we were delivering solid results, there was a growing amount of organizational strife that began to inhibit our ability to deliver. Where we were making progress before, progress slowed. Timelines slipped and our team fragmented into some pretty serious silos. At a minimum, people became less engaged and somewhat estranged from their leaders and from one another.
Traditional management tools were only scratching the surface, and I was wondering how a bunch of bright, talented, and well-intentioned people could arrive at this place. I began to see the negative energy wafting through my organization and knew that it was in that space that we needed some help if we were to get back on track. The IEP work shone a light on each of us in a caring and respectful way and helped us see how we were interdependent—and also accountable—as individuals and as teams. We were treating our work and our relationship with one another as a zero-sum game; my work got done at the expense of yours; my point of view was more valid than yours; etc. IEP brought a more holistic and highly personal perspective into the organization that created space where amazing results could flourish. We began to really “see” one another.
In addition, getting people in touch with their IEP and how they show up unlocked a greater ROI for us—not only on our results and feeling better working together—but on a lot of the training we’d invested in throughout the previous years. We realized in doing this work that one of the reasons we’d not been able to tap an optimal ROI for those engagements was because people were “doing” the training and the skills but not “being” them and showing up at their best. This work and the ownership for our contagiousness unlocked a new level of cultural and business success.
Probility
Probility Physical Therapy in Michigan is “dedicated to making a difference in people’s lives by providing outstanding therapy services in a welcoming atmosphere across 15 clinics.” The main header on its website is “BeRemarkable.” And the first person you see when you walk through the door is the “Director of First Impressions.” Enough said. I spoke with Patrick Hoban, President of Probility, along with Kelly Poppaw, Clinic Director (and also an IEP-Certified Steward), to learn more about how this work has unfolded for the company over the past three years.
How Do You and Your Organization Live and Be a Contagious Culture Versus Do It?
According to Patrick:
Probility teaches—from the moment that we interview someone, to orientation, training, and their daily work—a culture of love, caring, and service. We live this through only hiring people who display qualities like hope, joy, love, and humbleness. We show them on their first day they are a special part of our family by having every person have welcome gifts on their desk when they come in. We have programs that support and assist staff in being able to show gratitude and appreciation to each other at work as well as supporting our staff if they are in crisis. We create a culture where staff can consistently show we care about each other, that people can be their “whole self” while at work, and that we are a people/staff-first company. This is important: if the staff know we care about them significantly, they will then care about their patients in the same way.
Kelly offers:
One way we do this is by modeling culture—starting with leadership. We talk the talk and walk the walk. Just recently, Patrick granted our 14 Clinic Directors five extra hours of administrative time per week. He sent us an email titled “Living Our Core Values” and then described how by granting us more admin time, he wanted us to be able to feel more equipped to teach our staff and have time to get stuff done so we can go home and be present with ourselves and our families. This is an estimated $14,000 lost per week with patients. However, he believes we’ll make up for it in our ability to invest more in our staff and leadership development. This was our President walking the talk, showing us that the quality of our people is the most important component of our growth. I’ve learned that companies that live and be a contagious culture focus on quality, quality, quality—in care, in service, in leadership, in their people, in everything.
What Are Some of the Most Useful, Simple, and Meaningful Ideas, Tools, and Principles You’ve Integrated to Make These Ideas Live and Your Culture Better?
Patrick shares:
I love doing the mental/emotional check-in with myself and setting the intention of how I want to show up before meetings—especially ones that are potentially challenging or stressful. I love the xylophone. When I’m low on the scale, I’ll do something (a quick meditation, prayer, or something kind for someone else) to center myself and move up authentically. We provide personal growth opportunities through book clubs, leadership coaching that I do with every leader in the company (and that many of the leaders do with their staff), as well as sending them to seminars and workshops (like IEP Live!). Finally, we have a person on staff who is trained in IEP and goes from clinic to clinic to help improve people’s intentionality.
Kelly says:
We know, live, and breathe our core values, which are at the heart of our culture. We don’t just have them hanging on a wall in our lobby; our staff know them because they live them. We use them in our decision making and in how to respond and what action to take as various situations come up. As a leadership team, we intentionally reinforce them at our all-staff meetings by recognizing people across the organization for living each of our core values the best. These people stand in front of the whole company while Patrick reads cool stories about how they made a difference in people’s lives. Then we name an overall champion and they get a golden apple core trophy that says, “You’re Probility to the Core,” which they keep at their desk until the next person is named.
The other principle we live by is that “we are contagious” and “how we show up, matters.” Patrick tells us as Clinic Directors, “What you allow and what you don’t allow is the culture you create.” This ties to our core values of accountability and greatness in our jobs. It’s not just being great in the work we do, but being great human beings and servant leaders inside and outside the clinic. I can tell when one of my staff is not taking care of themselves as it has a huge effect on how they show up to work, how they interact with others (their vibrational energy), and their ability to be effective in their treatments with their patients. So, whenever I have a new hire come into my clinic, I get their permission from day one to hold them accountable for taking care of themselves. I’ve never had one person say no to me because I also ask them to hold me accountable for taking care of myself, too. I don’t believe leadership is unidirectional; I ask my staff to hold me accountable, give me feedback, and assume positive intent. This opens up a conversation for me to do the same with them.
What Have You Been Most Surprised by in Terms of What It Takes to Create Culture and How People Respond to This Content?
Patrick’s response:
This work has shown people they have the ability to impact their life, and not just have their external worlds impact them, which has been hugely impactful in creating more joy, happiness, and productivity here. The ripple effects at home and outside the clinic have been especially moving.
Kelly shares:
How little buy-in I get from staff when I make big grandiose gestures versus how great of buy-in I get when I pay attention and act on the little things. This can be as simple as turning my desk chair away from my computer screen and toward them so I’m facing them when they walk into my office. I give them my full presence. They leave my office feeling important and that they matter, which reflects in their patient care. There are also times when I change the cadence, tone, or volume of my voice to match what they need in the conversation. Or make sure I say hello and goodbye to each person, by name, when I see them in the morning and when I leave for the evening. These little things all have impact and are contagious, affecting whatever they do next.
What Impact Have You Seen?
According to Patrick:
Simply put—I have happier staff who are more aware of themselves, more emotionally intelligent, and who want to positively impact those around them. Probility has one of the highest employee satisfaction scores of any large department in our hospital system. The hospital has lots of good departments, and Probility is considered one of the happiest!
Kelly adds:
We develop people in ways that they become leaders our staff want to follow, not just have to follow. We have our staff write visions, and we grow and develop them as people because we believe our staff are our biggest assets. We don’t review or grade our staff on whether they are meeting productivity measures; we review and grade them on whether they are living our core values and being a contribution to our mission. We find that when we focus on these things, we’re successful on all levels—the numbers and the results we want follow and we knock our budgets out of the water, showing huge profit margins—but it’s not because we’re driven by numbers or results. We honor and support the soft skills first.
imageOne
“It’s a daily practice to live and be our culture,” offers Rob Dube, Cofounder and President of imageOne, an organization offering a progressive approach to managed print. The organization’s purpose? “To Deliver the X [DtX] to everyone, every day, every time. What is the X? The X is genuine care that consistently drives extraordinary energy, actions, and experiences.”
It’s working—imageOne was named to Forbes Small Giants 2017: America’s Best Small Companies and also ranked the #1 Top Workplace in Michigan in 2018 by the Detroit Free Press. When you look at what the organization does—or rather its IEP and who the people are, you can see why.
Perspectives That Create a Highly Positively Contagious Culture
Rob shares:
People are what drive and differentiate our company. What we do isn’t any different than the thousands of competitors we have. So, it makes good business sense to take unbelievable care of them and the totality of their lives to set them up for the greatest success possible, not to mention it’s just the right thing to do. What’s most important is that this care is genuine. Once we have the right mindset and intentions internally, it’s easier to do it externally. Showing up well for each other, taking care of ourselves, and serving happens naturally.
Serving Customers, “Good” or “Bad”
Rob explains:
A common philosophy nowadays is that companies should only do business with customers they love and are in alignment with. For us, we challenge ourselves to do business with customers that we can serve . . . or, truly DtX. Some customers (simply other humans in other organizations that happen to need our services) are in miserable cultures. They can’t help but not show up as their best. Our thought is, maybe we can bring a small light to their day. Or, in some cases, a very bright light. You never know the ripple effect this might have and what that might mean to that human.
When It Doesn’t Work: Mindful Transitions
When it comes to culture? “Some people get it; some don’t. It works for some, not for others. Don’t take it personally,” says Rob. He used to lose sleep over this, but through the years has shifted his mindset to see the organization and its culture “almost like a person—ever-evolving, always improving, imperfect, showing up in the world the best we can. Some days better than others.”
For those who don’t get it, aren’t getting what they need, or aren’t able to deliver what imageOne needs, he’s learned to support them, incorporating what they call “mindful transitions” (an idea he learned from Robert Glazer at Acceleration Partners) instead:
It makes no sense for people to give a two-week notice of leaving a company, and it makes no sense for a human to be terminated and escorted out the door with a box containing their belongs (often containing pictures of their family—other humans who are about to be affected by this!). Instead, why can’t we work together in a harmonious way to find what either is looking for? In the end, everyone wins.
Culture Takes Time
Rob’s learned to be patient:
Cultures take time to shift. When we add new ideas and components to our culture, I focus on them for a good 12 months. Consistent communication has been key. I’ve learned to ask lots of questions and listen deeply to what really matters to people. Then ask some more. It’s all about human relationships versus business relationships, showing up together, and working to make each other’s day a bit brighter. That’s how we create our culture.
15FIVE
Shane Metcalf, Cofounder and Chief Culture Officer of 15Five, an organization devoted to “unlocking the potential of every member of the global workforce” through the company’s team communication suite of tools (which I also discussed in Contagious Culture), offers that the company continues to build systems and processes to reinforce its positive culture. From small rituals like beginning meetings with a one-word check-in to reinforce the value of people’s internal emotional states (whatever they may be); to doing a full IEP Check-In at the beginning of leadership meetings to share where they are and where they want to be; to incorporating a list of questions related to these ideas in the company’s quarterly Best-Self Review that help people reorient to their best self and what that means in both being and doing terms . . . These have all been easy and effective practices in helping their organization be a positively contagious culture.
Shane shares, “Normalizing these things so it takes zero effort or emotional courage to instigate them has been essential. This way they just happen and the conversations and awareness grow from there.”
When asked what has surprised him most about creating culture and integrating the principles of this work, Shane said it was how hungry people are for this level of authentic relating in companies:
There may be some cynicism at first, but when you really get people connected to the benefit and the feeling of being seen by your peers, it’s revelatory and life-changing. The impact is that people begin to relax into a far greater sense of belonging and psychological safety. Trust begets energy and energy is what leads to an enthusiastic life full of accomplishment and meaningful connection. By saying that we value the energetic presence of every person here and equipping them with the tools and resources to optimize themselves, we witness people regularly bloom into ever greater versions of themselves.
SAI ORGANIZATION
Dana Schon, Professional Learning Director (also now an IEP-Certified Steward), and Roark Horn, Executive Director of the School Administrators of Iowa, have found that living and being a contagious culture versus doing it is a lot simpler than many of the initiatives people often think about when they need to embark on a culture shift. They call this work “an invitation” because it’s not prescriptive but rather invitational in nature, providing frameworks that are human, real, and easy to fit into anyone’s life who wants to show up better.
Dana says:
People’s connotations of the word “culture” often include tangible strategies that they’ll engage their staff or team in doing in order to make a better culture, but much of culture is in our own choice as to how we show up. As leaders, we are in the best position to establish the culture we want to create and sustain in our organizations. Most people respond with surprise to the idea that we are contributing energy to the room all the time. When invited to think about how they contribute to their own culture and situation, they recognize the role they play in creating the results they have. This is an “aha.”
So much of this work is about awareness. Once you have that, you can’t be unaware. Recognizing that we have impact in how we choose to show up and that we’re contagious has been a difference-maker in the quality of presence at the events, meetings, and learning opportunities we host. Our participants take their cue from us—when we show up high vibe and present, they do too. We’ve found we’ve been able to be more present, make better decisions, serve our buildings and districts better, manage our energy, and be more at choice in how we show up. This has had ripple effects throughout our organization. It’s literally been contagious.
Roark remembers engaging in an “IEP Appreciation Bath” when this work was first brought into the organization. He claims that “bath” shifted the culture. “People said things no one had said before and affirmed each other. The idea of being present was incredibly important because when I assumed this role, people were still uncertain about my expectations. Through this IEP work, I felt more vulnerable and willing to engage in more authentic conversations.”
After engaging in the work for a while, he shares he began to increase his awareness of his impact in all of his relationships. He says this awareness changed his relationships with his wife, mom, kids, and friends:
I’d catch myself not being present whereas before, I hadn’t noticed. I wasn’t aware. I became much more aware of the impact my presence had on others in the room. Now, I don’t bring my phone into our events. I know what distracts me, and I eliminate those distractions. I recognize the power of my title in the room. It’s been interesting to observe how others look to me when I am there as a participant. I realize that what I choose to do gives others permission to do. If I’m on my phone, then others feel it’s OK to do the same. I recognize how contagious I am as a leader.
I have been most surprised by how effective it is and how easy it is to implement and what a difference it makes in how our members interact with each other. There is a presence, energy, connection, and empathy among those who have awareness of their presence as compared to those who don’t.
Vivayic
Vivayic, a learning services company with the purpose of “building others’ capacity to do good in the world,” has been integrating the IEP Model over the past three years. Emily Kueker and Carrie Derner, two of the owners (and IEP Stewards), reflected on what they’ve learned to build a positively contagious culture for their team of 30-plus employees all working virtually.
Creating Awareness
“Creating awareness about the contagious nature of energy has been essential in giving us a common language to address the presence each of us brings into conversations,” shares Emily. “We know we’ve been successful in establishing the IEP Method when a teammate volunteers, ‘I need to reboot,’ during a meeting. This means they’re self-aware, and that they identify the need to be more intentional and know what to do to change their presence.”
Naming It
“Employees have bought into ‘naming it.’ As owners, we have a deep commitment to each other, and we refuse to compromise on it,” shares Carrie. “The freedom to name what we are sensing is beautiful. We don’t play games. I feel comfortable naming most things with our team members, too. If they identify something that seems off, we work together to name it. This saves time, energy, and drama.”
Integration, Accountability, and Making It Real
All new employees are introduced to IEP during the two-week onboarding process, and they attend a two-day live IEP event as quickly as possible. Components of the IEP Method are written into Vivayic competency models and creative operating procedures so that IEP will be part of ongoing processes, growth, and development conversations. Emily comments, “Our employees latch on to IEP quickly, and it really helps them understand our culture and the ‘why’ behind our language and habits.”
The Five Steps to Intentional Impact
Vivayic uses the Five Steps to Intentional Impact before tough conversations, interviews, and meetings. Carrie explains:
Checking our intended impact has been priceless for Emily and me. Many times when discussing how to handle something, we stop and ask, “What are we hoping for as an outcome?” It’s made a huge difference in how I approach situations. As a result, I’m a huge advocate of the 5 Steps with our team. I’ve been able to coach people through stressful situations and keep them focused on the intended impact.
The Results
The company has excellent employee engagement scores, which has led to extraordinary client engagement. The company recorded a Net Promoter Score of 82 in its most recent survey. This has led to Vivayic earning a spot on the Inc 5000 list for fastest-growing private companies four years in a row.
“We invest deeply in culture. We recognize the most important job we have as owners is to make Vivayic a place where people get a chance to be their best. The awareness and this work took us to another level,” says Carrie, “The results speak for themselves.”
Domaine Carneros
Shauna Sullivan of Domaine Carneros (DC), a phenomenal winery located in Napa Valley, California (also discussed in Contagious Culture), joined me for a check-in. After five years of integrating this work into the winery’s culture, Domaine Carneros has created some lovely best practices and found the tricky and delightful parts of creating and sustaining a positively contagious culture.
Noticing
Shauna speaks to the power of “noticing” as part of continuing to stay present and create a culture that truly is positively contagious. “To become contagious you have to first notice that you are in fact contagious. Once you notice this, you can change it. Through this work we’ve embodied noticing the energies around us that shape our daily lives.”
The Sunshine Committee
A few years back, Domaine Carneros created its own Sunshine Committee. The committee’s charter: “To help create a workplace that intentionally thinks about their actions and impact within their employee culture.” The committee creates spaces both physically and mentally where employees from different departments can interact, connect, become more aware of the energy they’re emitting and taking on, and notice how it impacts the bigger picture of personal satisfaction, culture, influence, and their customers’ experiences.
The winery has a core group of employees who hold the work with energy, spreading the good as much as possible. Shauna calls this core the “lifeblood” of the organization that serves all different employees and more deeply integrates the DC energetic culture.
Low-Hanging Fruit
DC has found that a little goes a long way and that there is low-hanging fruit everywhere around. The fruit? “Simply being present with and acknowledging our fellow employees so they feel seen and heard is easy and powerful. Paying attention to the whole person and expressing care and gratitude creates a pause in the busyness of their lives, making people feel valued and cared for. This is contagious,” says Shauna.
Cultural Immersion
Shauna shares that it’s taken time for a full cultural immersion:
It can take a good portion of time to get all employees to think about the impact they can have on their personal and work lives. What’s helped us create that immersion has been the employees seeing a consistent, focused, and educational approach to living a more energetically aware life. Patience, modeling, and being culture are the most influential part of integrating a workplace culture to ensure that cultural immersion takes place.
Tasty Catering
Thomas J. Walter, Cofounder and Chief Culture Officer of Tasty Catering, holds that “the organization’s culture is our biggest asset.”
He’s not kidding. Living Tasty Catering’s core values, honoring its intentions for culture, holding culture as its biggest asset, and walking the talk in BEing and LIVing versus just doing culture have resulted in:
• Being named APA’s Psychologically Healthiest Workplace (twice in the past four years)
• More than 90 percent employee engagement for the past 10 years
• Turnover of 4 percent
• Single-digit sales increases coupled with double-digit profit increases for the past four years
• 9,300 events last year and only 41 mistakes realized by the client
• 53 awards won for best place to work and happy people
But Tom shares that the company’s most significant marker is happy people. A contagious culture is the root of their happiness: “Our staff go home happy at night and return happy in the morning.”
How does Tasty Catering do this? With intention. Two of the most important cultural assets for being a positively contagious culture are the company’s culture statement and its core values. (These were codesigned by the employees.) The culture statement and core values speak to who they be as an organization, how they show up together, and how they treat each other. The culture statements and values are posted throughout the building, and teams repeat the values before every meeting of five people or more. The values have become assumed behaviors for the organization with every leader modeling them—starting with Tom himself: “What is important is that I do live them. Leaders are always watched, listened to, talked about, and if I don’t live the core values, the organization will be living a lie. Our values and who we are together has changed all of our lives for the better—including the lives of our families.”
nuphoriq
Erin Walter, CEO of nuphoriq, a marketing firm outside Chicago, shared that when it comes to culture, nuphoriq doubles down on “authenticity” as its cultural beacon. “We simply choose to build an authentic culture. One that reflects who and what we really are. It’s not about following rules, but more of a choice we make each day to show up. The whole idea is more than do-ing; it’s making the choice to be our best selves each day.”
The organization holds that authenticity is an idea that can apply to any culture. Instead of trying to show up as someone else, or looking externally to define themselves and their company, the employees look inward. She says, “It’s about being us. It’s incredibly powerful because it’s naturally contagious. Once people experience it, they are inspired to live that way themselves.”
Erin offered that the biggest surprise was discovering that the key to culture isn’t a huge system:
It’s about building a place where you can be you. Your deepest values become the company’s values. Your why becomes the company’s why. When you do that, culture spreads organically. The hard part ends with making the commitment to authenticity. After that, just be yourself.
Our team is more confident in who they are, what they bring to the table, and what we do together. Our office energy is high and positive, even dealing with the low moments of business. We attract external stakeholders who share our values, and naturally filter those who don’t.
Altus Brands
Mimi Lemanski, owner of Altus Brands (and an IEP Steward), shares that her company has its agreements posted around the conference room, throughout the offices, and in the production facility. Before meetings, tough conversations, or overall planning, employees set intentions, reboot, and use the IEP Sheet to prepare. They lean into the concepts of “Assume Good” and “Who/what are you being in service of?” to support them in navigating conflict, making decisions, and reminding themselves that they’re a team. Honoring the agreement of “direct engagement” has eliminated the “us versus them” mentality that they’d experienced in the past.
Mimi’s been most surprised by how easy this work is to integrate when people choose to live it. “By embodying IEP, I’ve seen a shift in how people eat and speak to each other, and how we work as a team. It is in the authenticity of believing in IEP, and knowing that we’re contagious and have a choice about that, that the transformation has taken place.”
Their business results? Mimi says:
People are more engaged with each other and not guarded, which has helped productivity. Conversations that used to be seen as “adversarial” are now opportunities to come to solutions that work for everyone. Being driven by values and purpose, and being mindful of the four quadrants, has allowed us to really walk the IEP talk, take care of ourselves, and be clearer about what we’re doing. Authenticity has been contagious, owning our thoughts and actions has helped us be more transparent and thoughtful, and with shared language and intentions we’re better at celebrating wins and strategizing challenges.
5 Dynamics
Karen Gordon, CEO of 5 Dynamics, LLC (from Chapter 14), shared that the company has integrated components of this work into the organization by using things like the bubble and the Wall of Gratitude and by increasing the awareness and intentionality in how people show up with each other. “We are always ‘bubbling up’ around here. Anytime we begin to feel the stress welling up, we say ‘Bubble up baby!,’ and we all know what that means. Just naming it, saying it out loud, helps us to bring things back into perspective.”
Being a frequent traveler, she also takes the power of intention and being positively contagious on the road. Karen adds: “It’s easy to go to a negative place as you make your way through the hurdles of the travel experience. However, I set my intention before I show up. I go out of my way to be patient and kind. I look for opportunities to shift others’ mindsets as well by doing something unexpected.”
For example, when Karen travels by plane, she sits in the exit row a lot, which provides ample opportunities for making someone’s day:
When a 6'7" guy boards the plane and is looking miserable, knowing that he is about to have to sit in a cramped space for three hours, I surprise him by offering him my seat. I love watching the shift in his energy and the energy of those who witness this. The smallest gestures make a big impact. Kindness and compassion have a ripple effect. When we commit one small act of kindness that is witnessed by others, they begin to reframe their thinking as well. It is a beautiful thing to watch unfold.
Tustin Unified School District
As shared in Chapter 4, Tustin Unified School District (TUSD) is the school district that has spent the past 18 months integrating this work into its system through IEP Stewardship and a series of engagements. I interviewed Greg Franklin, TUSD Superintendent, and Kathie Nielsen, Deputy Superintendent, for some of their insights and wisdom about what they’ve learned so far.
How Do You Live and Be a Contagious Culture?
Kathie and Greg offer collectively:
As a school district we recognized the deep need our students had for social and emotional support to thrive in our modern world. The surprise was the parallel need that our employees had for the same thing. Contagious Culture gave us a framework and vocabulary to reflect on our own intentionality, while supporting our students. It also made many of us more empathetic to the demands and pressures of our students because we recognize their struggles in our own lives. This has supported us in being more intentional about how we show up and take care of ourselves in order to be that culture for each other and our students.
Greg and I explored a bit further:
• What lessons have you learned?
“That the work on self-development and organizational culture is never done.”
• What have been the most meaningful ideas, tools, or principles?
“As a group, educators are extremely giving people and wholeheartedly in service of their students. One of the most meaningful insights and surprises from our work is that our teachers, principals, and counselors needed permission to take care of themselves—not out of selfishness—but in order to have a greater impact on their students.”
• Any surprises?
“For many of our people this has been surprisingly emotional work. Unfortunately, in most of our work lives we do not take the time to reflect on the alignment of our values with the lives we lead and decisions we make. Through that reflection our folks have experienced a more genuine connection to themselves, their colleagues, and their students. Some of our people have shared that the work with Contagious Culture has rejuvenated their careers.”
• What has been the impact?
“The observable impacts of our work with Contagious Culture is an overt consciousness throughout the district of self-care, intentions, and impact. These appear on agendas, newsletters, and district podcasts. I hear conversations where folks are discussing these ideas openly. We spend a great deal of time on planning for impact, rather than simply managing tasks. Less overt, but perhaps more importantly, people are bringing their whole and true selves to the important work of preparing our students for the future.”
And there you have it! In-the-trenches wisdom from leaders and organizations that have been working their IEP, building contagious cultures, and becoming more and more positively contagious yous in their own authentic ways. (More best practices, shares, and talking points from interviews with these organizations are available in the Contagious You Resource Toolkit at www.anesecavanaugh.com/cykresources/.)
What shares resonated for you? Where do you see yourself in them? What feels easy? Challenging? What’s the littlest next thing you could do in your organization to make this real? Remember, one step at a time, one breath at a time, one awareness at a time, one action at a time, one moment of presence at a time, and . . . presence, not perfection.
Fieldwork: Make It Real
Circle three ideas/actions in this chapter that feel most compelling for you and your organization right now and create your plan.