Conquer Toxic Workspaces: From Identification to Action | Colin Ellis | Episode 315

Scott McCarthy:
Colin Ellis, welcome back for a record 4th time, mister leading guest of the podcast.

Colin Ellis:
People will be sick of me. They’ll be like, oh, man. Not

Scott McCarthy:
this guy again.

Colin Ellis:
Oh, god. What has he written another book? Does he hate his family so much that he has to keep writing books?

Scott McCarthy:
So just a reminder, episode 109, we talked about culture fix. Episode 177, we talked about culture hacks.

Colin Ellis:
Hacks.

Scott McCarthy:
Episode 206, we talked about leading a hybrid team, and that was all out of the, pandemic. We’re actually just wrapping that one up. So that was 20 so 2, 2022. So 2. You’ve actually missed. So you did 2020, 2021, 2022. We missed 2023. We we missed having you on the show in 23.

Scott McCarthy:
And now 2024, you’re back again for a 4th time.

Colin Ellis:
It’s almost like Scott when I don’t write a book like I’m dead to you. That’s just how it feels. You never call. You never stay in touch. Oh, I’ve got a new book. Alright. Send me that. Yeah.

Colin Ellis:
I’ll be on the show.

Scott McCarthy:
Only when I need something from you. Right? You got

Colin Ellis:
some new ideas I can steal? Great. Let’s get him back.

Scott McCarthy:
Yeah. Exactly. What did you say? What did you say before we hit record?

Colin Ellis:
I said I said talent borrows, genius steal.

Scott McCarthy:
You just steal.

Colin Ellis:
To be talented when you could be a genius. Yeah.

Scott McCarthy:
That’s awesome. No. It’s so good to have you back, Colin.

Colin Ellis:
Thank you.

Scott McCarthy:
The audience loves you. So and and we we have such a great time with you on the show, and I thoroughly enjoy our talks around culture, because, like, you are definitely a leading expert in the topic of culture, organizational culture, which is super important. I don’t like this whole debate, culture versus strategy, blah blah blah. I’d say they’re both uber important. Let’s talk about both so that we can, you know, move our our organizations forward to achieve peak performance. Thank you. So today, we’re talking about toxic cultures.

Colin Ellis:
Mhmm.

Scott McCarthy:
Alright. Yeah. And I I love it. So just heads up, get ready because whenever the word toxic goes into a title, downloads go through the roof. So let’s let’s talk about toxic cultures. The first thing is, like, we I’m from Canada. You’re from Australia. We no doubt we spell things similarly, but not always the same.

Scott McCarthy:
I’d love to get to know what you mean by toxic culture from your perspective first.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. So toxic culture and that that is a really good point, actually, Scott, as ever so in, you know, in incisive because no one’s really asked me that question because it means different things in different cultures. But essentially for, I guess, the western world, a toxic culture arises when usually when senior leaders permit employees, to behave or perform poorly over a period of time, and and that includes themselves. In fact, some of the most high profile toxic cultures were perpetuated by senior leaders. You know, and I and I talk about this in the book a little bit, but but people will be familiar with them. You know, Uber is a great example of a toxic culture that that led to the actual founder having to resign. So

Scott McCarthy:
you guys I use that example all the time.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah.

Scott McCarthy:
I use it all the time as a failure of leadership, and how the, you know, decision making can lead to, you know, failure in leadership. So I love that you brought that one up. Thank you for the validation, sir.

Colin Ellis:
But, you know, the you’re welcome as ever, Scott. But the interesting the interesting thing about, and this was one of the reasons that I wrote the book. Oh my gosh. So to anybody listening, I promise I won’t keep plugging the book. Right? Like, it’s just not like like every time I mentioned it, there’s a little bit, and he dies inside. It’s like a Horcrux for Harry Potter fans. Anyway, so, whenever we talk about Uber, what happens is we put the focus on Travis Kalanick and his leadership, which is right. It’s a it’s a massive failure of leadership, but we forget the effect that it had on people.

Colin Ellis:
And and and so when when we talk about toxic culture, what we found with or what we saw with Uber is that basically his behavior infected the company to the point where it killed results, it killed innovation, You know, it it really affected the lives of human beings. And and in in those kind of scenarios, much like with the Weinstein Group, much like with the Harrods Group, which is happening over here at the minute, is there are senior leaders who allow the owners or the top people, to get away with that behavior, and and they’re never brought to justice, which is a real shame because it it it really does badly affect people.

Scott McCarthy:
No. It totally you know, it ruins is it ruins companies. It ruins organization. It ruins lives. I’ve been I’ve been in, you know, organizations where we’ve had toxic leaders. It is so not fun, and, actually, I I I speak about this, or sorry, this example regularly, but, I was in a unit military unit, so military leader, at at the helm, and unit was doing great. Like, we weren’t, like, rocketing it, but you know what? Overall, performance, everything, we we were on we were on a great upward trajectory. You know what? I was like, this is fine.

Scott McCarthy:
Like, because it was on a trajectory, which was sustainable. People were like, okay. They didn’t feel like the pressure that they needed to fix everything right away, but at the same time, they were getting those endorphins, those dopamine hits, and, okay, we did something great. We’re moving on to the next step, next step, next step. Right? You know? Fast forward, that leader in, you know, military, we spend 2 years in a post, and we move on most of the time, 90% of the time. Right? And we just talked about, before I hit, record how I’m in, you know, a relatively new job now. So I know I got 2 years. 2 years in command of this unit, and that’s it.

Scott McCarthy:
Right? So same type of thing. So that leader leaves, back to my story, new one comes in, toxic as toxic can be, and you wanna see your organization do a mock, knock, and I was diving to the ground. Now productivity, like, everything just yep. Boom. I was like and it was sad because I knew it was my last year there. I thoroughly enjoyed the jobs I was doing. I was thoroughly enjoyed the missions, you know, what we were the tasks that we had and all this stuff. But I literally, by the end, was like, I cannot wait to leave.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott McCarthy:
Just can’t wait.

Colin Ellis:
That’s what that’s what it does to you. Somebody said to me, what’s the biggest effect that toxic culture has? And, of course, there are loads of horror stories, Scott. And, and, you know, we all know lots of them because we read them in the media. I was like, but the biggest thing is people can’t get out of bed in the morning. They don’t wanna go to work. And, yeah, I’d I’d a senior guy said to me, he’s like, oh, that’s everybody. I was like, it’s really not. I was like, 99% of the working population recognize that they have to go to work to earn the money to do the things that they love, and work is a byproduct of that.

Colin Ellis:
If you can create an environment where they enjoy work, they will pay you back in spades through productivity, all of these kind of things. But also the opposite is true. If you create an environment that’s dehumanizing, is that permits bullying, harassment, micromanagement, poor communication, all of these things. They’re good at not only will they struggle to get out of bed in the morning, they will be sapped of energy, morale, intrinsic motivation, all of these things, and it’s because you didn’t actually choose to build something that they wanted to be a part of.

Scott McCarthy:
Yeah. It’s it’s it’s all about building that organization, that team that inspires and motivates people and offloads them, you know, enables them to, like, believe in the mission, but at the same time, feel like, okay. I’m doing this for a purpose, but and I’m also getting something out because, like, you you kinda said, and I use this I use this regularly. It’s like, who wakes up in the morning and go, how am I gonna go into work and mess up today, I wonder? Like, no one does that.

Colin Ellis:
Well, there’s the odd person, but no one There’s

Scott McCarthy:
the odd person. Yeah. But they’re so rare. Like, they’re honestly, it’s so rare. Even the person who you think does that most likely is not actually doing that. It’s just unfortunately, you know, they’re not properly mode mentored. They haven’t been trained. Haven’t been guided.

Scott McCarthy:
They Yeah. They just, you know, are making poor decisions, or maybe they’re just in a role that isn’t suited for for that. It’s not that they’re a bad person. It’s just one of the more combination those factors have come to play.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s so true. And and, we you know, I I I think we forget that. We just assume that people wanna come to work and be the worst versions of themselves, and it’s just not true. You know, as humans, we’re we’re we’re affected by people around us. We’re affected by the environment that we’re in, which is which is why, you know, kinda senior leaders need to be deliberate about creating the environment where people can bring themselves to the bring their best self to work.

Scott McCarthy:
So here’s a question for you. Senior you just mentioned it, you know, a senior leader and bringing, you know, the best versions themselves and stuff like this. Is there have you come across a way for a senior leader to go, wait now. You know, have we developed a toxic culture? Like, is there a way for them to litmus test whether or not their culture has actually gone toxic? You know, it’s kinda like the I think it’s like the the frog in the boiling pot. Right? Yeah. Where you put it in cold water, but if you put it in boiling water, it’ll immediately jump out. But if you put it in cold water and you gradually increase the heat temperature, the pot warms up. It’ll just, you know, sit there until it boils itself to death.

Scott McCarthy:
That could be similar to a toxic culture. What I’m looking at is, you know, is there a way for a leader, I. E. The frog in this case, to wake up and jump out of the boiling pot and, you know, turn the temperature down?

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. So so leaders can mitigate the risk of toxic culture. Right? It it people think that it’s inevitable. It absolutely isn’t. There’s so much that they can do, but there are three levels of toxicity, Scott, and it becomes more and more difficult to kind of further down, if that’s the right way of putting it. So so I, you know, I talk about this level 0 is consistently combating, and a combat and culture where is where it’s just people are engaged, but it’s hard to get work done. There’s lots of stress. There’s lots of anxiety.

Colin Ellis:
There’s a bit of micromanagement. There’s a bit of passive aggressive communication. There’s some microaggressions. People will lose their temper every now and again. So, you know, kind of that’s the that’s the level 0, I would say. And if it’s consistently combatant, so if if every day feels like a battle, that’s the first warning sign because that’s not how work should feel. You know, I’m an optimistic realist, Scott. You know, you’ve had me on the show, people who have listened to me before, is that I recognize that every now and again, people need a metaphorical pick up the pants, not a real one, a metaphorical one.

Colin Ellis:
That’s just the nature of work, but it that’s the exception. But if it’s consistently like that, that’s a problem. And and and the longer you leave it, you move to what I would call level 1, which is corrosive. Now as corrosive, you get bullying, harassment, you get, aggressive profanities, so people that swear at people, you know, it depends on the culture that you work in. Swearing may or may not be okay, but but in corrosive cultures, people are swearing at people. There’s favoritism, there’s a bit of unethical behavior. So that’s level 1 where all of a sudden, you know, I, yeah, I liken it to metal. Right? You keep checking on your metal, keep checking it to it’s getting pounded by salty water, whatever it is, and you treat it, and then all of a sudden you can start to see a bit of rust.

Colin Ellis:
And unless you treat it, it will get worse, and that’s then level 2, which is harmful. And and and at level 2, these are the these are the toxic cultures that make it into the media, Scott. So assault, verbal abuse, cruelty, racism, transphobia, you know, sexism, all of these kind of things cover up, self preservation where the leader does one thing. And and but but you can see that at level 0, so where it’s consistently combat, you can do something about it. And it it’s really I’ve I’ve worked with some of these where I’ve called combat culture. I’ve worked with some of them. It’s really not that hard. But but most people ignore those warning signs and just expect it to fix itself, Scott.

Colin Ellis:
And you have seen this in in your own work, is you see the signs. Usually, it’s driven by 1 individual. And, you know, know, the other analogy that I use is that, you know, when doctors find cancer, they don’t leave it in and just expect it to fix itself. They’re like, yeah. We need to take that out to give the per the patient a chance of survival. You know?

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, god. I love that last oh, gee. You’re so right. Now back to your 3 that’s an awesome way to describe it, actually. I really enjoyed in particular going down in this case because, you know, I think that’s the proper way to do it. Let’s let’s let’s say it is what it is, what it is. Like, toxic culture is a negative thing, so it’s going down in levels, not up in levels.

Colin Ellis:
Mhmm.

Scott McCarthy:
So you could even, like, hey. You wanna do a version 2.0? I would make that 0 level minus 1 minus 2.

Colin Ellis:
That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott McCarthy:
I should’ve

Colin Ellis:
done that. No. God. Yeah. Shucks.

Scott McCarthy:
Now the leader who’s listening is probably like, well, you know, we had a harassment case last year, or I had an incident last month of 1 employee swearing another, like, oh my god. We have a toxic culture. I I would assume it’s, like, you know, you get these rare cases. So Yeah. How might a leader discern, like, okay. Are we actually at, like, a level level negative one, as I wanna call it for this show, or negative 2? Or is this just, like, these instances of, unfortunately, bad circumstance, bad judge by an individual, or maybe a bad individual that we’ve since removed, fired, dealt with, whatever? You know, where’s that difference?

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. It only takes one rotten apple to spoil a fruit bowl. Scott, gosh, I’m throwing the metaphors all over the place here. I, so if you remember, you know, a toxic culture happens over a period of time. I think if you get an instance and you deal with it, that doesn’t mean you’ve got a toxic culture. Hey. I’ve got a great example. And this was when I was a permanent employee myself, in my last permanent job in the UK.

Colin Ellis:
Is somebody punched somebody in the office, they actually punched someone. It’s not funny. But they actually punched someone in the office. I’ll never forget the sound that made because he was getting so frustrated, and he didn’t know what to do with his anger. So immediately that that person was immediately even though he was apologetic, he was immediately suspended. He went on gardening leave, and he was sacked 2 days later. And that was the way at the time as a company we safeguarded our culture. We had a no tolerance for poor behavior.

Colin Ellis:
And so I think I I I think if you’ve had one of those instances of harassment, of bullying, there’s a couple of things. Just because someone says they’re being bullied, it doesn’t make it so. But the responsibility of the employer is not to gaslight the employee. The responsibility of the employer is to independently review the case. Right? And then fine independently because you don’t wanna be accused of any kind of bias. And and so once you’ve done that, you get the findings, and then you decide whether it is bullying or it isn’t bullying. If it is bullying, then you have to deal with that individual in a way that safeguards the environment for everybody else. Because if you don’t deal with that individual and you let them keep their job, if they’ve been, you know, found guilty for, in a better words, of bullying, then it will become toxic.

Colin Ellis:
100%, it will become toxic. Whereas if you dealt with it, then you’ve done the right thing. You know you know, and and, you know, another analogy is cutting the head off the snake. Even when you cut the head off the snake, you can still bite you, so you still have to guard against it. We cut the head off the snake, make sure because often people go on social media now. It’s damage limitation, but you’ve taken the right course of action to safeguard the culture and and and ensure that it doesn’t become toxic for everybody else.

Scott McCarthy:
Now I 100% agree with everything you talk about. I’m just gonna throw something at you, but Colin, he’s my top guy. Colin, he’s my top sales guy. Colin, it’s my c my COO. No doubt you’ve heard that before.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Yeah. I even I even had an approach from an organization, Scott. It’s the I don’t turn down many pieces of work, particularly when I get into the process of discussing how we would do it. But I turned down one piece of work because the CEO was the problem and the head of HR refused to deal with it. So, yeah, I don’t care if it’s the CEO. I don’t care if it’s the top sales guy. Is you the responsibility is to protect the environment for everyone, not just that one person.

Colin Ellis:
And I you know, I’m really pleased to say, Scott, that I think people are now becoming aware of it. Not they’re not doing anything about it much, but they’re actually becoming aware of it now because toxic culture now is is such a it is is of interest to the media. And I think people are starting to realize, hang on a minute. If we keep this toxic person, not only is it gonna affect the internal culture, and that should be reason enough, frankly, but actually it’s gonna affect our reputation. It’s gonna affect our results. It’s gonna affect everything else. You know, there are a number of high high profile case studies that I that I used in the book, to indicate where organizations just didn’t deal with that senior person, whatever they were doing. And and it you know, in one instance, it nearly put the business out of business, because they didn’t deal with it.

Colin Ellis:
So I I I think people are becoming more aware of it. They’re just not decisive enough in dealing with these people.

Scott McCarthy:
No. That’s, you know, that’s great to hear that people are becoming more aware of it, and, you know, realizing that, you know, Juan, maybe it is in the company’s or organization’s best interest to actually do something about it. Mhmm. But the latter part of that is still actually unfortunate. And as you said, they’re, like, still not necessarily doing anything about it, which always brings me back. I I love slash, and by love I say, I mean that with sarcasm, I actually hate when I hear these things of, you know, companies saying, oh, we have a zero tolerance for what have you. But then it’s riddled with examples of what apparently they have zero tolerance for. So, like, well, what is it? What, you know, what is it? Because do you have a zero tolerance, or do you have acceptance? Because keeping the, you know, the people around is condoning the activity.

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, but we, you know, we sent them on training, we did this, we did that. Right? But that’s not zero tolerance then. Yeah. That’s that’s that’s mitigation.

Colin Ellis:
And, usually, it’s a response to an event, Scott. So I complete I completely agree with you. We have a zero tolerance. Well, hang on a minute. You’re in the media now, as a result of the fact that at the time of this, you had you you didn’t have zero tolerance. You should never have to you know, and I I I make this point all the time. You should never have to say those things in public. It, you know, it should just happen.

Colin Ellis:
You know? If you’re having to say it in public, then you’re trying to defend the position, and usually it’ll be an untenable one because the evidence far outweighs your pithy statement about having a zero tolerance when there’s a senior leader there who’s been found guilty of, you know, assaulting or abusing x number of employees. These stories are in the media almost every day now. You know, there’s a there was there was an example, yesterday. Was it yesterday or day before yesterday? Yeah. I I posted it on LinkedIn. Of course, it’s created a flurry of activity. The top two stories in Australia, the top two media stories were both about toxic culture. And so, you know, if that isn’t enough to to scare organizations into taking this seriously and making sure they have a zero tolerance internally rather than having to talk about it externally.

Colin Ellis:
I know it always.

Scott McCarthy:
Yeah. No. I hear you, brother. And that’s that’s sad that those 2 stop stories, but talk about what the media focuses on is a totally different top topic of podcast. I don’t

Colin Ellis:
think we’ve a good time for that.

Scott McCarthy:
No. We don’t. But what I would like to do is shift gears, Colin. So we talked a lot about what toxic culture is. We got great examples, Uber being an example of 1. You know, we talked a bit about how a leader might identify, hey. Wait now. I do have a toxic culture going on.

Scott McCarthy:
Let’s get to the fixing. Like, the leader has either identified it, you know, whether they they’ve been there for a while and they’ve now realized, wait now. We got some stuff going on that we need to change and fix, or they’ve been parachuted in because someone’s been fired because of the toxic culture. Now, like, now you gotta go and fix this. So how do we go about, like, fixing something which is obviously now, like, been so ingrained in the company as its itself?

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. So you gotta do something different, Scott. And this is where most organizations make a mistake is they’ll do the same old thing as they always did. They’ll they’ll hire one of the big six consulting firms at BCG, McKinsey, at Deloitte, at KPMG, whoever it is. They’ll do a review at the end of the review you’ll get a report which tells the senior leaders everything that staff have been saying for 2 years. Then what they’ll do is they’ll send everybody on a training course usually about bullying, harassment, or diversity, equity, and inclusion to make sure everybody understands the rules. They’ll update their policies. They’ll strengthen their HR department.

Colin Ellis:
Then they’ll do a report 3 months later to say everything’s tracking as we expected it would. We’re on, you know, we’re on track to change. And it’s all BS, and nothing ever changes. So you have to do something different because that sends a message to staff that you are listening. That sends a message to people to go, you know what? What we’ve done today hasn’t worked. If it if it had worked, this wouldn’t have happened. So we’re gonna do something different, and I’m not saying you don’t update your policies. There may be 1 or 2, but what you’re gonna do is you’re gonna focus on 2 areas.

Colin Ellis:
The first thing that you’re gonna do is actually train your middle managers because they’re the people who have the greatest influence on culture. Middle managers are crying out for training on how to be managers. We still promote people based on length of tenure or technical expertise. We don’t we don’t promote them on people skills. And if we’re promoting them based on technical expertise, we still need to make sure they’ve got the people skills. We need to make sure that they know how to build vibrant cultures. We need to know that they they they need to know how to set expectations, how to give feedback, how to have courageous conversations, how how to celebrate success, all of the things that contribute to creating this really great place to work. So that’s the first thing.

Colin Ellis:
The second thing then we need to give our our employees agency on defining culture. You know, I always say, Scott, you get the culture that you choose to build. Most organizations don’t choose to build culture. They they try and hire what they believe are the best people, throw them all together in the hope that it will just work, and it never does. It never does. What you’ve got to do is choose to do some activity. And, again, it’s got to be different. You’ve got to involve the employees in it to say, let’s work together to define what this culture is, what it needs to look like so that we can create this great place to work that not only is respectful, it’s safe, it’s all of those things, but it’s discipline.

Colin Ellis:
It understands the value of hard work. It performs at the best that it can do such that people feel fulfilled. They’ve got intrinsic motivation, and the organization achieves its results. So when you train your middle managers, when you give your employees agency or culture, and when senior leaders then role model the behaviors that everybody expects of them to uphold a new culture, that’s the sweet spot. It will take to fix a toxic culture can take anything up to 18 months, but only if you do something To change a culture can take anything between 3 to 9 months, but again, only if you do something different.

Scott McCarthy:
I I love the overall message there is, like, you got to where you’re at by keeping doing the same thing. Right? And it goes back to the whole, I think it’s Einstein or I can’t remember who said it now, but, you know, definition insanity is doing the same thing. You’re expecting a different result. Right? Well, yet, here we find so many organizations, companies just constantly doing exactly what you said. Bring in a consulting firm from outside because we’re low we’re gonna look transparent, impartial, blah blah blah. Give us this report. We’ll do a few things, and we’ll say, you know, mission accomplished. Away we go.

Scott McCarthy:
I really liked what you talked with the middle managers. And by the way, you took some plugs out your book. I’m gonna take a quick plug at my service, which is the Leader Growth Mastermind, because that is exactly what we do in there. We help people develop those skills.

Colin Ellis:
There you go.

Scott McCarthy:
So if you’re sitting here, and you’re like, yes. I need this, well, then come to the mastermind, leaddoposs.com/mastermind. This is what we do. We give you those skills to be courageous, to take on these hard you know, have these hard conversations to, you know, lead your teams, you know, effectively. So leaddopebossforward/ or dot sorry. Leaddopeboss.comforward/ mastermind. So that’s my plug for my service. We’ll plug your book at the end as well, though, because it’s fantastic.

Scott McCarthy:
But the second thing that you hit on, you know, getting, people in and talking about it and developing it. And the one thing which, I’m gonna add on to that whole spiel that you did, which was awesome, by the way, is, like, you know, what about your values, your organizational values? Right? And are they just simply words up on the wall or you’re actually living them? Because if you’re actually living them, you don’t allow this. You know? You most likely wouldn’t allow this to happen, so you have to have a look at that as a senior leader and go, wait now, what are organizational values? And I’ll give you an example. Leading a team and there was a couple, you know, there was a rumors float around about a couple different employees within the team, and one of our values was what? Respect. So I sat my my my direct reports down, and I said, listen, our value is respect, and I and that is a core value of my personally, me personally, is respect. What’s happening right now is not respect. This does not happen in our unit, so go out, tell your people, whoever’s doing it, to stop because as far as I’m concerned this is another form of harassment, and, you know, we’re better than this. Right? And and and and that’s the key thing, like, I find so many times organizations simply throw them up on their website, put them on the side of the building, and, like, walk by them and never actually talk about them ever again.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. And and and values are are ideals that employees strive to fulfill. So if they don’t they don’t mean anything, then they’re just pointless. And actually what they become, as you mentioned, is contributors to toxic culture because people will say these values mean nothing. This is so typical of us. We have these values. We put them on the wall, but nobody lives them. And so they become weapons for other people to use, and so many people do value so badly.

Colin Ellis:
But but but this is the thing, Scott, is is that many leaders see culture as a tick box exercise. Values, got that. Tick that. Purpose, yeah, we’ve got that. Tick that off. DEI, have we done a DEI presentation? We have. Have we sent it around? Great. Tick that box.

Colin Ellis:
And and that’s not what culture is. You know, if you want peep people to feel a sense of belonging, they have to feel a sense of ownership. Culture is everybody’s responsibility. And so everybody or representatives of everybody need to be involved in its creation such that they’re interested in its evolution. And a big part of that is vision, values, behaviors, collaboration, innovation. You know, these are kind of oh, and community personality communication. These are the 6 pillars that really form the backbone of organization cultures. And if just one of those kind of ribs of that backbone isn’t working, then jeez, it will call cause all kind of pain until you fix it.

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, yeah. I I hear you, and what I really liked about it is that, you know, it’s not a one and done. Culture is not a one and done. Like, you can’t go, okay. As you said, the SoHo going, check, check, check, check. Like, no. You you have to talk about it. You have to display it.

Scott McCarthy:
Right? And I think that’s a big thing, and then going back to the Uber example, and that’s kind of where the failure really started to occur was displaying of the lack of values and a lack of, you know, allowing for a proper culture, but actually displaying what it meant to be toxic. And leading by example is a core principle of leadership, that can go either way.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Yeah. Travis Kalanick go either way. Yeah. Travis Kalanick. So he’s the he’s the founder of Uber. He’s the guy who we were talking about. And I don’t know if you if you read this, Scott, but not long after he got sacked, his his parents were involved in a in a really horrific accident, the kind of thing that you wouldn’t wish on anybody anyway.

Colin Ellis:
He was sat in the hospital reflecting, and he wrote himself a letter about what he would do differently. And it was it was printed by BuzzFeed, and I think it was I think it was BuzzFeed. It was fascinating, about just what he would do differently. And, of course, the principal thing that he would have done differently is to actively build a culture of respect. So he recognized his own failings. But, yeah, that I just thought that was really, really interesting is that, you know, the the thing that he would do differently was to actively build a culture that people would be proud to be part of.

Scott McCarthy:
Oh, that’s, you know, that’s a I didn’t know that. Thank you for sharing because I’ve, you know, I’ve spoken about that example so negatively for so long now. Sorry, but it is what it is. But

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott McCarthy:
At least there’s a silver lining that, you know what? You can make a mistake, but if you reflect on it and go, okay. I messed up. You’ll be transparent about it. You know, you can recover, and I think that’s ultimately the lesson learned here. So if you’ve gone ahead and you’ve, you know, you’ve led a poor example and you created that toxic culture, you can recover. You can start, you know, doing things right and leading by example in the positive way and slowly doing the steps that you talked about. You know, it’s 22 key things, empowering your middle managers and as well as, you know, getting everyone involved and fix it. I think that’s what overall, you know, main message I’m getting here.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, people you know yourself, if if you’re given something to to care for define and care for, then then you’ll you’ll take responsibility for it. But if someone says, this is mine. I’ve defined it. You have to look after it. There’s a the inner child in us goes, you look after it. You it’s yours.

Colin Ellis:
You created it. It’s not mine. You look after it. Whereas, actually, when you when you give employees agency over culture and say, hey. We’ve given you the skills. We’re gonna give you this guy, Colin, as a facilitator. He’s gonna help you define your culture, and then it’s up to you to make it good. People go, okay, well, this is different.

Colin Ellis:
We’re used to you just telling us what to do, so so we can define it for us. Yeah. It’s got to conform to these values because there are that’s how we maintain consistency across the company. You know, you have to link it to the values, but the facilitator will help you. Will you define your own culture? And at that point, people are really proud of it. You know, I work with a team of engineers, Scott, and blue collar workers. Right? And everyone makes a judgment about blue collar workers. They hate this stuff.

Colin Ellis:
1 guy told me he did hate it, but that’s fine. It was only 1 out of 300 people. And and, you know, they told me that the culture couldn’t be changed. I’m like, let’s give it a shot. I think I can help you. And then 3 months later, their their engagement score had gone up by 30%. And, you know, the the general manager of the business is like, Colin, this is a fabulous result. I’m like, but I haven’t done anything.

Colin Ellis:
I was like, all I did was guide you through a process. You’re the ones that when you left the room, you’re the ones that said this is our culture. You’re the ones that cared for it. You’re the ones who held each other to account. You’re the ones who challenged each other to get better over the last 3 months. I just did my job. You know, I said, but you’re putting in the hard work. And and and and that happened because people genuinely cared for what they created, and they were like, hey.

Colin Ellis:
We spent 2 days doing that. Let’s not just, you know, forget about it. Let’s actively do something to positively evolve there and make sure we don’t go back to where we

Scott McCarthy:
were. That’s such a great example to start winding the showdown. Coleman, it’s been, as always, a fantastic conversation. Before we wrap up, is there anything, like, we didn’t hit on or we didn’t go deep enough? I feel like we covered a lot of ground, but you never know. And culture is such a big topic anyway.

Colin Ellis:
Oh, I wanted to I wanted to quickly mention something, Scott, which is I think one of the biggest challenges managers have is they don’t know where their culture is. And so one of the things that I’ve been doing as well as writing a book for the last 12 months is I’ve worked with a team in in, Georgia, the US, to develop a quiz that managers can take that not only gives them a sense of the kind of culture that they’ve got, but it produces a report that gives them the actions that they can take. Again, it’s some I always wanna add value to managers. So they can do that by going to 5 cultures quiz.com. 5 cultures quiz.com. And I think, you know, if you take the quiz, it will give you a sense of, yeah, here’s where you are, but also here’s the things that you can do to actually make sure that you don’t stay where you are.

Scott McCarthy:
That’s awesome. And I was gonna follow-up with another question, which is, like, hey. What’s one thing one thing that leaders could go ahead and do today? But I think you just answered both at the same time.

Colin Ellis:
Just do that.

Scott McCarthy:
Right?

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. Just do that. Or just just you know, and when you get the report, it gets automatically sent to you. Just pick one thing. Just try one thing differently with regards to team building. If it sticks, keep doing it. If it doesn’t, just say, hey. I gave this a go, and then try something else.

Scott McCarthy:
Awesome. Colin, you, my friend, are always welcomed on the show because the conversations are so amazing. Final thing, you know the drill. Shameless plugs, have at it, weapons free. People find you, people follow you, join you on this journey, find the book, have at it my friend.

Colin Ellis:
Yeah. So LinkedIn is the place to find me, Colin Ellis on, LinkedIn. I’m just about to start a Substack that people might be interested in, so I’m gonna post a whole load of things for Bree on there. That’s called detox your culture dot substack.com, or you can go to my website, which is www.colindellis.com.

Scott McCarthy:
Awesome. And for you listeners always, it’s easy. Just go to lead don’t boss .comforward/theepisode number in digits, and it’ll just bring you to the show notes. And you scroll down, you’ll see Colin’s resources there under the guest resources, section. Hello, my friend. Thank you again. Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure catching up with you, having you back on the show.

Scott McCarthy:
As always, it’s awesome.

Colin Ellis:
Thanks. Thanks, Scott. Always great to share.