Culture isn’t yoga: What actually drives performance

“I believe that everyone is a CEO of culture. Every interaction is either a deposit or withdrawal from culture. You can have the most amazing culture within the team, and you can put someone in there that doesn’t do the right thing and doesn’t treat people in the right way. And if they’re in a leadership position, the shadow they leave is even bigger.”
Beth Hall

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

• Why culture isn’t something you can “initiative” your way out of
• The impact of incivility versus workload on burnout
• What emotional intelligence has to do with team performance
• Cultural “fit” versus cultural “add”
• How generational expectations are reshaping what is tolerated at work
• The power of onboarding and moments that matter
• Startup culture: speed, messiness and who thrives in it
• The role of trust in hybrid work
• Why feedback cultures matter and how to make hard conversations easier
• What leaders should actually look for in their people data

https://youtu.be/yzdUf9BNru8

Key links

Beth’s consultancy: www.culturedge.com

Beth Hall on LinkedIn
Daniel Goleman’s book on Emotional Intelligence
Michael Leiter’s research on burnout and incivility
Jim Collins’ concept of “freedom within a framework”
Saville Wave psychometric test
Netflix’s public culture deck

About our guest

Beth Hall is a highly regarded leader in People and Culture, with over 15 years of experience in shaping high-performing cultures across diverse industries. Holding a Master’s in Organisational Psychology from the University of London, Beth combines scientific evidence with lived experience, making her a trusted advisor to complex, dynamic organisations. Her career includes roles such as Global Head of Organisational Development at Cotton On Group, where she led transformational initiatives across a global workforce, and General Manager of Standards and Capability at AHRI, where she set the national benchmark for HR standards and Certification in Australia. Beth’s deep understanding of the people experience at work enables her to design and implement strategies that enable high performing individuals, teams, and cultures. Beth’s approach is grounded in the belief that sustainable, inclusive cultures are the foundation of business success.

About our host

Our host, Chris Hudson, is a Teacher, Experience Designer and Founder of business transformation coaching and consultancy Company Road.

Company Road was founded by Chris Hudson, who saw over-niching and specialisation within corporates as a significant barrier to change.

Chris considers himself incredibly fortunate to have worked with some of the world’s most ambitious and successful companies, including Google, Mercedes-Benz, Accenture (Fjord) and Dulux, to name a small few. He continues to teach with University of Melbourne in Innovation, and Academy Xi in CX, Product Management, Design Thinking and Service Design and mentors many business leaders internationally.

Transcript

Chris Hudson: 0:07
Hey everyone. Welcome to another insightful episode of the Company Road Podcast. I’m really thrilled to introduce our next guest today, Beth Hall, who’s a transformative leader in the world of people and culture. And she’s got over 15 years of experience shaping high performing organisational cultures across a huge range of diverse industries. She’s got a master’s in organisational psychology from the University of London brings a really rare blend of scientific rigour and real world experience to her work in this area and she’s had pivotal roles, including the Global Head of Organisational Development at the Cotton On Group here in Australia. And she led transformational initiatives across their global workforce. She’s also been GM of standards and capability at the Australian HR Institute where she established a national bent foot. Benchmark for HR standards and certification here in Australia. And Beth’s got an approach which is grounded in a powerful belief that sustainable inclusive cultures form the bedrock of business success. And her expertise in fostering agile resilient environments has helped countless organisations and people thrive, particularly during times of uncertainty. So she’s got a heap of qualifications, which include EQI 2.0. Neurolinguistic programming, a bunch of cool stuff which we can get into. And then for all you leaders and intrapreneurs listening out there, I hope you’re as excited about this one as I am, because we’re gonna go into Beth’s insights on creating thriving work environments where everyone can perform at their best, and aligning people’s strategies with business goals and navigating some of those complexities really around modern organisational life. So. Please join me in welcoming Beth Hall to the Company Road Podcast. Beth, huge welcome to the show.

Beth Hall: 1:49
Thank you for having me, Chris. Appreciate the intro.

Chris Hudson: 1:52
Great, great. And Beth, your career spans a lot of things, but it significant roles across different industries. Maybe we just start with an opening question around what drew you first to organisational psychology or maybe as it was once called something else, I don’t know, but how has your perspective on people and culture changed and evolved over your journey so far in your career?

Beth Hall: 2:13
Well, I’ve always been interested in people. I was a retailer back in the uk, so as a retailer, it’s a huge people business. And when I moved here to Australia, having grown up on home and way neighbours I realised that I didn’t necessarily want to be in retail in the sunniest months of the year. So I decided to train retail and as part of that, started to realise the impact capability and knowledge could have on performance and really. Had a desire to use knowledge to empower performance and went from there, really picked up organisational development and wellbeing and performance and got interested in why are people the way they are and how when we put them in different environments. Environment change their behaviour and how they show up so wanted to not just look from an individual perspective, but it from a systemic cultural level. So, I did my Master’s in organisational psychology and then my undergrad because I was enjoying myself so much.

Chris Hudson: 3:11
Awesome. All right. I guess it’s definitely taken you on a journey in itself. And you’ve led a number of transformational initiatives at the Cotton On Group, for example, here, which is huge over here in Australia across that global workforce as well. What do you think are some of the unique challenges that organisations are facing and implementing cultural change in diverse geographies, cultures, and how do you get around some of that, do you think?

Beth Hall: 3:35
Yeah, look, it’s increasingly. Less about geography and more about the diversity and the makeup of people within workforces, whether that be multicultural, whether that be generational. There’s lots of things that make us different, and I think we’ve got a lot better at embracing diversity and actually seeking out diversity. But with that comes challenge to, well, what is the norm around here? What do we believe is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and when everybody has totally different lived experiences, totally different reference points for what that is. It has become a bigger focus for businesses to be able to articulate their values and their expectations and how it shows up. It’s challenging when you look at a geographically dispersed business at like Cotton on Group, and I’ve worked for other global businesses too, where you need to meet people where they’re at. And in different countries, different workplaces, different types of workplaces, whether it be white collar, blue collar, there’s a different expectation around what the team members expect from the business just as much as what the business expects for them. So, it’s a really about looking at it from a contextual point of view. It’s not a one size fits all. That’s for sure.

Chris Hudson: 4:50
Yeah. It’s a good answer. I think there’s lots of interesting things about the ways in which businesses and leaders within businesses behave. But do you feel like there’s a standard now or do you feel like people are just trying to figure things out still? Where do you think we’re at?

Beth Hall: 5:03
I always look at what’s going on in the USA in order to inform what’s gonna come down the line. Just appointed Trump. I think cases of incivility are on the rise, and it’s interesting, we talk about burnout a lot in workplaces, but there’s some really interesting research that’s been done by Michael Leiter that shows that research. Into burnout is that incivility has a larger impact on burnout than workload, yet we often talk about workload and the impact that’s having on people not being able to get things done, but actually it’s incivility that’s impacting wellbeing. And it’s tricky when you think about incivility because it’s those everyday behaviours that people are exposed to. That impacts them. And what is incivility?’cause what’s incivility to me may not be What’s incivility for you, Chris? You know, I was talking to a team member just earlier today and I was just doing check-ins with people across the business and I. They were extremely vocal at this is toxic. Like it’s just toxic. Now talk to me about what that means. We’re using the word toxic a lot. What is toxic about it? What is happening? What are you seeing? What are you hearing? What is making you label it that way? And. I didn’t actually align with his interpretation of what is toxic. Now my role is not to choose to align or not to align, but to seek to understand. But it’s a good demonstration of the fact that what some people see as acceptable behaviour, others people don’t, which is why companies really need to look at how do we define this for the collective. So that culturally we’re intentional about what we’re trying to do here.

Chris Hudson: 6:46
I mean, just from a history point of view, when did all of this start? Because I picked up on things in my own career, but when did organisations start doing this and when did it become as needed? And obviously it’s needed now as you’re describing, but what have been the developments in your working life or maybe from your previous knowledge, do you think?

Beth Hall: 7:05
I think there’s been some really cool startups approach to the way they run their businesses and the way they treat their people. That has hit the headlines over the years. I think one of the notable ones is Netflix, when they pushed out their PowerPoint, which was a really clear message to everybody wanting to work at Netflix or within Netflix of, this is the way we roll, this is who we are. And I think that got people thinking about, yeah, how do we unashamedly explain who we are so that as part of the recruitment process, people are choosing to opt in or opt out of that culture. And I think values have been around for a while and those values have been used to inform behaviours and to. Inform code of conducts that have been produced. But this larger discourse around culture has really come about due to the workforce and the employee also demanding more from the employer. So as well as this kind of startup businesses that are thinking differently and creating great workplaces that are challenging, that the larger organisations, there’s also this employee that’s choosing. What cultures they wanna be part of and what they don’t. And the younger generations just will not tolerate what their previous generations have. And they will demand social impact and they will demand certain ways of conduct and behaviour. I’m a true believer that legislation comes about.’cause somewhere, someone, somewhere, someone did something wrong. And the amount of industrial relations legislation that we have faced within Australia alone, let alone globally, the latest being around psychosocial health and the expectation to provide an environment that is not only psychologically safe, but also has reduced all of the hazards that actually in large part are part of working life. So that’s also kind of put notice on employers to take this stuff seriously.

Chris Hudson: 9:09
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s almost evolved, it feels there’s a lot expectation was down here. Then it went the next level, the next level, and now we’re talking psychosocial health and policies around that. But it feels like there’s quite a lot more to consider and there’s more intricacy around that, and it’s not maybe as, as easy or as uniform as it once was.

Beth Hall: 9:28
Oh, it’s so heavily nuanced as I say, what’s acceptable to you versus what’s acceptable to me? Yeah. What are we in a multi-generational, multicultural society, accepting or not accepting from our workplaces, our peers, our leaders, our companies, and the more and more. Focus we put on director’s liability to the more impact it has on that top down decision making and that systemic level structuring of businesses. It’s becoming tricky to navigate. It’s a very important conversation, but it’s also very tricky to build cultures.’cause often when you’re a startup business, you are largely the business is based on your family values and the founders and what they believe and who they are. And then as you start to scale up, the founders get further and further away from those team members. And therefore it’s, you know, Chinese whispers to determine what was the origin of this original thinking and way of being. And then you start with the subcultures that show up. Whereby who is the leader of all of these different groups and how are those subcultures feeding into the larger culture? And I think there’s been a tendency in the past to. It’ll be okay. Let’s focus on the growth, let’s focus on the bottom line. Let’s focus on the commercial side of businesses. But the reality is businesses don’t grow themselves. People grow businesses, and as you grow, the people problems grow. If you don’t have really clear foundations in place to be able to. I often talk to people about culture is deliberate effort. It’s like any relationship. It’s deliberate effort. You’ve gotta invest in it. You’ve gotta spend time thinking about it. You’ve gotta spend time making sure that you are holding people accountable to it.

Chris Hudson: 11:11
Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, deliberate effort and frameworks and policies and all of the foundations, all of the structure that you’ve been describing does sit in a company usually, but a lot of people might think that culture is really organic and you’d put the same people into any kind of room. Just an empty hall or a warehouse or whatever, wherever the company is starting or needing to work. But you could put those people in and then they would assume that the culture would be there defined, ready to go, and that things would just happen because people would just gravitate to what they thought they would be doing. And then, then you go from there. But obviously. In a more controlled environment, which now it needs to be you have to set up all these different things. So has that always been the case? Do you feel like culture is organic or do you feel can it be handmade? Can it be fine tuned? What are some of the influences that we can have on cultures you believe?

Beth Hall: 11:59
I believe that everyone is a CEO of culture. Every interaction is either a deposit or withdraw from culture. You can have the most amazing culture within the team and you can put someone in there that doesn’t do the right thing and doesn’t treat people in the right way. And if they’re in a leadership position, the shadow they leave is even bigger. So, culture is organic, it’s alive, it’s happening every day. It’s ever changing, it’s ever evolving. So I would say whilst it’s great to have a code of conduct and values and policies and frameworks to be able to set expectation with workforces on what it is that we do, the reality is that if that’s not what’s actually happening. Then it’s just something that someone wrote down once upon a time because people will respond to other people’s behaviour more so than respond to a piece of paper that were given as part of their onboarding and induction. And yes, they signed it, well done. You got a signature from someone. But that does not necessarily make up what’s happening out there in the business day to day. I’m a big believer that the behaviour you walk past is the behaviour you accept. If we’re not calling out behaviours that don’t align with that conduct, that values those policies, then essentially we’re allowing that to happen within our businesses.

Chris Hudson: 13:21
Yeah. So I mean, in terms of your own radar as an employee in a team somewhere like you should be as aware of it and going into each day at work, it sounds like with your eyes wide open and trying to receive. The signals understanding whether it’s right for you, but do you feel like from an individual’s point of view on the show, we have a lot of entrepreneurs listening do you feel like that there’s something that an individual can do to influence what can they bring to the culture in a way that would affect it personally? Or positively I should say.

Beth Hall: 13:50
Yeah, look, I think again, everybody’s behaviour needs to be a conscious decision that you make. I think it’s important for people to remember that intention and doesn’t always equal behaviour. So whilst they might have the best intent and the purest intent, the way their behaviours actually show up to others may or may not be aligned with that intent. So, there’s a huge focus in schools at the moment around emotional intelligence because. I dunno about you, Chris, but I wasn’t taught any emotional intelligence in schools. So they’ve skipped our generations and they’ve realised that needs to be part of the curriculum because as technology grows, as we automate so many of our ways of doing things and our processes within organisations, our competitive advantage really does come down to that human element. And if we are giving so much to AI to be able to solve for what is. That critical thinking that we’re bringing as humans, but also what is that behavioural aspect that we’re bringing as humans to be able to lead differently, interact differently and be able to build cultures that we’re proud of. So individuals have a huge impact on culture. I would say that if an individual was in a business where they felt the culture was not aligned with their values. I don’t use the term cultural fit. I think that’s against diversity and inclusion. I talk about cultural add. You know, we move from cultural fit to cultural alignment, but I actually think it’s about cultural add. What are you bringing to that culture? And if your cultural add is actually negatively impacting people and is causing some of those toxic behaviours. I just shared an example with you that someone felt they were adding earlier. Then that’s not a great place for anybody to be. So, I’d be asking that, that person to just check themselves, but also check are they changing? Based on that environment in which they’re operating in.

Chris Hudson: 15:45
It sounds like it’d be really hard to manage, now that you explain it like that, it feels like if there was a situation and a manager had to talk to their team member about that, or if a team member felt misaligned or if something had happened, do you feel like these conversations are happening? Is it becoming easier? Do you think

Beth Hall: 16:01
it’s a real mix? It is a real mix for some organisations they are great at a feedback culture and really creating that transparent, open dialogue in order to be able to essentially sense check behaviours and go, Hey, something just happened in that meeting. Like what was going on for you? And. I didn’t think that that was okay, and this is why I didn’t think that was okay. And did, was that your intent or do you see how that was perceived? Actually having those meaningful conversations is really tricky if you are moving from meeting to meeting to meeting and especially if you’re doing that via the screen. So there are some things that we’re up against here in terms of being able to create those open, transparent conversations. Some organisations are really great at it. Others not so much. I was working with a small. Business out here in Geelong and supporting them with having some difficult conversations with their team members. And they text me saying, oh, your entire business should be, how to have difficult conversations. Like they actually were difficult because you coached us on how to do it in a humanistic way, and you can have great. Transparent, open conversations with empathy. It’s not a case of choosing one or the other. You can really help people understand how they’re showing up and actually it becomes an opportunity to support them in their own growth. So, I would say it’s mixed is the short answer as to whether people are really embracing and leaning into these conversations or not.

Chris Hudson: 17:32
Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. No. Good answer. I think there’s, yeah, you’re asking about whether I was taught emotional intelligence and I, I remember a very distinct moment in my career where I was waiting on a promotion, waiting, waiting. This is in a marketing agency in London, and they was like, you got all the hard skills, or fine, you gotta work on the soft skills, right? And gotta work in your leadership style. And they actually threw me the Daniel Goldman book and said, you could read that. And I’m like, this is now the thing. You need to understand your people. And I read it and yeah, eventually I did get the promotion, but it was like a big missing piece in my jigsaw I needed to address quite urgently. And yeah, it was yeah, it was quite surprising to me that I had to do it at a time, but then when I got my head around it, it was like, yeah, this is really important. So,

Beth Hall: 18:17
yeah. Yeah. And it’s a skill that you can grow. Yeah. Because it’s not like your IQ that’s set from the age of 17 onwards. Like EQ is an ever evolving skill and we actually pick it up naturally through lived experience as we grow. So, yeah. You know, if you look back of, oh, I can’t believe that I said that, I would never say that now. I’d never do that now.’cause based on your lived experience and your frame of reference. Our brain’s constantly evolving. When I became a parent, I read an amazing book on how to raise emotionally intelligent children, and I totally changed the way I approach the world based on Oh wow, like actually validation is important before anything else. And how do we validate. Even if we disagree, it’s okay to disagree, but how do we validate that person still has a voice and is heard and we’re acknowledging them? And now you brought up marketing agencies, not me. I was working with a marketing leader and their team and the way the team were being treated on a daily basis was. Just not kind. It was not kind, it was not good. I was observing team members joining the business with so much enthusiasm and rigour and excitement about what the business stood for and what they were trying to achieve. And I would watch day by day by day that become depleted and depleted. And the response from the leader was. Hey, I am from marketing agency world. This is the way we speak to people. This is the way we treat people. And I was just like, wow. You are justifying your behaviour to yourself based on the way you used to be treated. Yeah. And therefore you believe because that’s the way you were treated. That’s therefore the way you should treat others, which in itself is a dangerous point of reference.

Chris Hudson: 20:12
Yeah, I feel like some cultures are particularly hard on people and you’re faced with that kind of criticism the whole time. I think it’s drummed into that the critique is sort of healthy for you in that you take it on board, you learn from it, you move on. And 99%. Of the time you’re gonna be doing the wrong thing and that 1% of the time you might be doing the right thing. You know? So some cultures are a bit like that, and I, yeah, I can totally relate to that. It’s a really hard one to navigate, particularly as you’re coming through your career, you’re going through the ranks and you know who you fall to in terms of leadership and who’s there to guide you is really important. It’s really hard to choose sometimes. It’s not something that you can be that out outspoken about either it feels like.

Beth Hall: 20:57
Yeah, look, it’s tricky because you wanna keep your job. So, it’s tricky to be able to find your voice in those environments where you’re not psychologically safe and where the person, there’s a power dynamic there. Yeah. So the power dynamic is not in your favour. I think the people leave, managers, not companies has been spoke about for a while and yeah, and whilst I agree with that, the latest research is finding that people are leaving leaders, not managers. So they’re actually finding the decision making at the top, the strategic direction of the business and the acceptable cultural decisions that are being made. They’re actually. Saying, I understand why my middle manager is behaving the way they’re behaving because of all of the cognitive load and pressure and impact that’s being put on them. And I’m actually now not holding them accountable to it. I’m holding the leadership team accountable to it. So I think people are getting smarter about what’s going on. As we grow our emotional intelligence as a human race, we’re starting to see things that we maybe used to walk past or maybe used to accept, but now we’re not accepting it and we’re finding our voice. So, yeah, it’s tricky. My advice to people in those situations is. Life is too short not to be happy. Make what is the right decision for you and what is best for you and your own mental health and wellbeing. And if that environment is not serving you and it’s not supporting you in your growth, then no job is worth being treated that way. So I’ve, I have left businesses for that reason throughout my career. And there’ve been scary moments where. Am I gonna be able to cover the mortgages? Am I gonna be able to cover the school fees? What do I need to do to be able to not be here? But sometimes the happiness and wellbeing is worth more. Hey.

Chris Hudson: 22:44
Yeah, it’s a really interesting, there’s this kind of notion that a company is not a forever place anymore, and it feels like there’s the sustainable business and the inclusive cultures that you work on yourselves. It feels like there’s always gonna be a tension between that side of things. And like no matter what the company does, no matter what the leadership situation is, the cultural initiatives, all of that, it can be the perfect thing. But at the same time, there’s this kind of speed of. I dunno, attrition, speed of unsettledness whatever it is. It feels like people are wanting to just to try, get out and try a lot of stuff. Right? So how do you get over the kind of the tension between employee engagement and companies doing whatever they can, just to kind of keep people and then to what you’re describing, people just want to get up and go sometimes.

Beth Hall: 23:31
Yeah, look, I think if you’ve got a great culture, you get boomerangs. Yeah. So if people need to move because that’s right for their career trajectory and you are in a growth business that doesn’t have the role for them right now, having a great culture that you are building around them means that they might go and get skills from other businesses and bring them back to yours. And actually it’s in a long term play. It’s actually better for the business for them to leave and come back. And we see that boomeranging happening a lot. People going, oh wow. I didn’t realise how well I had it back there with that culture. Yeah. I’ve now gone out in the big wide world and worked at these different businesses and take me back. That’s my preferred space. I think treating people well and them leaving is better than not treating them well and not investing in culture and them staying because you’re actually just stagnant as an organisation too. So there is a direct correlation between culture and strategy and Denison has done a lot of work on how to bring those two constructs together to understand what is the impact of culture on strategy. And it’s shown us that. It’s a worthwhile investment and there are returns to be made from a commercial perspective if we invest in it.

Chris Hudson: 24:46
Yeah, yeah. It’s mention interesting that you mentioned culture and strategy. I thought you were gonna mention the breakfast word as well.’cause that comes up sometimes.

Beth Hall: 24:55
Look, it’s, look, the, the lives there for a reason, and it is a bit cliche, but you can, you can have the best strategy in the world, but if you don’t have, like I said. People grow businesses, not strategy. So if you don’t have the right people behaving in the right way, then it won’t be a sustainable strategy in the long run.

Chris Hudson: 25:15
Yeah. Interesting. so I do a lot of work in experience design space and often employee experience and customer experience. You know, some of those worlds come together sometimes within organisations that I work with, but it’s often interesting to see. That no matter what you do and you put down on paper what happens as a result, around the organisation can be totally different, right? So you can experience design for key moments in the onboarding journey and when people are being recruited and when they join up and you hope that you can do all these things to obviously make them stay for five or 10 years and have the most amazing career. But actually you can’t design, it’s about Jurassic Park. You can’t design for all those conditions ad infinitum, you have to just allow for some flex. So where do you feel like the most impactful initiatives would be focused to get a culture humming along? And where do you think some things will just be maybe a bit of a waste of time?

Beth Hall: 26:07
I hate the word initiative. I think, and look, a lot of consultants use the word initiative or project but culture just isn’t that. And if you think that you can pop an initiative in and all is well, and we did it a lot with wellbeing. Yeah. We just said, oh, let’s offer them yoga, let’s offer them fruit, let’s offer them this. But the reality is that if we’re not solving for the root cause of that wellbeing issue, then we’re just putting bandaids on it. So that would be my similar response with. Culture. So it’s interesting that you mention the kind of people experience them working with the client at the moment where we’re mapping out their entire people experience at the moments that matter. And we are doing an immersive experience with all parts of their organisation whereby they’re coming in and they’re talking to us about what’s going on in their culture. So what happened during attraction, onboarding, induction? What’s happening from a performance, wellbeing development perspective? And really capturing their lived experiences as well as their aspirational desires for the business to then determine, okay, where are the areas that matter the most? It does differ per business, per organisation because of the makeup of their organisation as well. It would be remiss be not to call out onboarding. It’s that whole primary recency theory around what was the initial expectation. What was the first thing that I learned about this culture because that kind of becomes the benchmark that everything is observed against. So that would certainly be a moment that I would suggest people lean in and focus on. Yeah. Wellbeing and development are the two things that are actually in many cases. Engaging employees to leave organisations over salary. Now, that’s not to suggest particularly with our cost of living in Australia right now. That’s not to suggest that remuneration isn’t important. It certainly is, but the generations in the workforce are so focused on wellbeing, whether that be flexibility, whether that be hybrid ways of working, whether that be cognitive loads, people are really realising that. Life is Sure. And they wanna make sure that they’re doing engaging, challenging work, but they’re also getting bigger joys in their life and development. People are looking for, how are you supporting my career? So to your point, Chris, they might move. How are you supporting me to pick up different skills and pieces of knowledge and exposing me to different things? And that’s where the startup world is winning because they’re allowing people to wear multiple hats, to try out lots of different skill bases to be able to really shape and inform their career. We zigzag now we don’t go up corporate ladders. So, being able to offer development experiences is becoming more and more important and more important to the culture. So you mentioned earlier, the feedback of it’s not right, it’s not right, it’s not right. And you might once in a while get something that you get right. That creates a culture that is risk adverse, that creates a culture where people are so scared to colour outside the lines in case once again, the feedback comes to us negative. So that developmental, that regular, you have a go i’ll back you, no matter how it turns out, is what, again, helps businesses grow in a world that is so ever changing. You know, we’re experiencing the change we’re experiencing today is. The most amount of change we’ve ever experienced. But guess what? Tomorrow we’re gonna experience even more. So that adaptive nature of organisations only comes from great culture. Great culture, where people are psychologically safe, they’re able to take risks and know that they’re supported.

Chris Hudson: 29:45
Yeah, a lot of the. Analogy that you were just using, which was around the colour and always the lines of demarcation around culture, because sometimes I don’t think everyone would think of it this way, but sometimes it feels really rigid and it’s almost almost prescribed, but it feels like it’s been a certain way for a while. And you wouldn’t have the breathing space within certain areas to do what you felt was right in all cases. So you would be tying the line a little bit. But just talking from an entrepreneur’s point of view. It’s like kind of colouring in books or whatever. So there are lines in which you’re expected to colour inside, but if you venture over, it’s gonna look like a mess. So some cultures might look a little bit like that whereas others would be much more forgiving tolerance and risk. They’d be happy for you to push into other areas. And some cultures might just be a total blank piece of paper. Do you use any kind of metaphors or, visual representations of how culture works and is there anything like that that you, you wanna mention?

Beth Hall: 30:39
Well, culture is a Petri dish, so it’s constantly, yeah, it’s constantly alive and moving and you, yeah. You don’t really know what organisms are growing in there, to be honest, half the time. So, whenever I start working with a business, I start with a cultural diagnostic. I start to understand what exactly is showing up, what are the patterns, what are the behaviours? So, within that frame of reference. Those patterns, behaviours, rituals. That’s really what’s going on. And understanding and stepping back from those to look at it from a systemic lens and from a, okay, so what is actually playing out here? Is it the actors? Is it the environment? Is it the ways of working? And sometimes it can be, oh, it’s actually the operating with them. We need to solve for, we solve for the operating with, it’s actually not a people issue. It’s a process and way of working issue. Other times it’s, no, we have a people issue here and we can actually pinpoint why that behaviour has become acceptable and who has made that behaviour become acceptable. And we can have those. Tough conversations to say, do you know the impact that you are having? Do you know that when you’re behaving in this way, this is the result? You know? And we have to hold up the mirror to leaders again, to have that honest conversation with themselves around that executive table. You know, Jim Collins talks about freedom within the framework. That’s another way to view it of what is the framework of this culture. We don’t want everybody to act and be the same because then we’re not embracing de and I. So it’s getting that balance. It’s important.

Chris Hudson: 32:18
Yeah. It’s a fine balance, isn’t it? Between obviously. Everyone thinking and acting the same way, because that’s what’s being observed versus other sidestep and ventures, pivots or, whatever the word is you wanna use. We don’t like the word pivot anymore since lockdown or whatever it was. It’s being ditched. But yeah, I mean, it’s that kind of thing. You have to. Designing some freedom, right. For that self-expression to be made possible.

Beth Hall: 32:42
Oh, for sure. Otherwise, people don’t belong. Yeah. You know, if we wanna create places where people belong, then we need to embrace who they are. Now, that doesn’t mean that we need to put up with a brilliant jerk that’s delivering results, but is treating everybody really badly. But it’s about. How do we be accepting of others in self and how do we seek to understand why is someone behaving in a certain way and what are we doing at an organisational level to either reward that behaviour or encourage that behaviour, which is what psychosocial health legislation is all about. In, essence, it’s about saying, well, what is going on environmentally for this? These individuals that we’re bringing into our environment and what’s our role as leaders to be able to look at that in a strategic way, to be able to determine what have we built here and how are we okay with that? And sometimes again, I say that. That culture is deliberate effort because if we don’t prioritise it, and if we don’t see it as a part of our business that we need to work on the same way, we need to work on our balance sheet the same way that we need to work on our product designs. We can design culture the same way that we can design product if we give it deliberate effort and the party it needs.

Chris Hudson: 34:02
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s always hard, isn’t it? In justifying, and I’ve worked with organisations that have been in this boat as have you, and it feels like you’d have to justify that next to the spend or the effort that would be associated with other things that are, you know, driving the sales, the revenue, the this, the, that. You are constantly within an organisational environment competing against some of those pressures. So from an entrepreneur’s point of view, and again, if you’re a leader in one of these organisations, how best do you think. You know what? What is the strongest case you can put forward for investing this time and resource into culture? Do you believe

Beth Hall: 34:34
performance if you want a high performing organisation, you need a high performing team. How do you get a high performing team? You work on your culture. Because you can have high performing people, but if you don’t have a high performing team, you don’t have a high performing culture. Yeah. So you can have all of the right hiring practices and you can get people with all of the right experience, knowledge, and qualifications. But if they’re not gonna play nice in the sandpit, if they’re not gonna leverage the collective intelligence of the workforce, then. You are not going to be as high performing as an organisation as you could be. You’ve hired for potential and you’ve put them in an environment that doesn’t enable that potential to deliver results. So, for me, to be honest with you, Chris, it’s just not a hard sell at all because. Do you want a high performing organisation? If you do, culture makes the list like, yeah. It’s not a, and I think a lot of C-suite realise that they clock it. Some of them know what to do about it. Some of them just go, I don’t know what to do. Let’s get a consultant in. And it’s like. It’s you, you know, you can get a specialist to help inform, but there’s gotta be a a catalyst for change or willingness to change in order to be able to make a difference.

Chris Hudson: 35:50
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really good. I mean, I think that you mentioned startup culture a little bit just before, and that obviously goes at a certain speed and you can have the best product, the best proposition, the best brand all of that is fine, but to your point around performance, you know, the differentiator would come from how well that engine and that operating model, that organisational structure was actually. Running in the background because if it wasn’t, then you might just have an empty, empty ship basically. Yeah, you’d have all the amazing promises and the amazing, amazing products, but if you can’t sustain that, then now to your other point around sustainable business, you can’t do that. Right? It won’t grow.

Beth Hall: 36:29
Yeah. Oh, and when I started my business, I called it Culture Edge for a reason. Like the edge is the competitive edge. A large part of the companies that I work for are startup growth scale up organisations, and I’ll go in as a HR practitioner or I’ll go in as a a fractional HR or support person that’s being brought in to solve for development or culture or structure or whatever it may be. And when I get to the team member sentiment to understand how they’re feeling and what’s going on, whenever I start to hear in that startup environment, people saying. Things aren’t clear. Everything keeps on changing. Like I’m just not feeling like I’m at successful because we’re constantly chasing too many rabbits and not catching any, I say, okay, let’s talk about startup environments and cultures. You know it, that they’re not for everyone and that’s okay. They’re not for everyone, but let’s just talk about and be really honest about who we are and how we operate because. As a startup, in order to perform, in order to be successful, you need to test and respond. You need to pivot quickly. I’m losing the pivot word. Like you need to try different things and be okay with change and sometimes you circle back and we try the same thing that you did a few months or years earlier. Because the timing wasn’t right then, but it is now. That’s not for everyone. You need a team that is so adaptable and adaptability is a skill. Do they have it? Let’s test for it before we hire them to make sure that. We are not creating an environment and a culture where people are unhappy because what happens is they’re the ones that start to bring in the toxicity because they’re bemoaning the change. They’re complaining, they’re bringing a vibe down. Your vibe is your tribe. You know, if you’ve got someone coming to work every day unhappy and not being able to navigate the environment, then maybe it startup’s not for you.

Chris Hudson: 38:29
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I mean, I don’t think without working at a few different companies and finding your feet, it’s a really hard thing to judge almost because sometimes you don’t know enough about an organisation before you walk in. You’re starting in a role. You’re getting to learn things over a period of time. Then there’s change up happening around you. It might be a restructure, new leadership, new manager, whatever it is. All of these things can change around you. So adaptability is very important and yeah, it just feels like. Unless you’ve got like the most acute self-awareness around what environments you thrive in and thrive less in, it’s hard to do it without a bit of a trial and error. But do you feel like there are any other ways in which we can understand, which cultures would be most suitable for us?

Beth Hall: 39:14
Yes, there is a test for it. You could do a psych psychometric that tells tells you exactly where you thrive, what are your energy givers, what are your energy takers and they can really become your kind of shopping list when it comes to selecting the right company. So as much as you are going through an interview and a selection process from the company’s perspective, you should also be interviewing that company too. So you should be asking during that process. Talk to me about your culture. If I asked your team how they would describe working there, what would they say? And when it gets to reference check, they’re checking your references with previous employers. Ask them for access to their employees to ask their employees some questions. Just watch out for those employees that think it’s toxic, but actually they’re just in the wrong place and. There’s nothing environmentally untoward. It’s just not for them. So, yeah. Again, it’s about having those honest conversations with yourself to go, when was I at my best? Like they call it in flow. Like, when was I in flow? When was I really in a great place? Yeah. What’s happening around me? Who was I working with? What work was I doing? Was it planned? Was it unplanned? Was it clear or unclear? Like actually have that conversation with yourself because. You can be the best performing team member in one culture and the worst performing team member in another culture. And I see it sometimes and people go, I don’t understand. I’m not set up for success. And I was great at my last company, I was the top performer and now I’m not. And I’m like, but you environment changed. So is it the right one for you or is it that there’s just. Bigger and better players here.

Chris Hudson: 40:56
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Do you know the test that you’re describing? Is that one you can share?

Beth Hall: 41:01
Yeah. Saville wave, it’s a 20 minute online test that you do that then tells you this is your environment, this is your environment. Yeses in your environment. Nos,

Chris Hudson: 41:12
yeah. Excellent. Yeah. Paul pop link. Thanks. Thanks for that. That’s a good one. Yeah.’cause I think you dunno otherwise, I mean, you can just kind of somebody might say it’s a great place to work, but it’s their point of view and their own experience, and then you end up in place. So it’s a big decision moving, you know?

Beth Hall: 41:25
Yes. Yeah. For sure.

Chris Hudson: 41:27
Yeah. And yeah. What else? I mean, it, it feels like the, yeah. The other interesting thing is about I. Psychological, I mean, you mentioned psychosocial training and the understanding of psychology within organisations because aside from emotional intelligence, which feels like it’s more broadly understood now, but no, from a psychology point of view, to be able to lead well, to be able to manage well and thrive in some of these environments, it feels like you do need to be. More clued up on that side of things. So is that something that you are seeing is being developed more? Like what are the trends happening in that space?

Beth Hall: 42:03
Yeah, I’m getting more and more requests for leadership development. The, I find like, like anything, there’s waves. So we’re currently riding the wave of, let’s go back to 360. Let’s go back to making sure that people know what their manager, their peers, and their direct reports think of them. Yeah. I had one company that asked me to do their entire workforce. There was 30 people in the workforce do the entire workforce three sixties. And I said, because you want everybody to not get along. Why would we do this? Why would we be in such a small office environment and everybody goes through a 360 process? It’s not for everybody. It’s a great tool to be used for leaders. That have reached the point in their careers or intrapreneurs that have reached the point in their careers whereby that self-awareness, there’s only so much that they know about themselves or can read about themselves and they actually need some more data. And that really helps uncover those blind spots. So yeah, the 360 are making a comeback. Mentorship is making a comeback too, in terms of it’s really hard to be able to, create a culture without role models, without people that you are looking to in term. And there needs to be a diversity of role models available of course, and a diversity of leadership, which is why we’re really focusing on diversity of leadership. There’s not one way to lead, there’s not one background or experience that you need to have in order to be in that executive team. And we want that diversity of role models and that diversity of mentors. To help support people see what good looks like from a behavioural perspective. So whilst EQ can certainly be taught and it is a very effective skill that can be learn, culture again comes back to how’s everyone showing up? How you know what’s going on in this environment? What is rewarded? And what is challenged and whatever is rewarded, becomes the norm, becomes the currency. So, environmentally we need to solve for that rather than just putting it all on our leaders.

Chris Hudson: 44:21
Yeah. I mean, people vote with their feet, right? It feels like you can only say and do so much, but people are gonna be behaving in that environment in a way that they feel is appropriate to the situation. So, yeah. The hybrid working environment doesn’t feel like it’s been solved just yet. I don’t know if you’ve got a point of view around that, but I know I’ve worked within businesses where it’s basically, you have to be at your desk, and there’s a piece of software that’s basically. Tracking whether you’re at your desk or not, and there’s that kind of stuff happening. Yep. People are trying to get around it by just going back upstairs every 40 minutes to shimmy the mouse a bit or whatever. It’s, but do you feel like there’s a soul for something like that where companies are trying to. Obviously encourage and it’s a bit to do with mentorship as well. They want to surround people by people that will be inspiring and that will help give them guidance in their careers and create that sense of togetherness. But do you feel like is there an evolution for hybrid working, do you think?

Beth Hall: 45:16
I’ve worked for fully remote businesses. I’ve worked for hybrid. Yeah. And I’ve worked for fully in-person businesses. Yeah. I believe that everybody in the organisation is and should be a cultural contributor. How you contribute culturally is deliberate effort, whether that be. In the physical space or in the remote space? Yeah. For some businesses, geographically, it’s actually not even possible. It’s not just, I’ve gotta sit in traffic for an hour. It’s, I’m on a totally different time zone in a different country. Yeah. So my, my take on it all is this conversation is not gonna go away until. Generations of decision makers retire and then we’ll stop talking about it, hopefully. But the reality is that there is a social macro thing at play here that sits outside of that organisational construct as well, in terms of our cities, our properties, our ways of living, and not just about our ways of working. So I think employees are gonna, again. Focus on what is right for them and their lifestyle, and whilst them may be willing to sacrifice their lifestyle for the short term, if their life and needs change, they will vote with their feet. To your point, in terms of moving on, yeah, it is a trust conversation too. How much trust is there if you’re still working in a business that is so focused on input and not output. That clock in, clock off. And there’s lots of, there’s employees that are testing if I clock in, but just. For an hour. Will I still get the tick on the system? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which day I went to the office. Oh, great. And you know, and I’ve, I’ve spoke to a team member that went from, I did eight hours one day, then I did seven, then I did six, and they went all the way down to an hour and still got their tick to say they were in the office and they, they told all of their friends, they were going department by department to let them know that, you know. Now on the swipe, he works in our business. So employees will always find a way. So it’s about trust, it’s about open communication, it’s about really sharing the why and, and being quite deliberate again of what are we doing when we come together. Because if we are coming together to sit on a teams call or a Slack channel for eight hours and just happened to be sat next to somebody, then that’s not necessarily building the right. Culture or sending the right message. So the ideal hybrids that, and research has shown us that the ideal is hybrids. The social connection happens, and businesses are very deliberate about creating collaborative spaces to encourage and drive collaboration in the office. And then for the deep. Work that’s focused or indeed with clients that that is done remotely.

Chris Hudson: 48:14
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Hey we’re almost outta time, but just wanted to catch something like a few quick things. So if you, if you’re a leader or an emerging leader within a business and or organisation, you know, from your experience, what are some of the signs of there being a problem? Like, or, you know, something going wrong? What do you think people should be looking out for?

Beth Hall: 48:36
Behaviours, just, yeah, look for in, look for incivility, look for just small, seemingly insignificant hostility or gripes or, frustrations that are happening across a team environment and as a leader, step back and go, what’s the pattern here? What’s happening? Is this isolated? What is the cause of this? And try and look at it from a systemic lens. Try and be an outsider looking into your business as opposed to being an actor within it to really be able to get to what the root cause is. You know, when you look at your. And your personal leave balances, are you finding that you have a huge leave liability and people aren’t taking leave or putting it in the system? Do you find that a lot of people are taking leave and it happens to be on a Monday or Friday? Hmm. It’s funny that why is leave happening on a Monday or Friday? Like, what’s going on here? So look at your people data too. Your people data will tell you a lot how many people are leaving within the first six months. That will tell you a lot. Was it not what they expected? Why was it not what they expected? What happened in that, that particular process? So look at your people data. Be an observer of your environment. Look at the behaviours and interactions that are happening to try and establish the themes.

Chris Hudson: 49:56
Yeah. Great. Great. And then on the more positive side, I mean what’s what? What are good examples of a business thriving and some of the signals there, do you believe?

Beth Hall: 50:05
People being driven to drive the outcome. And that’s not about how many hours they work or the late nights or weekends they put in, but being really outcome focused and driven towards the greater good civility, being good to others, being kind to others not being quick to judge something goes wrong, having an autopsy without blame as opposed to trying to cover myself in terms of. You know, this wasn’t me and let me prove why it was this person or that person. People helping each other out, you know, covering for each other, people asking about the whole person, people asking, you know, how was your weekend? Knowing their kids’ names or their, their sporting team or whatever it may be, is just creating an environment where people belong and where people care. So. That level of inclusivity, always ask the way your newest team member is treated. If you ask the way your newest team member is treated and what words they would use to describe your culture, it’s a really good eyeopener as to what it is that they’re walking into.

Chris Hudson: 51:04
Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah, really good. I always I mean, you mentioned, how was your weekend question? I always wondered how to answer that because you can, you can give away quite a lot of yourself, but some people just expect, yeah, it was good. The weather, you know, sun was out and, you know, whatever it is, we talk about the weather. But you know, you can give in that, in that moment because you’re in the elevator or wherever you are, you can give. Quite a lot about yourself, so you know

Beth Hall: 51:27
so much

Chris Hudson: 51:28
in a more transparent culture. If people are getting to know you, then you can use that as an opportunity to share a bit more about yourself, you know, happens everywhere. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Beth Hall: 51:36
Oh, for sure. And, and my follow up question, when they say good is always, what did you do?

Chris Hudson: 51:42
Yeah.

Beth Hall: 51:42
And, and, and it tells me so much about a person. Yeah, and I do it with my clients too. I ask ask ’em about their weekend and what they did, and it’s like, oh, okay, this is what’s keeping them up at night. They, you know, they, they had a staycation, not because they necessarily wanted to, but because their mental load and cognitive load is so much that they’re exhausted. Okay, how can I take some of that cognitive load off? And then that’s where you start to show compassion and empathy across your business.

Chris Hudson: 52:08
Brilliant. Alright. And finally, what, what excites you most about the future of work, do you think? What, and you know, what’s keeping you up at night?’cause you’re that excited.

Beth Hall: 52:18
I am just so excited about group dynamics. Like, I just think as AI is. Starting to take a lot of the doing. We are so much more focused on team success than individual success. We’re becoming so much more focused on what is the dynamic within a group and this new generation that’s coming through. They’re not gonna have the same. Start to their careers that we did because they’re almost gonna come in at mid-career because all of the early career stuff is gonna be automated. And how we create in a great environment at mid-career when they haven’t necessarily had all of that social construct and environment to kind of. Learners as they go in that early career and how are we setting up our businesses for success to be able to embrace and support that? So I actually think AI is gonna allow us to be more humanistic. It’s gonna free up part-time to ask that second question about the weekend because the cognitive load allows us to, because a lot of our heavy lifting is done. So, I’m excited about. People’s behaviours and how stress is gonna be going down and care is gonna be going up.

Chris Hudson: 53:28
Yeah. Wonderful. Good to end on an optimistic note. Thank you so much. And yeah, Beth, I mean, you’re incredibly qualified talking through this stuff. You can hear your passion, obviously, you know, you’ve got a lot of experience in helping out teams and organisations and yeah, thank you for being so generous with your thoughts and points of view on the show today. So thanks so much for coming on.

Beth Hall: 53:46
Thanks for your great questions, Chris. I appreciate it.

Chris Hudson: 53:49
And before we go, like how do people reach you if they want to get in touch or ask the questions as well?

Beth Hall: 53:54
Oh, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you there. I’m often posting what’s happening in the world of work, so, come and see what I’m talking about and, and leave comments on there. Otherwise, you can contact me through my website, which is www.cultureedge.com.au

Chris Hudson: 54:10
Brilliant. All right. Thanks so much. We’ll leave it there.

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