How to Foster Values-Based Teams with Jennifer Walinga | Episode 6

In this Cultivate Your Culture article, Zoran is joined by the gold-medal Olympian, professor, and organizational consultant Jennifer Walinga who shares easy-to-apply techniques to foster values-based teams.

Jeniffer Walinga

This article is the transcript of a podcast done regularly by Zoran Stojković. Listen to Cultivate Your Culture. Please excuse any transcript errors in this article.

Jennifer Wallinga: I worked with a coach once who had to make a very difficult decision to cut a really a really effective player, like a very high performance player, but toxic and completely counter to a lot of the cultural values that the team has established together, just resisting.

Zoran Stojkovic: Hello, I’m your host, Zoran Stojkovic and welcome to Cultivate your Culture. This podcast we’ll be discussing how leaders can build connected high performing teams and business in sport using actionable tools evidence based systems and simple processes. Today on the show, we have Jen Wallinga. So Jen has quite an impressive background. Jen is an educator has been an educator for 30 years, a former member of Canada’s Commonwealth world and Olympic gold medal rowing teams. So Jen draws on her personal, professional and educational experiences when facilitating problem solving and leadership processes in organizations. After retiring from elite sport, Jen taught English for several years in the Toronto area, then began teaching at Royal Roads in the early 2000s. at the Center for Applied leadership and management and schools of leadership and business. Jen is also the principal of the consulting firm, integrated focus, which offers training programs for individuals, teams, departments and organizations as well. And Jen earned her PhD in organizational studies from University of Victoria, Canada, in 2017, where she developed a problem solving intervention called integrated focus. Jen, thanks for being on the show today.

Jennifer Wallinga: Such a pleasure. Great to see you Zoran.

Zoran Stojkovic: To see you, how’s your day going? so far?

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, I got to get rolling this morning. I’ll play glass I was with my crew as well. We’re allowed to grow in a little forced them. So that’s been lovely. And I might actually go out again this afternoon after this, but my son in our single

Zoran Stojkovic: Nice! two workouts, two rowing workouts in a day still going strong. That was awesome. So tell us a little bit about your about your background, and a bit about your story of how you got to where you are.

Jennifer Wallinga: Well, I was very involved in sport. I was a nerd first real bookworm and into art and then discovered sport I grew really fast and ended up focusing in on rowing, is kind of involved with everything. And I discovered rowing by accident, fell in love, like the first experience, and I knew it’s all I ever want to do. And I still feel that way. And so it really shaped my whole life for many, many years through high school and into university and beyond. And I’m still growing at 55 years old, and still competing with my crew from those years when I represented Canada. So even this morning, I was at with three of them. So that’s pretty cool. And I feel like I’ve learned so much from sport, you know, I’ve gone to school for it feels like about 1000 years, and really the sport degree was, was crucial. And so I weave all of that in increasingly, I increasingly I participate and consulting to sport organizations or delivering educational programs, to organizations, on boards, etc. And I think I’ll just hunker down, and just board and more and more as I as I grow older. But I also because of sport, I was always very interested in performance. And that means for me, you know, an individual’s ability to be their best team and organization. So that naturally led me into consulting. and ended up, you know, through schooling and education. And I ended up teaching a lot at a very progressive University railroads, which focuses on social change, lots of work now organizational development. So that’s where I am. And I’ve been there for quite a while I’ve been associated with university for about 2020 years at least. And in a professor role for the past 15 years or so.

Zoran Stojkovic: That’s solid, quite an impressive background and set of experiences in both in sport and outside of sport and education. And so, you’re no stranger to being on teams and leading teams. And so how would you define team culture? Jen?

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, I think I think team culture, culture, I always describe it as “our values communicated”. So how are our values showing up? Because communication is yes, with your mouth, but it’s with your actions and behaviors, your body language, your decision making your structures and what we call artifacts, local communication shows up everywhere, culture shows up everywhere, because your values bleed out of you everywhere. And so team culture is exactly that, you know, what values are is this team communicating? They may be thinking that they believe in certain things and that they value certain concepts. Or principals. But we really can read their culture through their actions, behaviors and interactions with one another.

Zoran Stojkovic: Wow, that’s quite a set definition. So you’re talking about values and artifacts and the values being communicated and actually lived within an organization within a team. And so why then is it important to cultivate the culture of a team and to have these values and to have them communicated? And both business and sport?

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, well, I think, and I should differentiate, because we often I find, when I’m working with groups, they often start to delve into a discussion around “well, what is the value?” And so to clarify, and define the terms? When we’re talking values, of course, we’re talking those moral code kind of values, like integrity, or I believe in honesty. I’m a core value might be family for me, right? So that’s moral values. When I’m talking with a group and organization or an individual about cultural values, usually we’re talking about things where, what we think is important. So that could still be family. But it’s also things like, collaboration. All right. So you can sort of see the difference between those things. Where do we invest our energy, our money, our we our resources, in general, our time, our focus, those are what we value as an organization or team. And I think the reason that we want to attend to culture, culture is values communicated. And then how well those aligned with what we state to be or a spouse as our core values. Because we’re, you know, we’re promising when we put our values on a website or on a wall, we’re promising to the world that we’re going to live in this way, as you said, you know, live them. And so how well we honor that promise is really cultural integrity. So it is important to develop culture, because it’s about developing that integrity, that alignment with what we say we believe in and value and are going to prioritize me and an individual can do that, too. I was just talking with a couple people I’m working with, and one was saying, Yeah, I need to do that cultural audit on myself. And it’s a great exercise to check in on how aligned am I, with my actual values I, I believe I believe in and I say I prioritize, check in on all the things that you do and say, to make sure those align teams can do it as well. And it’s important as well, to check in on your cultural integrity, do the work of auditing that are reflecting on how aligned you are with your core values as you need them to be because cultural integrity is not only energy, now, if you’re blind, you’re solid, you’re balanced, you’re centered, you’ve got a foundation, you’re confident, you’re also exuding that around to everyone around you, so they can trust you. Because they know you’re trustworthy, you have integrity, and that with that energy concept and kind of trust that you’re building, I think there’s also value in it because it keeps you focused and clear. Where we get in trouble is if it’s misaligned, there’s contradictions, we say we buy it up, and then we do the thing. And now suddenly, you’re causing some kind of abrasion, abrasion, lack of focus, lack of clarity, and that has huge costs. So if you scale that to an organization, if everybody’s feeling a little agitated, because they don’t know where things set, or they don’t, they’re getting confusing messages, or the, they’re frustrated, because they feel like you guys say this, and then you do that. All of those all that agitation, all that lack of trust, all that concern, and worry, and anxiety, or anger and frustration, is sucking the life out of the organization. And it shows up in all sorts of different ways, right? We see it in health, we see it in all the backroom conversations, post meeting meetings, you know, what a waste of time. So when people are doing that they’re not working, not being productive, and they’re not building their sense of self or integrity or confidence. So it’s just it will rain on the organization, the individual team.

Zoran Stojkovic: So you’re saying it’s very important to cultivate the culture for a number of reasons. And one distinction that you’ve made is between these personal values and cultural values. And then you talked about alignment of action and value and actually living the the value and in the behaviors that we exhibit throughout the day. Is it possible to have misalignment between personal values like to value something personally, but then to work for an organization that doesn’t value that?

Jennifer Wallinga: Well, I think it is possible, but again, a huge cost. Okay. And so I do think the more we talk about cost So glad people are talking about culture a lot more. I’m not sure everybody understands what it is, I think it feels very intangible and the real people still, but that’s why I try and define it all the time as values communicate, because people seem to get that. And this idea of alignment, and then it’s a tool. Yeah. And I think it’s really important for individuals who are thinking to join an organization or who are thinking about leaving organization, it’s a really good exercise to go through to check whether your core values, first of all, what they are always a good exercise, and then to check whether they’re aligned with the organization you’re working with. You know, I work with a very progressive University, the values are very clear, they’re embodied right across the organization, and the learning teaching research model. But then we see the president saying them as well, you know, in his messaging, but the reason they’re the same is because a lot of consultation, which again, exhibits and communicate a core value of participative decision making letter does, I think about my support team, same thing, it was exhaustive, how much participation went into building a race plan, which is no different than a strip club. It was really thorough, and we all fundamentally understood how important everyone’s commitment to it, and alignment. So there’s a good example of personal and organizational or team values being brought into alignment. So we built the race plan, just as employees should be contributing to building a strat plan. And then of course, you’re going to have alignment, because it’s born up right and, sorry, my dog is snoring in the background, hopefully,

Zoran Stojkovic: No problem. [LAUGHER] His value is obviously recovery right now. And so that’s, that’s a solid, thank you for, for explaining that. And so what I heard you saying was that misalignment can be quite costly. And, and having alignment between personal values and having the cultural, like being part of an organization in a culture that has similar values is very important, because that, then that cultural audit is going to go quite well. And we’re gonna be living with integrity and with authenticity, and what happens when that alignment isn’t there? What’s the what’s at stake?

Jennifer Wallinga: I think that’s when it makes it a little more clear why the person might want to leave that organization or doesn’t fit with the team or I worked with a coach once, who had to make a very difficult decision to cut a really a really effective player with a very high performance player, but toxic, and completely counter to a lot of the cultural values that the team has established together, resisting, and no matter how hard they try, should they couldn’t bring her into that culture. Now. You know, even, you know, one could argue, well, shouldn’t they try to shift the culture slightly to incorporate this person as well, and I think they try. But I think she also contradicted to so many of their values, it just wasn’t a great fit. So that realization, that kind of cultural audit really helped me coach realize that, actually, I have to cut it. And even though she’s my top one of my top players, I have to cut her because it’s having too many costs. So the same with someone deciding to leave. And I’ve had lots of students, they go through and get their masters. And you know, most students will say, what job Am I going to get after these students quit their jobs? And because they realize, Oh, yeah, I don’t belong there anymore. I’ve evolved and I need to go somewhere where more aligned, right, and they have the confidence to do that. I think it’s crucial. I think too many people are probably working in organizations they don’t feel aligned with or committed to, and it’s not good for them. It’s not good for the organization, because they’re not committing fully. But it’s not good for them either to be living in.

Zoran Stojkovic: Yeah, the dissonance for sure can be can be challenging. And I was reading a book called Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott, really great book, and she’s going to be a guest on the show here as well. And one of the things she says when we live out of integrity with our own values and don’t – her whole frame is around having conversations that we need to have, when we don’t have the conversations that we need to have. She talks about immune system suppression and being more likely to get sick and just mentally there being you know, challenges and, and burnout and all sorts of things. So that’s, I think, definitely important. And the starting place would definitely be to start start with ourselves. Now. When we think about the culture and for leaders who work within cultures and who are shaping these cultures and creating them. How can culture be cultivated, like what is the starting place and who has to be in those conversations?

Jennifer Wallinga: Well, I would assume a lot of your audience is going to be athletic and into sport in some way. So I like using that metaphor, I do think it’s an outstanding metaphor, because, like almost the whole world participates in sport in some way as a spectator, even as a critic, you know, some people are thinking about sports, you know, so I think about my experience in sport, I was really fortunate to be part of a high performing, and very strong cultural team. And the way it was cultivated was, yes, the coach, the coach was central, because he brought his core his own core values, he was very clear and very, a lot of integrity around what he believed to be important. And I think he, he’s matured in that as well. So we kind of caught him at a place where he was really maturing into realizing how important it was. And, and then he insisted on our values based approach. So I think that’s a good starting point, is understanding that values are the foundation of an organization, I think sometimes people think they’re nice to haves, or we have to go through with this and figure out a mission mission. And they kind of treat it as though it’s tertiary, and soft and fuzzy. And then it’s very concrete is something that forms the foundation of your organization, just like purpose. Vision is right there to add values. And yeah, your vision is just, you know, an encompassing thing. So foundational values, then he insisted that we behave in accordance with the core values, and the purpose of our team, which, you know, is rowing. So we’re going fast. You can, that’s an analogy for an organization to you, this is pretty easy to define, we’re here to serve the public, or we’re here to make this product, or we’re here to provide a service to some other stakeholders, right? So it’s clear what our purpose is. And, and the values are not. So in order to go really fast and be an Olympian. I was part of it, we must not only be really strong human beings, athletically good at our jobs, but we also have to be leaders, in order to be Olympians. We need to be great people, and high performers in all aspects of our lives. So that drove everything we did. He would say things like, and you know, I’m attributing A lot of it to him, because I think that’s the responsibility of a leader. Their responsibility is to cultivate, I love the word cultivate, right? They’re the ones who wrap their arms around, they do the facilitation work, they design the communication process, you know, we met every single day, we were always clear on what was expected, but also what was happening. He and she told us stories all the time. So within those meetings, he would also embed these stories of that illustrated the values that we had all signed on to and the importance of doing things a certain way. So he’s a designer, he’s a cultivators, facilitator, he is hard to model things himself as well. He didn’t always do a perfect job, but neither did us, did we right, we would fall down sometimes. But that’s his responsibility as a leader, it doesn’t mean that he decides on our values, and I don’t think he pushes us pushed us around. That was another key piece was it was a very balanced balancing of power. His job was to, through expertise that he sometimes drew on other sports, but also from himself, was to kind of design a framework, but we were crucial players and all of that, and he would say that to us, you know, without the athletes, the coach is nothing. So constantly communicating that balance of power was really brilliant, I thought, and that then let us always be very much participants partners in achieving a shared goal. So the cultivation is need some kind of facilitator, someone just sparking along someone to understand that they have the expertise need that foundation, but it also needed all of all of us had to be leaders to we all had to show a lot of integrity, really commit to the process. And I remember when he laid up the quad, the four year plan leading up to the Olympics, and it was, you know, astounding, the standards that were being set for us. And we were deciding we wanted to go for Olympic gold. So here’s what it was going to take over the four years. And he literally put it out. It was an invitation. It wasn’t like, this is what you’re going to do. We weren’t in East Germany. And we all went signing up like I’m in. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’m gonna try. So that was pretty cool, too, that it’s an invitation. But we then had to commit we were going to sign on we had to show a lot of discipline, focus and a willingness to, you know, believe in the values and participate fully in that participate in all the agreements, you know, the ways we were getting ration. So it’s typed out, but it doesn’t need that one person to spark it. It’s not dominating. Yeah.

Zoran Stojkovic: Jen, that’s quite a lot of gems you just dropped here. And it seems like your coach really had a big influence on you. And, you know, it was a positive influence. But there’s, you know, there’s coaches and leaders who don’t have a great influence on their, on their team. And so one of the things that I found interesting is, is that you said, you know, better people, something better people make better athletes. And that was, that’s one of the mantras of the New Zealand, All Blacks, better, people make better All Blacks. And that’s a part of their values. And they have a, they do a lot, and they’ve done a lot of work, to reshape and cultivate their values as an organization. And a couple of things that I heard you mentioned, Jen was, you know, having co creating the values, but also having that one person who sort of sparks it. So when you talk about the values based approach, who chooses the values? And how are they chosen? You know. Is it something that’s handed out by the organization, which says, here’s the values live by them? How does that work?

Jennifer Wallinga: You know, I think we were we were all in our 20s. And we had a coach who was in his early 40s 40s. Yeah, I think in that context is where I think the sport differentiates from organization where there was definitely the Father, and then daughters in a way, right. So he did have more expertise, more experience. So he was going to bring his values just like a parent would. I think in an organization, it’s different in that we’re much more on a level playing field, everyone’s an adult, the leader is a leader for a good reason, they definitely share he has more experience more expertise. And they’ve committed to taking on more responsibility. But I think the, the power is even more balanced. So our coach had to work at balancing power, because typically, we would look to him like a dad. And he did that by keeping our focus on the shared goal of going this fast at the Olympics, and how what it was going to take to get there his role, our role. So we were actually led by our gold medal standard, we called it greater the criteria of success on high performance, I think you can apply that in organization as well, you know, that helps to balance the power, and it helps clarify that we’re all working towards something together. And I think in our organization, it’s probably more important for the leader to co create or co clarify what that shared purpose is, and repeat it often and make sure it’s embedded everywhere. Whereas in the coaching situation, I think it was more important for him to bring like that was there, but it’s a little more self evidence for what the show purpose is. And then for him to bring the values in, based on his experience. So those were things like teaching us to be humble, and keep perspective that Yeah, we think the Olympics was so important, but really, you’re going back into the boat. And not that that’s not important. But remember, you’re one of many, many, many people in the world who are striving to be their best. And what you’re really doing is striving to be your best, you would bring us back to those values as well. It’s not about getting the sponsorship, which we didn’t get it or you know, becoming famous or winning a gold medal. It was about striving for your optimal performance. I think a leader in an organization wouldn’t necessarily bring those like our coach did, but I think they are to solicit them. Now our coach did that as well. He definitely solicited what’s important to you. And he helped us do that within our crews as well, because we then broke down into smaller crews, and gave us you know, the tools to do some of that reflection. Yeah. But I would say those are the differences and things that you don’t like I participated in organizations or worked with organizations where the leader tries to solely identify what the core values are, and everybody’s roles arise because they might be true, but you know, we didn’t generate them. So it’s just showing something on us imposing something on our framework.

Zoran Stojkovic: Seems like there’s more, there’s more buy in when it is a co-creation process. And and people within the organization, or at least some of the people within the organization have have input over that and have a have a say in how what the values are and how they’re, how they’re communicated and how they look in terms of action and behavior. And Jen, how have you shaped team cultures? What sort of work have you done to shape team cultures? Maybe it’s you know, and coaching and sport or business.

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah. As a coach, right, just working with teams, definitely try to focus on clarifying expectations. And you don’t often you don’t have a ton of time with a team. But if you can clarify expectations right away, it just establishes how we behave as a group and encourages people to say adios if they don’t align, right. And then just in daily practice trying to model conversations where I can have them and linking it always back to you know why we’re here. But having lots of one on ones, I think that’s really crucial to bring out the best in each Jaffe and then working with Marsha consultant like I work with the Rugby Sevens team sometimes because my buddy Kirsten and I are crewmates, and she’s their mental performance consultant. So the two of us will do stuff, where we were doing that work of trying to facilitate from them draw out from them, what’s most important, and then do the hard work of what does that look like in daily practice? And then the harder work of an audit, you know, are really reflecting on where are you going off the rails here, you say, believe in us, but then I see the stuff, it takes a little while but they’ll start becoming more and more forthcoming with those kinds of examples, because they start to recognize that we don’t look at these fractures, they’re gonna turn into full on crevices and breaks. And we’re gonna be in trouble. Because I like that the word of like a cracker cultural crack is good, because it literally things can leak out just like they wouldn’t foundation.

Zoran Stojkovic: Yeah. And leak in. Yeah, that’s, that’s interesting. So you’ve shaped team cultures, both as a coach, I guess, as part of part of the the, the Olympic teams and some of those teams, and the co-creation process, and then as, as a consultant with teams.

Jennifer Wallinga: And then right now I’m working with a number of leaders across the sport system. And when I do that, I’ve consulted lots of different kinds of organizations like geotechnical core in Vancouver, or BC Hydro BC, transit or something like that. And it’s all the same, it’s working with, usually leaders from the middle. Sometimes, if this always makes me laugh, because sometimes the CEO will stick around, but usually it’ll leave, which I think is great. Because usually they’re that part of the issue is they don’t quite get it. And that’s why the organization has struck struggling. And we call it believe in, I just buy in, but believe in when you believe in something, you’re gonna give your heart to it. But when I’m working with those middle manager, or leading from the Middletown leaders, I try to give them the tools first of all, to kind of have those cultural audit glasses on all the time, or give them a badge like your cultural police, they look into the cracks, because when you find a crack, you can fix it, you can actually feel it. And they know how they know how to bring something back into alignment by using the values and that’s where it highlights values is something very concrete, it’s a tool that will bring integrity to your organization, if you embed them in everything that you do, it brings integrity, that kind of sense of certainty and confidence as well. So I just try to equip people with that concept of culture, how to do an audit how to align things, go through that process and exercise that and, and then as a leader, myself, I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to foster culture within smaller teams, bigger teams, and then even across organizations. So when I participant organization, I look for the artifact that is like the heart of the organism. So my university, for instance, one of the things I got behind holy, and I’ll get on certain committees that I know, facilitate, I would say like the physiology of the organization. For us, it was the learning teaching research model at a university, I knew that that’s the home of the whole place. Get involved with that, and it will have a huge impact, huge reach. And it does mean it affects everything we do. It’s research, learning and teaching our purpose. And you know, the bureaucrats can do whatever they want around you. But once that heart is beating strong and clear, and people know about it, and you’ve been using it and it embodies everything they love, then you’re going to be okay. Because I think another key thing is understanding organizations can become very, they just shoot themselves in the foot the people in organizations because I think we love control so much. We kind of have to describe it really, it’s almost like scar tissue, I think we create scar tissue across the organization by by limiting and controlling and locking down and creating bottlenecks of approval and just hinder and hinder and hinder by squeezing the org all the different little kind of communication so it is a good analogy the human body. No. It’s like if you were smoking, and you’re just inhibiting that ability to transfer oxygen and an energy and nutrition around you, right? So I see organizations tending that way for some reason, and maybe it’s just aging, and we do it as we need to. But to understand that, okay, well keep your heart healthy then to combat the inevitable. So yeah, maybe the aging is a better example. And keep your lungs you know, the breathing in and out of the communication harbor today, we’re sending messages, getting that oxygen, out to all the different areas of the body. Yeah.

Zoran Stojkovic: This is great. I love that analogy. And when you talk about the cracks that happen, and sometimes these fissures can turn into into fractures, which can turn into clean breaks, that’s a very vivid picture, because you’re right, and what you said before, culture is very airy fairy, it’s very, not tangible. Typically, when these cracks happen, actually, what like, what are these cracks? And you know, like, what behaviors are toxic for Team culture? And then how, you talked about empowering people to be the culture police to actually patch up these cracks? And so they don’t they don’t turn into breaks and scar tissue. So how, how do you do that?

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, exercise really simple. I just, you put up a PowerPoint slide, or just on the wall, he say, okay, we say we believe in that. But then we do these things, and you you mind for them, and they’ll be all nicey nice at first, you have to be patient. And gradually, they get more and more brave as they realize this is a positive thing. So let her go. And I was like, using his little cracks where the light the light comes in. And it’s the same with culture, like you got to look at the cracks. Because those your opportunities, it’s just like maintaining your home, you know, you wouldn’t ignore the cracks. Me a disaster. So seek them out, always be maintaining, looking to, you know, it’s like looking after a car or whatever, you’re always adding oil and taking care of things all the time. So it’s that process of seeking out where we are misaligned, and also being compassionate and understanding that a lot of this stuff is well intentioned, like, you know, people will accuse politicians, leaders, CEOs of will we say we value our people, but then we don’t give them great benefits, or we dismiss them on without even acknowledging your service, or we don’t recognize the work that was done, right. There’s all these and, and those are usually not intentional. So recognizing that it’s not an attack on the leaders. It’s just going, Hey, this is where we’re misaligned. Whenever I have new students come, I asked them to do this on us. And that’s a good way to start because they have a chance to talk about you know, and you’re modeling that you’re totally open, point them out, help us out, because we sometimes can’t see it, either. We’re so biased, or we’re so busy, you know, we’re not even noticing. And so they’ll point out some really helpful things around our because we value in the environment, we value indigenous relations, we say we value human sustainability, and that’s a good one. Because they’ll say yeah, you say you value ability, you know, balance and well being but then you like cram us into this three week intensive residency and glamorous with all this work? Yeah, you’re right. Where’s the reflection time, right? So listen to me when we when we respond. They love that too. And it’s good for everybody. So with that exercise at pointing out just what you’re saying making a really clear examples of what those cracks really are they, they can be a zillion different things. And it depends on the organization. But you’ll hear right away, you know, it’s those little conversations after the meeting. Everybody’s rolling their eyes,

Zoran Stojkovic: What would you say are some of the more common ones? Like what are the top three that you’ve noticed across a variety of different organizations, those toxic behaviors?

Jennifer Wallinga: Oh, God, well, it’s usually something that hits at the real trust. So a big one would be a leader asking for like, everybody to participate in a cultural values assessment, you know, or some sort of litmus test, and how are we doing as an organization, and everybody participates, takes about maybe 2030 minutes out of their day, and we’re all excited and think they’re going to have a big impact. And then the leader leaders or leadership team, say, Okay, thank you and then ignored. Now maybe they’ve listened to it, maybe they’ve read the results, but nobody knows. And especially if they do something that’s completely contradictory to their values shortly after, like laying a bunch of people off or, you know, instigating a new policy that’s really rigid or kind of strangles the employee’s sense of autonomy of power takes away or costs or any of these things that can really hurt people’s ability to do their work, then people will just be completely disenfranchised. So would have been better if they hadn’t even done a cultural valid, nice assessment. Sometimes they do read it, but they don’t tell anybody. So there again, it’s well intentioned, they’re like, oh, great data, we’re going to make these changes, just like we did around adding some reflection time into our residency. But no one really notices or, you know, they’re so such subtle changes, no one really is aware, or they’re happening in one part of the organization. So 90% of the org doesn’t even see it. The leaders have to share, like, follow up. So that’s another really important piece to culture, building and cultivating a culture is the communication, not only of your values, and everything that you do, but in your repair or healing of those cultural crowds, share back to the people who work at the organization, what you did with the information, how you’re going to try and rectify something like we do evaluations all the time of people, processes, projects, organizations, and then we don’t actually feedback what we heard. And the changes we’ve made based on that are the changes we’ve decided not to make.

Zoran Stojkovic: And so Jen, how can leaders measure and assess team culture in valid and reliable ways then? Like, does it mean having conversations? Does it mean, listening in on those after meeting meetings? Which, I mean, I don’t know that, that people would be open to sharing that. Does it mean doing an anonymous survey? Like what how’s that done?

Jennifer Wallinga: I think that cultural values assessment is a great tool, I think there are better ones out there and not so good ones that are too limited needs to be quite robust. And not just a few little question. But really, the best way is to ask those kind of questions. Where are we misaligned? And if there are 1000 things where you know, you’re failing, first of all, and, but it’s a great opportunity. So it’s a productive exercise, at least, that you can try to heal all those cracks. And then you’ll be on your way again, just like doing a, you know, some sort of a, an assessment of your of your house, right? When you do an inspection of the house that you’re gonna buy, it’s already giving you that kind of feedback as well, like, Where are the cracks? Where are the things that we’re gonna have to repair, it’s gonna need a new furnace, your water heaters, like what’s going on? And same with an organization. So those assessments, those surveys are really useful if you actually pay attention to them. And people think, oh, but you can’t measure it. Yeah, you can. Like I said, if it’s 1000, things that are misaligned, you know, you’re not doing very well, the Barretts, Barrett values, center instead of the states, but something like that, where they have these kinds of assessments. And then at the end, I’ll give you a reading. And it really it measures alignment. So the way they do it is they say here’s what are my values, or here’s what I see the organization communicating, here’s what I think they should be communicating and short assessment. But in the end, it illustrates alignment and how well you’re doing. And I think some organizations think they’re doing really great. If they’re only like 20, 25% misaligned, I think that’s a really terrible score, actually, and you should be aiming for like 3% misaligned you just aren’t noticing and strive for that. I also see organizations sort of sharing the results and then not doing anything about it. I really terrible measure of misalignment to Yeah, I think the listening in you kind of you can definitely rely on some of that. And there’s some really good work around social network analyses and, and identifying across your organization where the, the real strong nodes of communication are, like who those people are, they’re often not leaders, they’re, you know, safety person or something, because they have access to so many people. So you could probably have a meeting, like identify who those people are, they’re your cultural auditors, and they’ll give you an honest appraisal, how you doing culturally? So again, that’s kind of qualitative, but I think it’s a pretty sound measure. And a good leader would have have those condiments five they are. They got their fingers on the pulse rate, great signals within the system. That’s another good strategy. But you’re there are tons of measures like absenteeism, mental health turnover, not always, but you know, for the most part, and it’s worth exploring and asking why that person left. So exit interviews, great feedback. And, you know, for a university, I’ve hired probably eight faculty over my tenure there. And every single one of them says, Well, I’m keen because of your model, your learning teaching research model. So that’s it. Got a little piece of information would be really great to interview them three years down or something to see if that still, yeah.

Zoran Stojkovic: That’s interesting. So john, you mentioning, using surveys a couple of questionnaires talking to people and those exit interviews. I think that instead of doing exit interviews, I think we should be doing entry interviews. And when people come in asking them, what is it that you need to be at your best so that, you know? And what are you bringing to the organization, and then actually giving them that and treating people as, as individuals and not as a group. Because in that sense, equality doesn’t really work, because you can’t treat everybody the same way. Right? Everybody has their own unique blend of values, behaviors, traits, skill sets, you know, and and so that’s, I think that’s, that’d be really important. For you what, what does cultivating your culture mean? When you when you hear that what comes to mind?

Jennifer Wallinga: When it comes back to what you just said, because it started me thinking about the word we would do on a rowing team of acknowledging that diversity, right. And really, I think sport misses this quite a bit lately, where we’re not thinking of every individual as this beautiful, unique human being that we’re trying to elevate to their peak, right. But to do that, you really need to know who they are. And they’re not these little automatons that we can control. They’re human beings, and to leverage your physical capacity, I also need to be able to leverage your emotional and your mental. So I need to know the whole story before I can. And as an educator, I get that, but I think a lot of leaders aren’t educators, so they missed that boat. And I think it has to do with that 100% understanding the individual and then helping, the facilitation you do is helping them connect, connect in their own way. So I’ll describe a race planning session for our women’s eight was eight women plus a coxswain costume, which facilitated lead it coach wasn’t didn’t need to be in the room. He didn’t need to know whatever he wants, which I thought was brilliant, and exactly right. Because it showed that communicated trust in us as athletes, professional athletes, so we sit in this room, we booked off the whole day. Like, no question that we we knew it might take all day. And we all had to be prepared for that. And we were all committed to the process of identifying 220, 225 strokes in a race over 2000 meters, demanded that every single person had to identify with every single call that the coxswain and we all would associate with each stroke. So you think about an organization, it’s the same with designing a project, or department, any kind of process within the organization’s you have the right stakeholders around the table, not be afraid to have too many, whoever is going to play a role needs to be there. And then we have lots of really great facilitation processes that don’t have to take all day. But be prepared that they might take some time. So this will usually take us about three to four hours. And it took too long, because we get to a point, you know, first 250 and we want to do this and then that and then someone would go, you know, I really hate that word. And it’d be one out of nine. And everybody do like, you know, especially if we get to the last 200. And we have 20 stories to deal with, like, we just agree. And so I would have to be brave and say No, that doesn’t work for me. And we wouldn’t, we wouldn’t roll our eyes any sort of way because you’re tired, right? Y’all understand fundamentally that of course, we have to make sure it works for her, as well as everything else, because without her on that stroke, we’re gonna lose a race. So it was a really powerful, and it took a lot of time and a lot of courage and a lot of patience and, but in the end, we’d end up with a plan we all 100% believed in. And I tell you, it helped us win a World Championship last year by an inch. Because of our trust in each other our race plan. We kept our heads in the boat because we were losing at the beginning and shouldn’t have been and then, you know, things that just transpired but we kept our heads in the boat committed to that race plan. And we knew if we executed I love this piece actually executed what we had created together. It would bring out the maximum peak performance right? So when we cross the line doesn’t matter how we’ve done really, but what we promised is we would do our optimal and then when we cross the line had done that peak performance and then we look around see how we did you know what I mean, compared to everybody else it didn’t really wasn’t really about the gold medal. It was about that optimal thing, the gold medal standard, the speed. And so there’s one time Yeah, we, we were down like a full boat length, which is a lot in a rowing race and to the Russians. And they were way bigger and way stronger and all that but we just kept her head in the boat and kept focused on executing every single stroke. And in the last 10 strokes or so or coxswain let us know that you know, we were moving, we had been touching them. But you start to feel like you’re gonna run out of room. And then she said, they’re dying, they started looking at us, right and taking their head out. kind of gave it to us, but I feel bad for them. But you know, it was about us staying focused and just believing and in the end, they don’t repeat about a little tiny bit. And that set us on our path. So that idea of really participating but also honoring all that diversity. Everybody has to play a role and in their own way. You can’t force something on someone. Yeah, it takes time. That’s just like teaching, you know, you’re you can’t just sort of give or take a bunch of theory and just like push it into people’s brains, they have to find a way there. Yeah, it’s pretty cool.

Zoran Stojkovic: Some teachers and leaders still seem to think that you can. And and I think there’s a serious update that needs to happen in, in society, both in the world of sport and business in terms of the understanding that science has around motivation. Now the understanding that science has around communication and how how important culture is and and the fact that in practice, we really have a long way to go. And we haven’t we haven’t caught up. We’re not there yet. We’re using outdated systems, models, frameworks. And so I think that’s, that’s very important.

Jennifer Wallinga: What do you think it is that gets in the way? Like, what do you think we’re stuck on relying on?

Zoran Stojkovic: I think a piece of it is fear of change. And the fact that it’s comfortable to keep doing things the same ways. The I think the other piece, which may even be bigger is not having the conversations that we’re supposed to be having people not speaking up at work, people know that things aren’t, you know, when culture isn’t great, people can feel it, but they don’t always share it. And so I think sometimes the leaders in the organization, maybe have an ego, and they don’t listen, or they pretend to listen, and then go do the thing that they want to do anyways. So I think that’s a couple of things that definitely get in the way. And I do see it getting better. Like there’s a lot out there in terms of information in terms of podcasts, audio, books, books, journals, blog posts, there’s a lot and I think information is getting out there. And people are getting more and more educated on what to do, what not to do. But I still think some of those things get in the way,

Jennifer Wallinga: Really good point. And that’s I think, why I’m hoping this idea of cultural auditing, like looking at the cracks is an opportunity to strengthen. It’s not about being critical, or saying that CEO needs to go, you know, it’s more about, here’s an opportunity to bring things into alignment. I think that doesn’t seem to require as much courage because I get it like it’s very power imbalanced as well. Speak up because we can be turned or we can be excluded. It’s not always about getting fired. Sometimes it’s being just invited. The opportunities aren’t there for you, your cast are a bit of a pain in the butt.

Zoran Stojkovic: Yeah, for sure. That’s a really good point around people, reasons why people don’t speak up. And yeah, maybe might be it might be that fear of losing a job, but it might be just fear of being excluded and not in that circle, whatever that means. Is there a book or resource that has shaped your understanding of culture, Jen?

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, I’d say Peter Sange was one of the first real leadership books I dug into. I’m sure there were others like Stephen Covey, and that kind of stuff, more popular books, but they’re saying he wrote the Fifth Discipline and lots of others. I think the bridge too, he wrote lots about how schools learns another big one. But he, I think he woke me up to the, to the philosophy like you’re describing, like, we have this kind of these beliefs and philosophies around how things should be. And I think a lot of it was, for me grounded in sport and in the good environments. They participated in successful models I’ve been exposed to, which is great. And then I come into organizations and I wasn’t seeing it quite the same way more more in education, maybe by a little less than other organization. And so he will be up to Oh, you know what, this is possible. And this is good. And I just, you know, all the words he was saying, I just went, Oh my god, it’s so great to have that sort of community. I think he welcomed me into the community, this kind of thing. And then another one that’s had a huge impact recently, Amy Evanson, she’s the one who’s coined that phrase of psychological safety. And I like I love the psychological safety concept because they, but she’s kind of just made her name on that, but I love her. I love the work she does, she talks about failure as well, which I really believe in, again, not as a negative thing, it’s not an opportunity. Although learning happens, it’s helped to, to realign my thinking around failure as well, you know, I can talk the talk, but then when I’m in a sports situation, you know, I really try to avoid failure. And I think this coaching, and yet, it’s she has caused me to reflect back on myself as an athlete being very comfortable feel you’re not that I failed a ton. I was really lucky, I always had good crews and great opportunities. And so, but I was when we lost, I would just become like, you know, obviously upset, but then very much in a learning mindset to do with my coaches. But it took me a long time to apply that in another setting. So she’s been fundamental, and I feel like I share her stuff more than anybody else. So she just put up a little TED talk on leading and crisis. And she, she just shares down the whole concept of what you described, here, change wanting things comfortable, we seek security, she goes knowing in crisis, we’re gonna, we’re gonna lean on that we’re gonna look for that. And then she just goes, and she’s kind of taught, double work, and just gives everybody home, you won’t know about it. It’s about being open and vulnerable, and letting things go a little bit. Trusting and people are like, awesome.

Zoran Stojkovic: Those are really great resources. Thank you for sharing. And one of my last questions here is what is one practical tool leaders can use tomorrow to cultivate the culture of their team?

Jennifer Wallinga: Practical tool, look for the cracks. And ask your employees to, don’t just do it all yourself, and list the whole organization to be on the lookout at all times. If you did, that your organization would be lying.

Zoran Stojkovic: That’s powerful. It reminds me of an activity where the organization has to come up with what they would do if they were their competitor, how they would break apart their organization. So you’re like forced to look for the cracks? Love it. And I’ve used that with teams and coaches and athletes before and it’s, it’s absolutely powerful. People love it. Really great activity. So tell me, tell me about your company, Integrated Focus.

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, it’s consulting. And so I do a ton of different little things really. So you know, organization, you hire me come in for a day, maybe I’d be there regularly over the span of several months, I teach, you know, workshops, or I’ll come in and just work with the leadership team and try to tease apart with the challenges. He designs and programming with them. Also things I’ll do one on one stuff, of course, going into teams, and different different sectors to bring different sort of context. But I really love sport intends to get more and more leading, which is super fun. And it’s all premised on the work I did during my final degree we tried to do with problem solving. And it seems really like a weird topic. But it totally relates to sport because of the idea of high performance, and how do we get there. And usually, you’re solving a problem of some sort, you know, some sort of thing that you don’t have going on in your body, or an opponent that’s particularly challenging or ditions. It’s always something you’re solving. And our our interest was around inflate, which is, those people think of it as like the hall that you have, when you figure something out. That seems really intractable and complex. But then all of a sudden, you get it. And we we were quite interested in that and saw that as kind of a nugget and highperformance anything. Because we don’t we didn’t believe it was magical, or just by chance, we knew we could facilitate it. So I really dug into this concept. And what I discovered was, it had to do with failure and barriers, that if we could be courageous enough to acknowledge what the barrier of failure actually was the threat and use that to lead us to what it threatens or when it gets in the way of that would reveal the true goal or value that was at stake. But it would also keep in focus with the value or threat was and that was the key if you could keep both things in your view and kind of expand your problem plan frame to include the goal and the barrier. So for us in sportive East German gold medal. And, and what we discovered in that was really the gold medal. Because what they threatened is what they get in the way of is that winning, not a gold medal but being the best. But once we clarify the goal was about being faster, and they were impenetrable because they were doping differently, way bigger than us. But what we discovered them when we brought the two together was we had to go faster than them seems obvious. But in a totally different way. We weren’t going to be big like that we’re not going to take drugs. So how else can we that fast. And as soon as it was framed holistically in an integrated way, oh, then we came up with lost of solutions. Active recovery three times a day, lots of time on technique, lots of time on building our lungs. And then we went really well.

Zoran Stojkovic: Wow, that’s huge. And that gives every day in the daily training environment it gives it it gives it purpose, it gives it understanding everything makes sense, is what we’re doing right now gonna make us faster. And if it isn’t, then maybe we shouldn’t be doing it. Where can people find you, Jen? Are you online on social? Do you have a webesite?

Jennifer Wallinga: Yeah, website is integrated focus. And on all sorts of social usually jwalinga or Jennifer Walinga. It’s a pretty odd name. So it’s easy. And I’m pretty I think I’m pretty busy on social. I like to share things I think that will help unlock people or promote these kinds of ideas, share those resources, right? I’m a teacher. So that’s always going to be my first effort, and then staying connected with my community. And at Royal Roads, it’s easy to find you just put in Jen Waling, that’s probably the first thing that’ll come up.

Zoran Stojkovic: Perfect. Jen, thanks for taking the time to talk to our audience today. It’s been really enjoyable. And there’s a lot of gems and nuggets that people are going to get out of this conversation.

Jennifer Wallinga: Thanks so much, Zoran and what a great conversation. Fabulous questions really blew my mind. So thanks so much. Take care.

Zoran Stojkovic: No problem, it was a pleasure. Hey, thanks for tuning in to cultivate your culture, rate and review our podcast on iTunes. Any websites and resources mentioned in the podcast as well as the guests information can be found on the show www.kizo.ca/podcast. Here’s a sneak peek of what’s coming up in our episode next week.