Dan Bredeson on Planting the Seeds of Winning Cultures

In Brief: Organizational culture and leadership consultant Dan Bredeson (danbredeson.com) joins host Dan Freehling to discuss his new book "Seeds of Culture" and the importance of cultivating, rather than attempting to construct, a culture of commitment in organizations.

Bredeson shares his observations from his career as a leader in the insurance industry, where he noticed a discrepancy between the desired culture of executives and the actual culture on the ground in client firms.

He emphasizes the need for leaders to think like farmers, nurturing and growing culture over time, rather than thinking like carpenters in trying to artificially build culture. Bredeson identifies six traits of successful culture farmers, including affinity for people, making culture a priority, bringing the right energy, being authentic, growing credibility, and demonstrating integrity.

Bredeson also discusses the importance of effective communication, ethics, psychological safety, diversity and inclusion, generosity, autonomy, and mutual accountability in building a strong culture.

Recommended reading: "Leading Change" by John Kotter, "The Four Disciplines of Execution" by Chris McChesney, and "Developing the Leader Within You" by John Maxwell.

Transcript

Dan Freehling:

Welcome to Forward-Looking Leadership, a podcast for visionary executives building future ready organizations. I'm your host, Dan Freehling. I'm the founder of conceptus Leadership, a coaching practice that helps organizations develop their leadership pipeline through virtually unlimited coaching for their top rising talent. I'm honored to be joined today by Dan Bredeson. Dan is an organizational development culture and leadership expert, and the author of the new book Seeds of Culture. He's also the director of field development for CNO Financial [00:00:30] Group and brings over 20 years of leadership experience with a Fortune 500 company and several nonprofit organizations. Dan is a member of Aflac's West Territory Hall of Fame and has a master's degree in organizational leadership and learning from the George Washington University. His ideas regarding culture and performance are influenced as much by his upbringing on a farm as they are by his professional experience in formal education. Dan and I were grad school classmates who enjoyed working together so much that we partnered in virtually every group project. We became fast friends and have remained so since. [00:01:00] Let's get right into it. Thanks for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership. Dan,

Dan Bredeson:

It is a pleasure to be here and it's always great to chat with you.

Dan Freehling:

Likewise, likewise. So Dan, what drove you to write this book?

Dan Bredeson:

Oh, wow. Oh, boredom. No, I did start it in early 2020, so we did have a lot of time in the house to sit down and do some writing. But no, the main impetus for it was over the course [00:01:30] of my career, I interacted with a lot of different companies of varying size and varying industry, and I was actually in the insurance industry and as part of my job there, it was to call on companies and talk to them about the employee benefits that they're going to be offering to their employees. And then, so I was meeting with people in the c-suite, executives, directors of hr, those kinds of things, CEOs, CFOs sometimes. So I'd see [00:02:00] and I'd hear about the type of culture that the organization wanted or aspired to. But then throughout the course of the implementation, I would talk to middle managers.

I would talk all the way down to frontline employees because I was talking to them about the type of benefits that they were going to be offered. So I saw a broad disconnect quite often between the type of culture that the executives thought they had wanted to have and what was actually happening on the ground, [00:02:30] on the frontline. And it was really interesting, and I had several clients for 10 years, 15 years, and I saw leaders come and go within certain organizations, and I saw some leaders who were winning in every aspect that you could define winning for an organization and other organizations that weren't winning. And there was some common threads throughout those leaders and the things that they were [00:03:00] doing and the type of culture that those organizations had. And I was trying to put the pieces together as to what creates this winning culture and what's not happening in the organizations that aren't winning.

And the leaders that were a part of cultures that were really performing well, they reminded me of someone they reminded me of my dad, who's a Midwestern dairy farmer, and these leaders had [00:03:30] the patience of a farmer. They were really about growing and nurturing, and they used terms mentoring the next group of leaders. So the aha moment to write the book was really, I wanted to come up with a way to help leaders think differently, kind of change a paradigm around the way that they think about culture. I witnessed too many failed cultural transformations [00:04:00] because I just thought that people were going about it all wrong. So I did a little bit of research, I reflected on my past experience and spent a couple of years put it all together, and that's how we wound up with seeds of culture.

Dan Freehling:

That's lovely. I'm glad you brought in your dad into this and that farmer perspective of the long term of taking your time with leadership and not trying to rush it and something together and hope that it works and changes everything overnight.

Dan Bredeson:

[00:04:30] Yeah, exactly. No matter how long you think it's going to take, it's going to take you twice as long. Yeah. So there was really some fundamental mistakes that I saw far too many executives making when it came to their approach to culture. My assertion and my thesis you could say around it is that there's way too many organizations that are struggling with culture because [00:05:00] their leaders are thinking like a carpenter when they should really be thinking like a farmer. They think about culture and construction terms. Let's build our culture or let's go lay a solid foundation for culture. We need to transform culture as if we can pick it up and shape it with our hands. And I would suggest, and the book argues that leaders who I refer to as culture farmers should look at culture as an organic process. Culture is [00:05:30] grown, it's not built.

And the type of culture that they should aspire to grow, the type of culture that will yield the best crop of results and staying with the metaphor is what I call a culture of commitment. This is a culture where people show up and they work hard for the organization and for each other because they want to, not because have to. I've seen a lot of cultural transformations that seem to be seeking compliance versus, and if you can grow a [00:06:00] culture of commitment, you're going to watch your organization soar. And to do that, you need to plant the right seeds of culture.

Dan Freehling:

This seems to be spot on and a lot of how do you get people to really commit to the organization to show up, to perform well, to feel that ownership. It seems key here, rather than how do I get people to comply with my dictates as the top dog in this organization? That just doesn't work, obviously.

Dan Bredeson:

And they'll do that for as long as [00:06:30] they have to. Right? They'll comply until they get a better offer somewhere else. That was part of the whole chapter two of the book is I did a lot of research about the great resignation. I thought I was going to be able to release the book a lot quicker. But right as I was finishing it up, the great resignation was all over the headlines. So I'm like, ah, I can't write a book about culture and not include something about this. People going to be like, how tone [00:07:00] deaf are you? So it took another few months of just really actually watching that play out a little bit. I mean, it was the last time you heard something about the Great resignation.

Dan Freehling:

Yeah, no, it's

Dan Bredeson:

Been months, right? But it was here. It was a real thing. I mean, it really happened. So I kind of dig into that in chapter two and the idea being that folks will stick around until they don't have to. When the labor market corrected, when [00:07:30] the world started to open back up a little bit, people were like, peace out. I've been waiting a year to quit this job. But resignations and the number of quits in the marketplace are really a pro-cyclical economic event. When the economy's booming, people are more willing to leave their job because they're confident they can go find another one. If the economy is a dumpster fire, they're not going to quit because you're going to try to find another job of everyone around you is getting laid off. No. So [00:08:00] all that to say is that they'll comply with your mandates and what you're asking them to do for as long as they have to and they'll vote.

Dan Freehling:

Right? Exactly. And real winning as an organization isn't derived by the sort of lowest common denominator employees who feel like they have no choice but to stay and they're going to just stay in the organization no matter what happens, it's by bringing on those people who do have options, who are able to walk and go [00:08:30] somewhere else, but how do you actually convince them to be committed to the org and stay in their roles and thrive in their roles? So I'm thinking of the other leaders who are listening to this and they're thinking, okay, I can get behind this. This sounds like something that makes sense that I might want to do. What would you recommend to someone who's ready to make this shift in terms of how they actually go about doing it?

Dan Bredeson:

The traits of successful culture, farmers that I've recognized, the folks that really do a good [00:09:00] job, there's six different traits that I've recognized. The first one is I call it affinity. Good culture. Farmers have an affinity for people. They actually like people. Now, you'd think that leading people, a prerequisite for leading people would be liking people, but that's not always the case. We can be as everyone who's worked in an organization, you'd think that leaders should like people, but it [00:09:30] doesn't always work out that way. Hey, let's be honest, we can be frustrating creatures sometimes. So what I've seen more often than not is what I call fluctuating affinity.

You start out as a new leader. You're excited when someone's first promoted into a leadership role. They're really excited. They got a lot of enthusiasm. They got rose titted glasses, everything looks great. They're in the honeymoon phase. But then after [00:10:00] you have some frustrating interactions with folks and you start to see people at their worst, as often as you see them at their best, you kind of cynicism starts to grow, and then your affinity kind of starts to fluctuate. And sometimes you're just done with people and you ever felt that way or is just you always look at everyone, everything's awesome all the time. No,

Dan Freehling:

I think it's important. Yeah, it's important to recognize that it's a [00:10:30] very human interaction, leadership and yeah, you're going to pay off on mood on certain days. You're going to have different relationships with different people. It's all part of the process there, as you know.

Dan Bredeson:

And what I've seen the best culture farmers, what they do, and what I've tried to do in those times when I've got that fluctuating affinity, which I might not be a fan of people at a particular time, is [00:11:00] stay humble, curious, and make connections. So humility, curiosity and connectivity to kind of put myself to ground myself back in a place where I can have that affinity for people to be the best type of culture farmer that I can be for them, is to stay humble. If you look down on people, don't expect them to look up to help you grow culture, curiosity, stay curious about folks. I remember when I was new [00:11:30] to the sales game and new to the sales leadership game, everyone was just a prospect to me. Everyone that I met was just, oh, can I sell to that person? And then when I was moving into a sales leadership role, it was like, well, is this person going to help me hit my quota? I wasn't interested individual.

And a few years of struggling to make my sales quota, [00:12:00] I was like, well, I got to step back here and the marketplace humbled me. How about that? So I'm learning from experience there. So this humility was grown out of like, whoa, okay. So I made my quota, but just barely. I didn't make the kind of bonuses that I want to. I got humbled by the marketplace a little bit, and I don't know how or why, but I started becoming more curious about the people I was selling to and the people that I was selling with. And I learned that people are sometimes frustrating, but [00:12:30] they're always fascinating. Now, one of my favorite things to do is just chat with people. And everyone is fascinating. Yes. Even you, whoever's listening to this, you've got a gold mine and great stories out there. Even if you think you'd live a mundane life and everyone else that you run into, every frontline employee that you have or person that you work with, or maybe it's someone in the office who you don't have a great affinity for it, there's still something in their background that's fascinating endeavor [00:13:00] to find out what that is.

Dan Freehling:

And fascinating for the sake of being fascinating, not as a means to an end being really important there. Not seeing people as just prospects or as widgets in a factory, but as unique people who are valuable. Inherently

Dan Bredeson:

The term I used, an authentic curiosity. An authentic curiosity that is not born out of, because people can sniff out inauthentic curiosity, right? [00:13:30] That

Dan Freehling:

Slick salesman,

Dan Bredeson:

It's called nosiness. It's intrusive people. So the more I get to, everyone's got a great story in their background or some weird job that they did, and I love finding that stuff out. And then the third part of growing affinity is I call it connectivity, which is just connecting [00:14:00] with folks and finding a way to on purpose, proactively connect with people. Remember the special occasions, at one point I was leading a sales team of about 275 sales agents, and every single person every single year got a handwritten birthday card for me. So I had a nice little logo of the organization on it inside Happy [00:14:30] Birthday. I said, happy birthday, make it a great day. And I would underline, make it so take control, go out there and make this a great day. Everybody got the same card and then I'd sign it and 275 people. The other thing that they got every year for me was an anniversary card, a work anniversary card. Because in that particular organization, vesting and how long you've been with the organization was a really big deal from a financial perspective. So it'd be like if they'd been with the company nine years, you'd be like, can [00:15:00] you believe that you started nine years ago? Only one more year until you're fully vested. Go get it. Something like that.

And I put a process in place for that. I had my assistant who would come in the third Tuesday of every month, and she would drop two big lists on my desk and it was the birthdays and anniversaries that were coming up for the next month. And I would sit in there and I would hand write all these out. I mean, I carved out time on my schedule in order to create those connections. And [00:15:30] Dan, I got to tell you that as I traveled around, there were six different regional offices that I was leading. I traveled around to the offices and I'd go into the regional manager's office. And more often than not sitting on the shelf alongside the sales award that they're most proud of would be my handwritten anniversary card.

Dan Freehling:

Just that simple gesture.

Dan Bredeson:

And it almost became a point of pride. I was with that organization for just under 10 years [00:16:00] that it was kind of like having your stripes. How many anniversary cards do you have from Dan? And they'd line them up. And it was kind of cool to walk in and say, that's right. We've been working together for six years. You see six cards lined up. So connection money may get a person to show up to work, but it's going to take appreciation and recognition to get them to commit. So [00:16:30] I don't know where I got the idea to do his handwritten cards, but man, it was popular.

Dan Freehling:

This is all driving toward that cultural commitment, every single piece of this.

Dan Bredeson:

And the final thing on making connection is go break bread with people. There's nothing. If you can find a way to sit down and have a meal with folks, that's a great point of connection and make a point to not talk about work. I had a mentor who when we went to lunch, [00:17:00] if I talked about work, then I'd have to buy because she just wanted to make a connection. I'm also blessed with an Italian wife who loves to cook and entertain. So when I would have the sales team, not all 275 at once, but typically the sales managers and leaders come to our house a couple times a year, she'd throw a big piece in. There's just nothing like having folks in your home to just make you as the leader real to folks in my experience. [00:17:30] So if you have an opportunity to do that, that's a great way to build connection, which is going to grow your affinity for people

Dan Freehling:

And to the tangible actions question. I mean, those are all really practical steps that leaders can take to grow this. And it may not be the fancy frameworks, it may not be the hard charging things that you think you need to do to build the culture, but these smaller, genuine, authentic actions can help to [00:18:00] really grow that culture over the long term.

Dan Bredeson:

Yeah, absolutely. And the part with the affinity was that would be the second piece of that that leaders can do is make culture a priority. I mean, what I mean by that is actually talk about culture out loud. Make it a priority, put it on your calendar. The birthday cards and the anniversary cards on my calendar, it was a priority. Culture was a priority. I actually carved time out [00:18:30] to do that,

Dan Freehling:

Right? Yeah. This is your job as a leader is to do this. This is not some side activity that's not as important as what you see as the bottom line. This is what actually helps to grow the bottom line.

Dan Bredeson:

Yeah, totally agree. I was working with consulting with a leader of an organization that was struggling a little bit, and I recommended to her as I was [00:19:00] and spent some time around the organization, the different leaders, Hey, you work need to work on the culture around here. And what she said to me was, I've already done that. They just need to execute the strategy. This strategy would work if these people would just do their damn jobs. That told me a couple of things. Number one, I'm not really sure she was high on the affinity scale for folks. It seems like she was a little frustrated. The other thing, she hadn't [00:19:30] really made culture a priority by saying, I made the recommendation of maybe go out, work on the culture, build some relationships with folks before getting them to try to execute on strategy. When she said, I've already done that, made me understand, or I understood at that point that she looked at culture as a box.

You can check, oh, I'm the new leader here. Okay, go create culture. Okay, check. I did that. Right? Moving on to plan [00:20:00] step two, that's not the patient's of a farmer, right? That's like a carpenter who thinks like, okay, so I attach this piece to here and then I screw 'em together. She hadn't really made culture a priority. So that'd be a second thing that a leader can do is that put it on your calendar, talk about it. And when I say it's a recurring event on your calendar, right? It's not a one-time thing. It's going to take a continuous, [00:20:30] my dad didn't just plant seeds in the ground and then walk away. You got to continue to nurture them and get them to grow,

Dan Freehling:

Right? You're never done with growing this culture. This is something that requires continuous tending to

Dan Bredeson:

Yeah, absolutely. Because guess what? You're going to have some performance. That's the crop of performance that you get. And then guess what? In Wisconsin, at least where I grew up, winter came, you see what you got to do next spring? You got to replant. So it could be the performance [00:21:00] that you have for a year. Hey, it's December 31st. Awesome. You immediately go from hero to zero time to crank it up again, right as soon as January 1st comes. So it has to be a repeating calendar event. And that's going to take the third part. The third kind of trait of successful culture farmers is energy. It's going to take a lot of energy, physical, mental, and emotional energy in order to, so if you're looking for a tangible takeaway for leaders is [00:21:30] that there was a time when I was first promoted to a leadership role in my early twenties, and let's just say that Dan liked going on for a few beers after meetings, right? Midwesterners showed exactly.

It was just part of the culture. And man, when I think back on how many days I was on the struggle bus, getting up in the morning and having to go and perform [00:22:00] at the top of my game, it was, let's just say that there was no coincidence that when I was working out and getting in shape and having the physical energy, my actual performance improved as well. So it takes some physical energy, the mental energy, it just never stopped learning. Now, I went back to grad school at 44 years old, was I 46? I'm so old, I can't even think, I don't even know. I was in my mid forties when I decided to go back to grad [00:22:30] school. I mean, you were there. I was the old guy in the room, but I just had always had something in my head, I want to go get my master's degree. I want to go get my master's degree. While I was grinding away, working my way up the ladder and leading teams for 20 years, and plenty of folks could have said, well, why are you bothering to go get a master's degree now? And it was, I never wanted to stop learning. I also, I wanted to show my kids that's important.

[00:23:00] Yeah,

Dan Freehling:

There's point where similar to where there's no point of where you can stop tending to culture, there's also no point where you as a leader can stop learning new things and stop trying to come up on the latest and continue to look ahead,

Dan Bredeson:

Never stop learning, have that mental energy. And then the third type of energy, which I think is, I don't know if anyone is more important than the other, but it's emotional [00:23:30] energy. This could be draining being a leader. When I think about my dad as a farmer, just the emotional energy of we had four kids, he had a wife and four kids to feed, and when milk prices went down, we didn't have a nice Christmas. If there was a drought, it was tough times. Just that emotional resilience. And [00:24:00] when it comes to emotional energy, enthusiasm is your offense and resilience is your defense. Just having that resilience. And I wish I could bottle and sell resilience, man. We wouldn't be talking right now. I'd be on an island somewhere, but whatever you can do to try to become more resilient. There's plenty of Ted talks [00:24:30] on grit and resilience, but that's your defense. That's your emotional defense. Your enthusiasm is your emotional offense,

Dan Freehling:

And you have to play both in your mind of having that resilience and having that enthusiasm to really bring this energy that's needed to grow culture.

Dan Bredeson:

Yes, exactly. And then the fourth trait of successful leaders that I and culture farmers is authenticity. There's so many fake things out in the world, Dan.

Dan Freehling:

[00:25:00] There's a scarcity now of realness and trust, in my opinion,

Dan Bredeson:

From fake news to fake Twitter bots to people are looking for real. And in my opinion, authenticity. If you're well, how can I be authentic? Well, ground it in self-awareness and sincerity. Be self-aware. [00:25:30] And if you don't know what your blind spots are, ask someone you trust. Have the courage to have the courage to be self-aware, and how are other people perceiving you as a leader? Leader? Seek out some peers. Seek out the folks that report to you and figure out what you're good at. Figure out what you're bad at, but be authentic to who you are and then stick to it, which is the sincerity part [00:26:00] opposite of sincerity. Fake. So another trait of culture, farmers is the next one on list here is credibility.

Credibility. And the way I break it down is that credibility is the reason people will start listening to you because the organization's going to be wondering why, especially [00:26:30] if you want to start growing culture or if you think that there's a cultural change that should happen, they're going to be like, well, why should we listen to you? And that's just human nature. My kids every question, why? Why, why? And that doesn't change when we're adults. It's just it's going to be, well, why should I listen to you? Some things to look out for if you're looking to grow and increase your credibility with your organization, here's some stuff to look out for. Beware the allure of tenure. Quite often [00:27:00] if someone is trying to position themselves as being more credible than maybe their ability would lead people to believe, they'll just say, well, I've been here for 20 years and this is the way that we do X, y, z. No one caress how long you've been there. What we care about is that, are you good at your job? Have you been here 20 years or have you experienced one year 20 times?

Dan Freehling:

Right? That [00:27:30] years of experience being a very imprecise proxy for actual ability I think is something that comes up over and over again and the research, and it's so important to separate those two.

Dan Bredeson:

I've been playing golf for 20 years and I suck at it. So why does tenure? Tenure does not equal skill? Just because you've been doing something a long time doesn't mean you do it well. So if you are a young leader out there [00:28:00] listening to this is that takes solace in that it's not about how long you've been doing, it's about how well you're doing it while you're in the role and can you find ways to bring value. I was promoted to a regional manager when I was 27 years old, and the district manager, the top producing district manager reported to me was 54 years old, twice as old as me. I was maybe a little, [00:28:30] I was maybe overly self-aware of like, well, this person's life twice as old as I'm, and maybe I lucked into it or maybe someone told me. But I always tried to find a way to bring her value in the ways that I could and understand the ways that I couldn't. And we had a great working relationship, great working relationship. I mean, she eventually retired, we still exchanged Christmas cards and I haven't worked with her and I'm going to date myself, probably haven't worked with [00:29:00] her in close to 20 years.

Dan Freehling:

But you had the same, you were working toward the same goals and you were bringing real value to that relationship.

Dan Bredeson:

And I didn't try to, IS shoved my ego aside. I had that humility could be like, why? She knows a lot of stuff. If you're currently a leader and you're concerned about your credibility, watch out for blind spots. And what I mean blind spots is people, if you were, let's say a senior leader and you're [00:29:30] promoting and putting junior leaders into position, their credibility or lack thereof is going to impact your credibility or lack thereof. People take a look at who you promote in place, and if you do have to take a flyer on someone and take a chance on promoting someone too early, well then it's your job to bring them up and mentor them because they suck at their job. Other people around that are going to notice it and they're going to be like, why did Dan promote him? What's that guy? [00:30:00] And sometimes we like people so much we keep 'em around and all they're doing is hurting our credibility. Next thing to watch out for is trying to leverage your title or position, and that can really hurt your credibility. If you have to tell me that you're a vice president, I immediately find you less credible. It's like, dude, I got the org chart. I know where you sit on it. You don't have to tell me that I should listen to you just simply based upon [00:30:30] the legitimate power or authority of your title.

Dan Freehling:

That should always be a very last resort for getting anything done. If even then, and if people can't tell that you're in a real position of authority just from the way that you act and carry yourself and add value to the conversation, then you're doing it wrong, in my opinion.

Dan Bredeson:

Do you ever play that kind of social experiment where say you're out at a business meeting and there's a whole group of coworkers sitting around and it's [00:31:00] one of those where someone's picking up the check. You ever try to guess who the server's going to bring the check to?

Dan Freehling:

I don't dunno if I have. I'd love to hear what you've done with those.

Dan Bredeson:

No, just try. Sometimes it's an experiment and they're usually pretty spot on. That's really

Dan Freehling:

Interesting. You can tell just innately

Dan Bredeson:

Yes, maybe it's servers ain't stupid. They typically will bring the check to the right person [00:31:30] without having something out to tell them. They're just picking up on who's in charge around here. Yeah, just next time you go out with a large group of

Dan Freehling:

People, I'll definitely try that. Yeah.

Dan Bredeson:

So credibility is the reason that people will start listening to you. Integrity is the reason that people will continue listening to you. And that's kind of the sixth trait of a successful culture farmer is integrity [00:32:00] is without it, you can just throw all the other attributes that I've just went through and just throw 'em in the trash, right? Because if you say one thing and do another, people are going to start stop listening to you. So if you lack integrity, if your words and your actions don't match up, then people aren't going to like you. They're not going to have an affinity for you. They're going to be like, does Dan really think culture's a priority? Because [00:32:30] sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Can't trust what comes out of his mouth. It's going to take a tremendous amount of energy. It's a whole lot less energy to tell the truth than to remember your lies. Your authenticity will come into question, your credibility comes into question. So the six traits of the really successful leaders culture, farmers are once again affinity. They like people, they make culture priority in number two, [00:33:00] you have the energy to do it. They're authentic, they're credible, and they have integrity.

Dan Freehling:

So moving away from the book a little bit, I'd love to get some of your thoughts on some more general leadership trends and looking toward the future of leadership. So I know you're not a fortune teller, but just speculating here, what are some major changes you see coming to the business world in the next five or 10 years?

Dan Bredeson:

[00:33:30] Wow, if I can answer that question, I'd be running a hedge fund five years from now. Who knows? Covid jumped on us less than five years ago who could have seen that coming,

Dan Freehling:

Right? Yeah. I mean there's so many things coming out of the blue and you mentioned the great resignation and all of that too.

Dan Bredeson:

Yeah, AI scares the crap out of me mostly because I watched the Terminator [00:34:00] like a thousand times as a kid, but also because I probably haven't invested the time to see how it can be a tool. I'm just waiting for Skynet to take over.

Dan Freehling:

It's useful. When I was just at a coaching conference and they were doing a lot of these presentations with AI and how amazing it's going to be. And I think there's a lot to that obviously. But I think these sort of science fiction scenarios do help to ground [00:34:30] you in how could this go wrong? What do we need to be looking out for? So I think there is benefit to having the Terminator as an exposed,

Dan Bredeson:

Right? They're talking about AI controlled drones. I'm like, wait a minute. No one wants the Terminator. Listen, this is exactly how it goes down. So I'm going to dodge that question. I'm going to punt on that a little bit. Again, here's why I'm more of a historian than a futurist. [00:35:00] Maybe it's because I'm coming off writing a book where I had to do a lot of research and as I mentioned, I was so close to having this thing a completed manuscript, and then the great resignation was everywhere in the news. And then that kind of forced me to dig into it.

And during the great resignation, there was one thing that really drove me nuts, which was you watch the talking heads or read the headlines about the great resignation of people [00:35:30] are always like culture matters now more than ever, now more than ever before. It's important to have a good positive workplace now more than ever. And it was almost as often as you'd hear people say The new normal, this is the new normal. I got tired of both those things and I got curious. I'm like, really? Is culture now important for the first time now more than ever? And you mean it is now more important than it was during the Colorado [00:36:00] Coalfield war when members of private security and the Colorado National Guard Massacre, 21 people, including women and children, just to break up strike because people were fighting over workplace culture or how Carnegie calling in the Pinkertons to break up strikes and all the other labor problems that we had during the Gild age. Culture has been important forever. It's not suddenly more important. It's a part of our history culture, [00:36:30] and in a culture of commitment that people care about in a place to show up to work where they feel valued and committed to that organization, it's going to be just as important five years from now and 50 years from now, just as important as it was 50 years ago and a hundred years ago. So I don't know if I'm answering your question, but the major I think you're getting,

Dan Freehling:

Yeah, I think you're getting at it. So in my view, a lot of what you're saying here, and definitely chime in if I'm off base here, but [00:37:00] there are some real fundamentals that essentially amount to being a decent human being who works well with other people toward common goals as part of their work and doing the basics is actually rare. And if you can get those basics and start growing this kind of culture, that's the best way to be ready for whatever the future's going to bring.

Dan Bredeson:

Yeah, [00:37:30] I mean, someone asked me, so for the last year, I've been working remote, which has been interesting because while I was writing the book, I guess I was working remotely. I was working, I was writing it, but I had never worked fully remote until the last year, which kind of made me nervous, already finished writing the book. I was like, oh wow. Does this stuff still make sense? [00:38:00] Are the philosophies and the ideas of having the book, do they work in a virtual world? And the answer is yes, luckily,

Dan Freehling:

Yeah, they ever grin.

Dan Bredeson:

Yeah, luckily, because where do I see the business world going in the next five years in regards to culture and what I've been spending a lot of time on, I think it's going to be those kind of evergreen ideas that were the same back 50 years ago, a hundred years ago. I mean to see as a culture effective communication is [00:38:30] five years from now, is ineffective communication going to be better? Another seat of culture is ethics. Are we saying that is ethics going to be different or we're not going to need ethics? You still need ethics in a remote work environment just because the way that I define culture is how we do things around here. And those things are everything. How you hire, how you fire, how you recognize, how it's you do everything. That's the real culture and how [00:39:00] you do things virtually versus onsite in person. You still have to communicate effectively. You still need ethics. You still need psychological safety. Diversity is a good start, but you got to work towards inclusion too. Generosity, you can still be generous in a virtual environment. Autonomy, that's a big one in a virtual environment. And then a mutual accountability where we're holding each other accountable because we're both committed to the organization. I don't need someone coming [00:39:30] to hold me accountable. So

Dan Freehling:

Getting away from a lot of the kind of fads and the manufactured debates of the day and back to some of these really foundational elements is where you're seeing business leaders need to be going.

Dan Bredeson:

Well. And anecdotally speaking here, I have some friends who are getting forced back to the office, and I'll use that word. They're getting forced back to the office. There's different ways to get it. We've been called back to the office, we've been asked to welcomed, we've [00:40:00] been welcomed back to the office, and they're not happy, even if it's just three days a week because for their particular job, they can do it from home, they can do it remotely. But one thing that is often used as an excuse or reason why we have to call people back to the office is a culture. You've got to pull people back in for the culture. Well, yeah, if your culture was beanbag chairs and craft beer on tap in the break room, well then yeah, you got to pull people back into the office for [00:40:30] that. But that's not really what culture is. Culture is how we do things around here and people don't want to show up at the office because you've got some cool furniture. It's more than that. It's deeper than that. So where I see in the next five years to 10 years is maybe an understanding of what are those evergreen principles that create a good culture that people can commit themselves to. So there's a long-winded answer [00:41:00] to the short question,

Dan Freehling:

No refresh. It's a refreshing perspective, especially as there's so much of the sort of fad and ideas of the day that are coming out that it's this historical look that you bring to it and that return to the basics and doing them right and being a decent human who can work well with other people and in its own way, refreshing to hear now.

Dan Bredeson:

That's good. Yeah, thank you.

Dan Freehling:

Yes. Want [00:41:30] the people who disagree with that? There's bigger problems foot, but I think it is really like it's nice to agree with the stuff in principle, but it feels like really doing it day in, day out is where the work is.

Dan Bredeson:

Yes. And it's going to take patience. And I keep going back to it is how would a farmer approach this? Farmers play the long game they've got, and [00:42:00] there's new technology out there. There's some really expensive technology in farming. And my dad would, one day a year, my parents would allow me to take a day off school and skip school, and we would go to the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. And it is people from all over the world, the dairy state, America's dairy land. And so I grew up on a dairy farm and we would go to the World [00:42:30] Dairy Expo, and I remember as a kid walking through there and looking at all the different machinery and technology, and this is going to be back in the eighties just to date myself, but they had robots. They had robots milking cows back then. And I was like, wow, that's crazy. So the analogy I'm making here is that five, 10 years from now, some of the technology may change. You may have milk and robots, you may have AI in your business, you have the version of milk and [00:43:00] robots in your business, maybe ai. But there's still going to be some foundational things like when we saw the milk and robots, remember my dad's saying, yeah, if only they could get a robot to feed them.

So there's still going to be some fundamental things. Or if only they could get a robot to pick up the manure. There's still going to be some core basic foundational evergreen seeds that need to be planted [00:43:30] no matter what the twists and turns of your industry.

Dan Freehling:

Dan. So we did a lot of studying of different leadership theories during our time at gw. Can I ask you, what's a leadership theory you most describe to, and then what's one that you think is something you don't really fully agree with or might be overhyped in some ways?

Dan Bredeson:

Servant [00:44:00] leadership. I ascribe to that for many years, I led a team of independent contractors. So those 275 sales reps I've talked about, they were all independent contractors. They were not W2 employees reporting to me. So my legitimate authority, legitimate power was very limited. I needed to influence 'em because they didn't really have to listen to me. [00:44:30] And I would say out loud to them, I would say the words. I say, listen guys, I work for you. You don't work for me. What can I do to? I am here to serve you. I work for you. You don't work for me. Now I'm an at will employee, so I'm going to choose how and where and when I'm going to do that. Because I'm a servant leader, doesn't mean I'm just your servant, right? We're going to be in this together. But I do look at you as [00:45:00] my number one customer.

You're my primary customer. What can I do to help you achieve your goals? So taking a servant leadership approach, and I don't know if it's because I just had so many years where I was doing that, but also situational leadership. I can recognize a lot of times in my career where I was differentiating between who I was delegating to, who I was supporting, who I was coaching, who I was directing. [00:45:30] So if there's some, and maybe the way that I viewed the situational leadership with servant leadership is like, this is how I'm best going to serve this person in this situation. I do need to direct this person in this situation. This is a person who I just need to coach. This is a person meeting them where they are. Yes, I need to delegate to them. This is a person who needs my support right now.

Dan Freehling:

And it's fundamentally not [00:46:00] how do I feel like leading them? What do I think would be the best approach to best serve them in this moment?

Dan Bredeson:

And I guess if I'm going to go back to the second question, authentic leadership, I have some questions about that. I mean, I know that sounds weird. I just talked a lot about how there's a lot of fake stuff out there and people are thinking about they need authenticity. I get that. But sometimes in the authentic leadership, [00:46:30] and maybe I'm you, tell me how you feel about authentic leadership. Yes, people love authenticity, but I've seen some folks twist the idea of authentic leadership into, well, I'm just a jerk and that's who I am. And you just have to deal with it. I'm being authentic.

I had a [00:47:00] leader of mine who was love to death, very authentic guy. The guy would often drop F-bombs in a meeting right now, the team that I was leading. And occasionally people would call him out like language. He's like, that's just who I am. Kind of like, you got to deal with it. That's just who I'm, people want authenticity. Yes, they do. But when I asked [00:47:30] him to come in to talk to my organization one time, I said, Hey man, listen, I'm no prude. We drop F bombs around each other all the time, but just not in this room today. Not for this group here today. And he almost had to clutch his pearls like, oh, what do you mean then I'm not being my authentic self? I'm like, please, man, just not today. I dunno if that's answering your question, but

Dan Freehling:

[00:48:00] It definitely is. Yeah,

Dan Bredeson:

It's about just because you like to talk a certain way or you are not worried about offending other people, but those other people are worried about are just, your message is going to be lost. And the way I explained it to 'em, like, dude, you got such a great message, but people are going to tune it out, the first F bomb drop. So I dunno if I disagree with authentic leadership, but that's just, I struggle with it.

Dan Freehling:

I totally understand that. I think there [00:48:30] is a misconstruing of authentic leadership. That's exactly this. Seth Godin, I'm not sure if you've come across his books and everything, but he says Authenticity is a crock, which I always found an interesting way to put it. But his basic message is that as a leader, you are always putting forward what you need to in order to move the activity, the cause, the mission, [00:49:00] whatever it is forward. And it's so much less about what makes you as the leader feel good or feel like you have to do less work. And it's much more about what do you have to bring forward as a leader? And I find that pretty compelling too, of there's a lot of times what feels good to you as the leader is not necessarily what you should be doing in order to really make the impact you want to be making. And a lot of times as a leader, [00:49:30] it's doing the hard things that might not be easy, that really will move the needle.

Dan Bredeson:

Wow, yes. Put that on repeat. It's so much easier to, it's so much easier to just be yourself, but that doesn't mean it's the most effective. Yes, be yourself. I mean, don't be fake, but just there are times where it's really easy to be yourself. It might be harder [00:50:00] to be the best version of yourself in that particular moment. And in one of my very first mentors, he'd often say, it's not about you. Because I would go in there complaining about the team doesn't do this, and I told them this, am I this? Am I this? And he's like, it's not about you. It's about what you can do for them. Okay. So yes, the way that [00:50:30] I talk, what I do or what I feel, or I'm just being authentic, but is it about being the real you or the best you? And I don't know if you can probably do both at the same time. I'm sure there's someone who could dive into that. But since you asked, is there a leadership theory that I'm still struggle with? It would be that one.

Dan Freehling:

Yeah. It's not using authenticity as an excuse. It's not using authenticity as a crutch to just do whatever you were going to do. [00:51:00] It's being genuine, having integrity, all of the things that you mentioned are fundamental to being a good leader. And at the same time, it's not just, okay, I'm going to go and unload on my team. It makes me feel better about some other thing that happened in my life. And that's terrible leadership, obviously. So it's figuring out what parts of your authentic self you can bring forward, and making sure that you're self-regulated enough [00:51:30] where you can actually give people the steady leadership they need to grow the organization over the long term

Dan Bredeson:

And kind of doing what you feel like doing. And I had a leader once who she was coming in to talk to the team. She was like a vp, and she was coming in to talk to the team that I led. And there were some folks on the team were like, well, I can't remember what the topic was, but they kept saying, well, we'd like to do it this way, and we'd like to do that this way, and we'd like [00:52:00] to do this. And she goes, wait to continue to do it because you like to do it, or because it actually works, because they might not be the same thing. So yeah, it's an interesting topic

Dan Freehling:

For sure. It definitely is. Yeah. One last question for you, Dan. So is there a leadership book or some other resource that you find yourself returning to the most often?

Dan Bredeson:

On my desk right now is [00:52:30] I'm looking at Leading Change by John Kotter because we're going through, I'm currently working with an organization to change their go-to-market and some of their sales practices. So I've found that just a good refresher of working through the eight steps of Kotter's change management. I keep coming back to that. [00:53:00] It's certainly not a new book. It's been out probably close to 30 years now.

Dan Freehling:

Yeah. Tried and true.

Dan Bredeson:

And the Four Disciplines of Execution. I find myself coming back to that as well. I think Chris McChesney is the main author on that. It's from the Franklin Covey folks. I don't know if you're from there with that one.

Dan Freehling:

I haven't come across that one in particular. What's the gist of that?

Dan Bredeson:

So it's the Four Disciplines of Execution. The thesis is, strategy is knowing what to do, execution is knowing how to do [00:53:30] it. And if you want to talk about some tangible takeaways that's got super tangible takeaways on how to actually execute on something this broad strategies of, but first, so how is that going to work on the ground? Yeah, the four dx, four disciplines of execution. Find myself coming back to that one. And this is going to be a super old [00:54:00] school one. Maybe I'm dating myself, or maybe it fits in with exactly the type of leadership theory I ascribed to, which is Developing the Leader Within You by John Maxwell.

Dan Freehling:

Yeah, classic.

Dan Bredeson:

It was the first leadership book that I read, and I think it was the first one that he wrote before he had to go pump out a book every three months, 21 year repeatable laws of this, the 17 laws of that. [00:54:30] But that's the different levels of leadership in that make a lot of sense, especially for the type of organization that I was leading.

Dan Freehling:

Yeah, it goes right in line with some of the real classic foundational elements being what's missing now. So I've really loved our conversation. Dan, thanks for sharing all your expertise with us.

Dan Bredeson:

Oh, this is great. This was awesome.

Dan Freehling:

Thank you for having so, [00:55:00] oh, I'm so glad to have you, and thanks again for coming on. Where can people find out more about the book and what else you're up to?

Dan Bredeson:

danbredeson.com and probably in the show notes or a link, you'll get the proper spelling of my name, danbredeson.com will be the author splash page for the book. You can grab the book anywhere that you purchase books, [00:55:30] Amazon, Barnes and Noble, everywhere that you can buy a book, you can find it there.

Dan Freehling:

Fantastic. And the book is Seeds of Culture, so definitely recommend that everyone check that out of all kinds of wisdom from Dan and something that everyone should really check out. And so we'll put the links to all that in the show notes. And listeners, thanks again for joining us. If you got something out of the show, if you can share it with a colleague, leave a quick review that helps a lot in spreading the word so others [00:56:00] can find us. And Dan, thanks again for joining us.

Dan Bredeson:

Hey, this is fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.

Dan Freehling:

Of course.