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August 29, 2023 15 mins

What if the minor irritations in your team, like the talent who doesn't play well with others, the leader who lacks emotional intelligence, the values that are constantly ignored, are like splinters in the palm of your hand? This week on the podcast, I share my personal renovation mishap and the parallels I found to the often-overlooked issues that have the potential to derail the momentum of our work.

In this episode of the Lead Culture podcast, we'll draw analogies from a splinter and how it represents the small but significant issues within an organization. I'll take you through the importance of addressing these issues before they create confusion, frustration, and potentially a toxic culture. We'll identify these potential splinters, understand how they make their way into our teams and explore effective ways of extracting them for a healthier, more productive team culture. Listen in and let's work towards building a splinter-free culture.

Culture work is the most important work you can do to maintain the health of your organization, so keep leading well!

Did you know that 4Sight has a comprehensive Culture process to help you assess your current culture, define who you want to be, and build a plan to achieve the culture you desire? One of our certified LeadCulture coaches would love to guide you through the process of unleashing your team and accelerating growth. Schedule a free call to learn more.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jenni Catron (00:10):
Hey friends, I'm your host, Jenni Catron, and
welcome to the Lead Culturepodcast, where I coach you to
lead yourself well so you canlead others better.
My team and I at the 4sightGroup are committed to building
confident leaders, extraordinaryteams and thriving cultures, so

(00:32):
each week, we'll take a deepdive into a leadership or
culture topic that will give youthe tools you need to lead with
clarity and confidence andbuild a thriving team.
So today, you guys, I thoughtthat I would share just a little
bit of a story.
As you know, I kind of find aleadership or culture dynamic in

(00:56):
almost every situation that Iencounter, like I'm always
looking through that lens ofwhat would I need to do as a
leader and what's going on inthe culture, and so recently I
was helping my husband and mydad on a renovation project.
Now we're currently restoring ahome that was built in 1900,
complete with all the characterand the quirks that come with

(01:20):
being 123 years old.
So this house has challenged us, to say the least, and so I was
over there working with themone day, and dad and I were
working on reinstalling some ofthe original baseboard and trim
in the home, so we were tryingto protect that character like

(01:40):
keep all that beautiful oldwoodwork and restore it, but we
needed to make somemodifications, especially to one
of the pieces that we werereplacing Now.
Keep in mind, these arebeautiful original pieces of
pretty elaborately cut wood trim.
You can't find it anymore.
So, as we're doing this, we'relike we can't go just buy a new

(02:03):
piece at Home Depot.
We actually have to try topreserve and keep the original
pieces, so we're doing our bestto be super careful with it.
And so, as dad and I gentlycarry a 12-foot piece so it's a
pretty long piece of trim, sowe're kind of both on each ends
of it trying to take it out tothe yard where we're going to,
saw off a little section thatneeded to be trimmed and a

(02:26):
slight slide along the roughedge of the board quickly
embedded a splinter into thepalm of my left hand.
You know what was coming assoon as I started talking about
that right, 123 years old woodand it's in good shape.
But, yes, definitely somesplinters.
And so let's just pause herefor a moment and clarify what is

(02:49):
probably pretty obvious.
While I enjoy the product ofrestoration, like I love, like
this house is actually comingtogether and it'll be done in a
few weeks and it's gonna bebeautiful.
So I love the product ofrestoration.
The vast majority of my time isspent using my hands to pound
out letters on a keyboard and alittle less time pounding nails

(03:14):
with a hammer.
That's probably no surprise toall of you, right?
So, as you can imagine, a tinylittle splinter didn't meet much
resistance when it encounteredthe flesh of my palm, right?
So here's the scenario, right,like you know, I think I'm being
all helpful and you know I'mdoing working with my hands and

(03:35):
doing this, you know, like justrewarding work, and I'm doing it
with my dad and my husband andit's all wonderful.
And then all of a sudden, I geta splinter and the whole
project comes to a grinding halt.
Right, immediately, our projectgrinds to a halt while I
quickly try to extract thesplinter before it becomes more
deeply embedded, right.
So I'm like, oh my gosh, I'vegotta get this out of here.

(03:57):
I'm totally a wimp, right.
Probably a little embarrassingto both my dad and my husband,
but that small little splintercompletely hijacked the momentum
of our work right, for a minute.
I had to stop everything andtry to address the splinter in
my hand.
The discomfort and pain werejust too much of a distraction

(04:17):
for me to focus until I couldattend to it right Like, in fact
, you know, I kind of didn'ttell my dad right off the bat
because we're in the middle oflike trying to get this piece
cut and so we make theadjustments and then I'm like,
okay, I gotta stop, I've gottaget the splinter out.
But more than the immediatephysical discomfort of the
splinter was the understandingbecause, believe it or not, I
was a tomboy growing up.

(04:37):
Like I love I still love beingoutside.
Like, put me outside, let mehave fresh air, let me explore,
let me wander, I'm in my happyplace.
And that's how I was as a kid.
And so I had a lot of splintersas a kid.
I cannot tell you the number oftimes that I would come in from
playing outside and I wouldhave splinters in my feet
everywhere and my grandmotherwould have to like get all of

(04:58):
those splinters out.
And so I understand the like,the long-term effect of a
splinter left unattended, right.
So more than that immediatephysical discomfort of the
splinter was the understandingthat if I left the splinter
unattended, it would get buriedeven deeper in my skin, making
it more difficult to remove andlikely possibly create infection

(05:22):
.
So enough historical experienceto know ah, you should probably
go ahead and get this thing outof the way right now.
So what does this have to dowith culture?
What actually has a lot to dowith culture?
And here's what I was thinkingas soon as we finally got that
splinter out of my hand.
I'm thinking about the factthat one of the common mistakes
that I see leaders make isignoring splinters in their

(05:45):
culture.
Right Like the little things,the little things that just kind
of create a little bit ofirritation and you can deal with
them.
Right Like I could have keptmoving on with a splinter in my
hand.
It would have been a littleannoying, but I probably would
have gotten a little accustomedto it and could have carried on.
And we do the same thing inorganizational life.
But there are splinterssometimes in our culture that we

(06:08):
tend to ignore or just hopewill go away, when in actuality
they're starting to createinfection in the culture.
So here's some possiblesplinters in your culture.
Maybe it's that one reallytalented loan ranger employee
who is exceptional at what theydo.
Right Like they areextraordinarily talented.

(06:30):
They get so much done in thework that they do, but they
don't work well with others.
Or maybe they do really goodwork but it's really
inconsistent or you can't counton when it's actually gonna get
done, and so you kind oftolerate some of their
dysfunction because of the endproduct, right?
So we see that all the time.

(06:51):
Maybe it's the leader who lacksemotional intelligence and is
often demeaning or dismissive ofothers, right?
So maybe you've got a leader onyour team, maybe they've been
there a really long time.
They just lack some emotionalintelligence and they're always
kind of causing a little bit of.
You're kind of going aroundthem to kind of clean up some of

(07:13):
the messes, but again, they'vebeen there so long they
contribute in other meaningfulways, so you kind of let some of
those things just fester.
Maybe there's a value, that is,you've said this is a key value
to us as an organization, butyou've let it be ignored or

(07:34):
you've let some people violatethat value, right?
Like, we have a value ofbelieving the best, but people
are kind of talking bad abouteach other behind the scenes.
Maybe it's bad attitudes orgossip, right, and you've kind
of just let some of that slidebecause, frankly, the energy to
address it and have goodcoaching around it it does take

(07:58):
a lot of energy, right.
And so those are some ideas ofsplinters in your culture.
Now there's some other ones.
There's confusion.
Maybe it's that org chart thatis out of date or inconsistent
or just even non-existent, right, and so people are confused

(08:18):
about who does what, and so it'sa splinter in your culture
because it always createsfrustration, right, that bit of
confusion just createsfrustration.
That's a splinter in yourculture.
So there are so many thingslike there's the little things
where a little lack of clarityhere or a little lack of
consistency here creates asplinter that, unattended, could

(08:42):
start to become a problem foryour culture.
Splinters in our team culturesare detrimental to the health of
our team, right, while theyseem small, their impact
eventually becomes quite large,and we typically try to ignore
or look past them,subconsciously, hoping they'll
go away.
I get it, I've done it too,right, like you know where it's
just that thing you're like oh,maybe it was just a one-time

(09:05):
thing, or maybe they were justhaving a bad day, or gosh.
I know we need to bring clarityto that, but I just don't have
the time or energy to do itright.
But you can never really ignorethe pain that splinters create.
Right, like they're gonna bethere, they're gonna fester
until they're removed.
In some cases, you build up alittle tolerance and you get

(09:25):
some calluses and they mask theproblem for a bit longer, but
eventually they resurface andthey require us to address them
and, frankly, they resurfacemore prominently, more loudly
maybe.
So I want you to be as sensitiveto splinters as my wimpy hands
are.
Right Again, these little handsthat I've got in front of me,

(09:46):
because I can't not talk withoutusing my hands.
They're best suited for talkingwith my hands and typing on my
keyboard.
So I want you to be assensitive to splinters as my
wimpy hands.
This isn't an area that I wantyou to toughen up as a leader.
Right, I want you to behypersensitive to the splinters
in your culture, because, asleaders, we must stay sensitive

(10:09):
to the things that can derailour culture.
Right, and remember how wedefine culture.
It's who we are at our best, orit's who we are and how we work
together to achieve our mission, and so we've got to stay
sensitive to the things that canderail that, that can get us
off course from being who we areat our best.
Splinters in our culture.

(10:30):
They're gonna happen right.
We're humans.
We're not gonna get it rightall the time.
We're not gonna be in fullalignment all the time.
We're gonna have our owninterpretation.
So they're gonna happen,especially when we're moving
fast.
It's part of the work.
But addressing the splintersquickly is what enables us to
get back to work as quickly aspossible, to get everybody back

(10:51):
aligned as quickly as possible,avoiding the long-term pain of
infection.
You guys know what it feels likewhen you're in a toxic culture,
an unhealthy culture.
You know what the pain of thatinfection feels like.
And so oftentimes thoseunhealthy cultures start with
just little splinters.
So I encourage you to considerwhere might you have some

(11:14):
splinters in your culture today?
Right, just think about it alittle bit.
Where are those little thingsjust below the surface that are
a bit annoying or uncomfortableor incongruent, and maybe you've
tried to ignore them.
But you recognize.
You know what I've got to givesome attention to these things.
Remember your culture isbuilding or eroding every day.

(11:36):
It is a living thing, becauseit's your culture, is comprised
of the humans that are a part ofyour team and it's your job to
lead culture to foster health inyour organization, and you've
got to be the one that'sproactive about it.
I talk to you about this allthe time.
The reason why I use the phraselead culture is because you

(11:56):
have a culture, whether you'reintentional about it or not,
like your culture exists.
But if you want to have ahealthy, thriving culture where
team members are engaged,they're aligned, they're on
mission, you've got to leadculture.
So if you need some outsideperspective, my team and I at
4sight would love to help youwith this.

(12:18):
This is what we do.
This is how we serve leaders.
Our lead culture framework willlead your team through an
effective culture changemanagement process.
That includes our customizedculture survey.
So we dig in and we get.
We ask questions specific toyour culture.
We ask questions around ourculture hierarchy of needs and

(12:39):
we help assess what's thecurrent reality of your culture.
Then we work with you to builda clearly defined plan for
creating that culture you aspireto.
We say this is the North Star,this is who we are at our best.
We say, okay, let's build aplan to get you from where you
are to where you want to be Now.
Sometimes that's not a hugedelta.
Sometimes that's a big deltabetween those two things.

(13:01):
So we help you define the planfor closing that gap from your
actual culture to the cultureyou aspire to.
Culture change doesn't happenovernight.
It is patient, it is persistentwork, and so our commitment is
to be with you on the journey.
So, guys, I want to justreinforce don't leave your

(13:25):
culture to chance.
Your team is the linchpinbetween your purpose and your
strategy.
And the stronger your culture,the more momentum you'll have
towards your mission.
And that's what we are hopingfor is we want to be
organizations, we wanna be teamson mission.
There is a purpose, there is amission that drives everything

(13:47):
you do, and having a clearlyaligned team working with you to
achieve that mission, you guys,is one of the greatest joys
I've ever experienced.
So if we can help you in any way, email me at podcast at
get4sight.
com at get4sight G-E-T, thenumber four, s-i-g-h-t.

(14:07):
com, and schedule just a freecall to help you assess the best
next step that you need to taketo lead culture.
We would love to help you inthat journey.
So remember, deal with thesplinters.
What are the splintersimpacting your culture?
And take action on addressingthose splinters this week.

(14:30):
All right, friends, thank youfor being with me this week.
Let me know what you thought ofthe episode.
Email me at podcast atget4sight.
Message us on social media.
We're at get4 sight on most ofthe social channels and I'm at
Jenni Catron and I would love toconnect with you.
I would love to learn what ishelping you lead culture,

(14:52):
because that is our goal.
So keep leading well.
Thanks for listening today andwe'll see you next time, mighty
excited.
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