Enriching Leadership - Cultural Change & The Four C's with Rob Nielsen

Striving to enrich your leadership focus and identify how you can communicate effectively & clearly with employees? 

In this episode of Leadership Levers, our guest is Rob Nielsen, CEO of All-American Leadership, a veteran in the culture field with a unique blend of military and corporate experience.

Rob sets the stage by emphasizing how creating a healthy organizational culture can drive success, even in our complex and distraction-filled world. He underlines the necessity of shared values and how they lead to a unified direction that propels everyone forward.

There are challenges aplenty as you try to bring about cultural change in any organization. Rob highlights the importance of consistent, clear, concise, and continuous communication - the four C's that can bridge the gap between leaders and their employees. Rob shares insights on implementing these four Cs effectively.

He also shares the relevance of utilizing consistent Culture 5 Check Ins to bring everyone's voice to the table and help foster a sense of relevance and purpose among team members.

From tech to manufacturing to service organizations, no matter your industry, these nuggets of wisdom from Rob are sure to offer you a fresh perspective on leadership and organizational culture.

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Music Credit: True North Kansas

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Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, c of Connect2Metrics. At Connect2Metrics, we help organizations strengthen their culture, one action at a time. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Rob Nielsen, the CEO of All American Leadership. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us today, rob.

Rob Nielsen: 0:27

It's my pleasure, thanks Will.

William Gladhart: 0:29

Let's start by having you share with our audience a little bit about yourself and your background.

Rob Nielsen: 0:34

Oh boy, okay. Well, I am a lifelong student not necessarily a great one, but a lifelong student of learning and definitely of leadership and organizational culture. I spent a number of years in the military. I graduated from West Point and from there I left the military, have spent several decades in the corporate world in various types of leadership capacities running companies, running salesforces and growing teams and over the last 15 years . focused specifically on how to help individuals and other organizations maximize that source of success which is their people.

William Gladhart: 1:20

Great hanks for sharing. We're actually going to be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to start our conversation. Would you share why you believe that a healthy culture is critical?

Rob Nielsen: 1:31

Boy. It seems like it's so obvious, but then so many times. like they say in war, the solutions to success and victory are the simplest ones, and yet they are the most difficult to execute. And if you've got an organization that employs people, unless you have the passion, the commitment and the creativity of everybody on board, there's no way that you can optimize your success. And so, for those reasons, I think it's mission critical that, particularly in a complex world like we have today, having everybody on board understanding, buying into and being committed to a common purpose, a common vision, common direction is just not an option. They've got to be on board.

William Gladhart: 2:22

You've kind of touched on leading into our question one today. So what do you see as the biggest challenge leadership faces for cultural change within any organization?

Rob Nielsen: 2:33

I think that we're in an age right now where it is incredibly difficult for any leader to, if not impossible for any leader - to be that one single visionary that has their finger on the pulse of everything that's going on and you're trying to get people to come together around a common purpose, to behave and execute within the scope of one shared set of values, at a time when, seemingly, the entire world is conspiring to distract and undermine everything we're trying to do, even if you have that clarity and you're constantly ringing the bell and reminding people and celebrating your purpose and your values and those that are living them. You've got everything from climate change to AI, to terrorism, to war, to the environment All of those things that are in the back of our brains and distracting and pulling at everybody's attention span, so trying to keep focus is incredibly difficult. I'm not sure if it's one single thing that's the biggest challenge, but I think it's all of those things conspiring.

William Gladhart: 3:48

I think that's a really well stated thought t, Rob, simply because there are so many things not only coming at leaders, but also the workforce out there in the world in general. So what do you think that leaders can do to address the challenge that you described?

Rob Nielsen: 4:07

Yeah, and I'm going to start to sound like I'm beating the same drum over and over again.

William Gladhart: 4:11

That's okay. I think repetition is worth it.

Rob Nielsen: 4:15

As we are working with so many different kinds of organizations, from tech to manufacturing to service organizations to b. We just got such a deep relationship with the fire service right now, particularly on the West Coast, where we are able to measure and evaluate from an informed perspective through culture assessments or through ongoing Culture Snapshots. It's clear that organizations that succeed are really consistent on some really simple things and starting with communication, once you have clarity, so you've got to have clarity of communication around what you stand for and, ideally, you've taken the time to harness the voice and the input from the entire organization as to what do we stand for, what do we aspire to and what do we commit to with regard to our values and how we're going to act, how we're going to interact and how we're going to make decisions. That level of clarity on the front end now gives you a mechanism to create clear, consistent, concise and continuous communication.

Rob Nielsen: 5:35

You hear all the time from employees oh, leadership doesn't communicate with us. And then, conversely, leadership is like oh my gosh, we feel like all we do is communicate, constantly communicating. But the challenge is not just dumping volumes on people, because that's the opposite of what they're looking for. They're already besieged with information overload and all of those distracting forces. What people are truly looking for is real, real clarity. Clarity, consistency and in a concise and continuous format. I think those are the things that leaders need to focus on.

William Gladhart: 6:12

Thank you, it's really interesting. I think that is a great takeaway with those four Cs, with consistency, communication, concise and clarity around all those pieces where I think, as you well stated, that sometimes leaders feel like they're always constantly communicating, but maybe staff is not hearing the communication because it's not in a way that they can understand or it's not clear and concise, as you mentioned. So is there anything else you'd like to share or add around some of these leadership challenges facing, as you well noted, it's not just one specific industry or area, it's all across the board and many, many types of organizations that you work with. So what would be the takeaway to wrap this up today?

Rob Nielsen: 6:58

Well, let me double down on that communication piece and give a couple of nuggets so that people can get a sense for what it looks like when it's done right, when it's done less than optimally in communication. So often I get folks that'll say well, I'm communicating all of this information by email constantly. Well, true, but so often the important nuggets there may be three important sentences in a 600-word email. People don't appreciate, people don't have time to read a 600-word email and so they can't find those three genuine nuggets. So be concise in your email. Try not to have more than a couple of bullet points when you're talking to people, for whatever reason.

Rob Nielsen: 7:50

In today's world, it seems like when people get asked a question and they get engaged, their lips start moving and they cannot stop them themselves from just spewing more words. If you can say it in 10 words, don't take 10 minutes. And again, create that clarity. Create that clarity of purpose. Bring people's voices in, and periodically and this is one of the things I love about having regular surveys that can be completed in three to four minutes you've got to have regular touches. You've got to be inviting the voices of people into the conversation so that they feel relevant and so that they feel like they are doing something that matters and that you, as a leader, care about them.

Rob Nielsen: 8:37

Having these regular surveys allows me to be able to start from an informed perspective. I talked to fire chiefs. They want to go out and they want to meet in the fire station, sit down, have dinner with the crews and they may have an hour for a discussion. Hey, what's on your mind? What should we talk about? Which is okay, but too often, because of all those different things that are important to different people, it's difficult in an hour to even find what's the most important thing to talk about today. Having those surveys allows me to quickly drill down to the top two or three topics that are front of mind for people and say hey, here's what the data said, this is what you said. Which of these should we talk about today to create success for all of us?

William Gladhart: 9:25

I really like that about you know, not only the honing down, but also taking the one action and making that actionable over a period of time where there actually is measurable progress and both the leader and the champion, or the culture champion like yourself can see that movement, which is really fantastic. So anything else you'd like to share before we close out?

Rob Nielsen: 9:47

No again. Thanks for inviting my voice into the conversation.

William Gladhart: 9:51

Absolutely s, Rob. We've enjoyed having you on today. Thank you again for your insights.

Rob Nielsen: 9:56

My pleasure.

William Gladhart: 9:57

Thank you for joining the Leadership Levers podcast. You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes on our website at connect. he number metrics metrics metrics metrics . com com. com. com forward slash podcast Tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experiences in strengthening culture, one action at a time.