Engaging Youth for Conservation and Cultural Change with Lidia Soto-Harmon

How do you transform an organization's culture to create a thriving environment that energizes employees, attracts future leaders, and advances the organization's mission?

Lidia Soto-Harmon, the President/ CEO of the Student Conservation Association (SCA), joins us to share her insights and experiences. Growing up in Central and South America and leading the largest Girl Scout Council in the U.S., Lidia offers a wealth of diverse knowledge on leadership strategies for connecting with and building impactful experiences for youth

Dive into Lidia's journey as the new SCA leader and learn how the SCA is engaging young people in hands-on conservation efforts nationwide, collaborating with key partners like the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. 

Lidia discusses the crucial role of trust and a learning mindset in building a healthy workplace culture. She explores the challenges of driving cultural change with a 200+ remote team, emphasizing that culture is a lived experience for leaders, not just words.

Lidia's firsthand experiences highlight the transformational impact of engaging youth in conservation and the power of action-based leadership.

Join us for an enlightening discussion on leadership, cultural transformation, and the vital role youth plays in preserving public spaces for future generations.

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Transcript

William Gladhart: 0:00

Welcome to the Leadership Levers Podcast. I'm your host, Will Gladhart, CMO at the Culture Think Tank. Our Culture Think Tank community is committed to advancing workplace culture and well-being. We're a virtual hub for authors, investors, leaders, managers and employees worldwide to connect, engage in candid discussions, share ideas and explore resources for cultivating a healthy work environment. We're here today to learn about the actions leaders have taken to address cultural change. Our guest today is Lidia Soto-Harmon, President and CEO of the Student Conservation Association. Thanks for taking the time to join us today.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 0:41

Thank you, Will. It's so excited to be here with you.

William Gladhart: 0:44

Thank you for that. Well, I thought we'd start by having you share with our audience a bit about yourself, your background and your organization.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 0:52

Sure, so I am the President and CEO of the Student Conservation Association, just recently celebrated my first year in this new role, very excited to be doing such important, impactful work, and my background is that I am a Latina. I grew up in Central and South America and have had a career doing lots of different things. Most recently, before joining the SCA, I ran the largest Girl Scout Council in the country here in the Washington DC area, and I'm excited to take all the learnings from that job and to apply it to a national platform.

William Gladhart: 1:30

Absolutely. Can you share a little bit more about what the Student Conservation Association does? Just real quick.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 1:36

Yeah, so the Student Conservation Association is the oldest and largest organization dedicated to hands-on service to the land. It was founded in 1957 by an amazing woman - her name is Liz Putnam, who is 91. And just this weekend I got a LinkedIn request from her, so she is out there.

William Gladhart: 1:58

That's impressive.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 1:59

That is very impressive and the whole concept around it is that our public spaces in our country need attention. Who better to give that attention than young people that care about environmental stewardship and all the things that go along with conservation? So 67 years now the Student Conservation Association has really been working with the National Park Service, the Forest Service, with all sorts of land-based federal agencies, to provide that hands-on opportunity for young people. In this year that I've had a chance to travel around the country, even going to Alaska, I have seen firsthand the incredible impact that these opportunities not only have for the young people but actually have for all these public spaces that we all want to keep as a legacy forever.

William Gladhart: 2:46

Yeah well, thank you for sharing that. I really think it's amazing work that you do, so we'll be discussing three questions today as a warm-up to start our conversation, could you share why you believe a healthy culture is critical?

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 2:59

Well, I think a healthy work culture is critical because it is the underpinning to everything that you do. If there isn't trust, if it isn't a learning organization, if the things that you value as an organization are not part of the culture, then it doesn't really matter what you're doing, because you will fail, quite honestly.

William Gladhart: 3:20

That's how strongly I feel about the importance of culture. Absolutely so. What do you see as the biggest challenge leaders face when addressing cultural change, or what specifically have you faced in your own organization?

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 3:33

So I think cultural change that name has been used to sometimes mean what I don't think it means, which is to do rapid change without thoughtful evaluation. So to me, when I think of cultural change, I think about the importance of gaining trust from people, especially as a new CEO in this space. Gaining trust from the people around you, all the different stakeholders, from your employees to your members, to your board, to your partners externally Also, demonstrating through action. I think that's one of the things that I really believe about culture is that you demonstrate through your actions what you mean by culture. Anybody that spends too much time talking about their culture gives me pause, like it should be a lived experience, and if it's not lived, then it's probably written somewhere. But it's not something that is really being, it's not really imbued in the work or in the people around that work.

William Gladhart: 4:32

Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that. It's so frequent that there might be a word on a wall or something somewhere. And when you ask employees in the organization what are our values, what are our culture, everyone has a different answer and there's no shared meaning. So I really appreciate you bring that up for other leaders. Now, this is a little segue before. The second question is you have a specific challenge because you have an entirely remote workforce. So tell us a little bit about that and tell us something you've done to kind of take that next step with that large group of individuals.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 5:06

Sure. So we have about 180 employees across the country living in 23 states. I think that what I have done in my first year at SEA is to get on a plane and go places, meet people as much as I can meet people as much as I can Actually talk about culture. On day three of my job I flew up to Vermont to meet the founder of the Student Conservation Association. I know people were like it's your day three, you could wait, and I'm like okay, she at the time was 90. I'm like I need to meet her because that's one of my cultural values is that we do stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 5:45

And I felt that it was very important to send a signal to everybody that what Liz Putnam had done in 1957, that I now have the humble honor to continue in that, that I needed to make sure that I had met her, that I knew who she was. And I think that traveling to the different centers across the country we have seven offices across the country where I can meet staff, where I can meet our leaders, our members who are doing the actual work was a key to my first year here, because when you show up it feels different than when you're just in the Zoom room, right. And I think, even when you have an all remote workplace and even though we are doing so much of our work virtually these days, I think that there is still a really important component of what we need to do as leaders, which is to connect with each other on a personal and in-person kind of way as well.

William Gladhart: 6:42

Absolutely so. You touched on a couple items, but what do you think leaders can do to address the cultural challenge they're facing? And you clearly have taken some next steps and you know, in terms of what have you done, what else can you impart around that piece?

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 6:57

Well, one of the things that I did when I first started. The staff was not used to having a monthly staff meeting.

William Gladhart: 7:05

And you know that is an expense.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 7:07

One could argue for an organization to say, okay, there's an all hands every third Thursday of the month, but I felt that it was really. Communication is so important when it comes to culture and I felt that it was very important for them to get to know me and my style, but also for me to share and celebrate the things that were happening across the country that were making a big difference. Or work group you're in, you can inadvertently become very siloed about it. So the more that you can share the successes across departments or things that everybody needs to know, that's how you start building trust and that's how you start building better communications.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 7:50

And I think that it is working because recently I was in Chicago for a visit and I brought in all the folks that live in the Chicagoland area for lunch and I overheard one of the staff people say Lydia is going to take a picture. We got to get in because we'll be in the next. All staff, you know slideshow. So I thought, oh, that's interesting. So I guess, even though some people had said, oh, they don't want to be in pictures, those kinds of things create family, create community.

William Gladhart: 8:17

Absolutely Well. You shared a little bit with me about Picture Story and if you go on the website, on your social media those pieces you see the staff at all the different locations with you know so everyone is. It's really creating that culture of communication and trust, but also that you're acknowledging all the great, wonderful work people are doing out in the public spaces. So you know you've shared some really fantastic ideas around trust, communication, about how to build teams, those pieces. Are there any other insights you'd like to share for other leaders?

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 8:52

Well, I think that one of the important insights, given my role at the Student Conservation Association now, is we all care about the planet, we all care about the environment, but I think that for me, one of the other hallmarks of this work is something that in our organization we call JEDI, which is an interesting I love that acronym which stands for Justice, equity, diversity and Inclusion. I love that acronym which stands for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. No-transcript. Caring for the planet, whether it's prescribed burning or to mitigate potential wildland fires, or dealing with invasive species in parks, that you need to remove those invasive species, or coastal monitoring or whatever. The task at hand is that.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 9:50

The reality is that we need to make sure and I would challenge leaders to make sure that we are including people who are different from us in some way, whether it's language, whatever diversity you can think of, whether it's ability.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 10:06

I just recently learned that in Pennsylvania we have an all-deaf crew that works with amazing chainsaws and they use American Sign Language to works with amazing chainsaws and they they use American sign language to communicate with each other. So it's like perfect Cause it's very noisy and actually they're you know. Their ability to communicate efficiently is actually makes them an incredibly powerful crew. So we all have something that we can bring to the table and as leaders, we have to make sure that we are thoughtfully looking at our teams and making sure that we are giving voice and providing that space to elevate that agency that people need to have, especially young people, because I do think that this is a difficult world, that technology is a blessing and has created so much for us, but it's also, I think, for a lot of young people it's created an incredible burden to try to keep up with all of it. I'm just pleased that when I was in high school there was no social media. I can't imagine growing up with that now, me too, me too.

William Gladhart: 11:09

That's a lot of pressure.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 11:10

They say that the average young person will have had a million pictures taken of them before they turn 18. That is sobering to think about that, and what does that mean in terms of how they perceive themselves, how they perceive the world? That would be one thing that I would want to make sure. Will that people take from your podcast?

William Gladhart: 11:30

Thanks for those thoughts. I think when leaders are thinking about that, especially in your role, we all live on the same place, we all breathe the same air, we all share the same spaces and having a lot of different voices and individuals, you know, because we could talk about culture up to a blue in the face, but if we're not starting at the very beginning with the land and with the conservation efforts, the other pieces, then we're just talking to talk.

William Gladhart: 11:57

So thank you again, Lidia, for joining us on our Leadership Levers podcast. I really appreciated your insights today.

Lidia Soto-Harmon: 12:04

Thank you Will. It was a pleasure to be with you.

William Gladhart: 12:07

Thank you for joining us on the Leadership Levers Podcast. You may find all our Leadership Levers episodes in our Culture Think Tank community at www(dot)culturethinktank(dot) ai. Join the community at no charge and tune in weekly as we invite leaders to share their experience in strengthening culture, one action at a time.