Creator of Culture: Welcome, to the Creator of Culture podcast. It’s great to have you here.
Bryant Vitanza: Thanks for having me.
Creator of Culture: It’s my pleasure. We have a lot, actually, three really great topics to be discussed tonight, we’ll see if we can get to all of them, we… Before we get in and dive in, feet first, tell me a little bit about you… Why are you passionate about this? What does culture mean to you? And anything else you wanna discuss?
Bryant Vitanza: Definitely. So obviously, we’ve been talking about this type of stuff ever since I met you for I guess four years back now, but it’s something as I’ve stepped through my career, spending a lot of time in the transformation… Large scale change space, I’ve realized a lot of the root causes are not due to technology limitations or not due to process, it’s mostly around the people, and at the end of the day, when you think about the people in organization, everyone always says that the number one asset of an organization, but when you actually look at how an organization provides a space for those people to excel and to work at their best, that kinda gets into that culture Real, which in essence is the soul of an organization. It is one thing that you can’t…You can’t see it, but you know it’s there, and you know when it’s working for you and you know, and it’s not working for you. And a lot of organizations struggle with this culture where they do don’t wanna change the culture ’cause it’s what makes them unique, or that’s their kind of bread and butter in terms of being able to drive innovation, what they don’t realize is you have to continuously re-evaluate that, see what aspects of the culture do you want to retain and what aspects do you need to start to shed for whatever reason.
And so as I’ve stepped through my career, I’ve seen time and time again how organizations have blinders on and they don’t really recognize that their culture is actually limiting the innovation, they’re not providing a safe space for their employees, that psychological safety, that’s allowing their employees to really… Work and grow at a much higher potential in the organization, so I’m really passionate about helping organizations to understand why this is something from diversity of perspective, understanding all the different perspectives, why competencies are no longer in silos, but you actually need to be able to cut across competencies and be cross-functional and your understanding of the organization, how it runs, what you do, and so I’m really excited to talk about these topics, ’cause this is something that we’ve… Is talked about quite a bit, and I really enjoy… I really enjoy talking about it, so yeah.
Creator Of Culture: For sure. The material out there is great, I think it needs to be unpacked a little bit further, there’s still a stigma around culture and there’s often saying that, “I sense it, I can feel it, but sometimes it’s hard to label and define”, so through this project, Creator of Culture, and discussions with people with experience, with stories to tell, we’re looking to demystify that and basically label that feeling and label, well, I really feel that in an organization… So anyway, let’s jump right into it. Bryant, you mentioned something previous about psychological safety in organizations, I wonder if you can unpack that a little bit for me and for people or listening.
Bryant Vitanza: Yeah, I think to kinda pull on a thread in terms of being able to feel it, I think it’s the old school mentality kind of chain of command, top-down directive of an organization where people really… We’re just there to put a bunch of time clock or to do a task or to do a job, and weren’t really empowered. That’s kind of, I think, time and time again, is whether it’s through studies or through actual results is proven not to be the most effective way to build an innovative organization. And so one of the key aspects of, I think, a modern organization is this concept of psychological safety, and then there’s a lot of literature obviously about this, one of my favorite people to look at, Adam Grant talks a lot about, this is a room of books around it… But when you think about psychological safety, it’s really from the top of the organization and is really important from the leadership perspective, providing people a safe space where they can make mistakes and not feel like they’re gonna be reprimanded or penalized for making a mistake that they’re transparent and they don’t feel like they need to sweep something under the rug, and so it really gets back to the kind of humility, being able to express your feelings in a way for all the way, again, from the CEO of letting their people know, “hey, it’s okay to make mistakes, I make mistakes every day. And I want to empower you to express yourself in whatever way, it’s a safe space, so if you have a problem or you make a mistake, that’s okay. Let’s support you and help you grow.” Because that’s what really drives that idea of a learning culture, this concept that what helps you do your job today, and what’s got you to where you are in your career is not what’s gonna get you to the next step.
And every organization is very good at doing what they do today, but it’s that learning culture that’s gonna help them to innovate and do what they need to do 5, 10, 15 years from now to be relevant. And so the psychological safety, I think, is one of those kind of cornerstones of ensuring that you build that learning culture so you can stay relevant and continue to innovate in your organization and retain talent, people want to be empowered, they wanna feel safe in their jobs, and that kind of ties into the diversity inclusion space, which is another important topic, but it’s something I think that a lot of the leaders today that I grew up in the old school of mentality, really struggle with, they have a lot of blind spots around some of those softer, what would typically are referred to a softer skills, emotional intelligence type of thing, so I think it’s a challenge for them to kind of bridge that gap into the next generation and start to really build psychological safety into the culture of the organization, if it’s not already there…
Creator of Culture: Now, that’s a really interesting point, Bryant, about psychological safety. And a lot of things seem to basically combine to produce the safety, one is, you mentioned vulnerability and vulnerability from the CEO down. You say, “hey, it is a safer organization. I make mistakes like everybody. It’s okay if you do, because our culture of what we’re trying to create is something, say innovation is a priority, and to create that, it’s trust, making mistakes, that safe place to learn to grow, to move beyond your comfort zone and support that”. And basically say It’s okay. How does that relate to, in your opinion, to problem-solving, is this interrelated, is it overlap in a way, or is that something separate, do you think?
Bryant Vitanza: I think it’s very much related. Right, this is where traditionally, we grew up in education system where you focus on different subjects and you really don’t learn how to express yourself or how to understand, Well, why am I feeling this way? Or, Why can’t I do this? Or, how do I overcome adversity? Or if I fail, do I get back up and keep moving forward? So you’re educated in mathematics, you’re educated in English, you’re educated and all these subjects, but at the end of the day, you get into the workforce and you realize a lot of that doesn’t apply, a lot of it is just basic problems, Hobson skills, being able to connect the dots between the problem you’re encountering today and how are you going to actually solve that problem?
And so when you think about creating that safe space, being vulnerable, being your authentic self, which drives creativity and innovation, you need to be able to have support and feeling power to be able to problem-solve, otherwise you’re gonna continue the status quo, which means if I see a problem, and it’s not in my little world, it’s not part of my job responsibilities, I’m just gonna look the other way and that problem is gonna stay there where if you’re empowered and really owning it and feel safe and part of the team, in terms of we’re all in this together, the mission, and if I help you, you’re gonna help me type of thing, you can leverage your problem-solving skills to step outside of your comfort zone or step outside of your competency area and help to drive that… Whatever that problem is, or challenge to completion, and I think that’s how people grow, right. I think no longer are you gonna be stuck in your competency, right, whether you’re a contract professional or whether you’re finance professional or an engineer, it’s very rare that you can now operate just within that mode, you need to have these against softer skills to be able to… Attack these problems that we’ve never faced before, the environment’s changing at a pretty rapid pace in terms of competition, in terms of the industries, in terms of the challenges, and so problem-solving is gonna be critical to that, but you need to have a safe space to be able to grow and operate within that.
Creator of Culture: Bryant, why can’t people let their guard down and be vulnerable? Is there something… It makes me think that…. is there something from your perspective, physiologically going on in our body that just is a block from doing that is letting down your guard? What’s the hold up? I guess, is there a fear of doing that, are people worried about exposing too much? In your opinion, how do you get over that hump?
Bryant Vitanza: Yeah, so this is a really good question. I think it’s not too much of a kind of a stretch to pull the thread and realize that this is actually impact your personal life too, in terms of the vulnerability, psychological safety, being able to express yourself, and so just to tie it back to how we’re brought up as children and through the education system and through college, you’re rarely taught how to channel that and to understand how you’re feeling… How should I express myself? And I can’t speak to whether on the physiological thing, but… Do you think in terms of overcoming, it takes a lot of self-awareness and being able to look inside introspectively and say, Why am I feeling this way? or why?… Every time I step into this room, I freeze up and I don’t wanna talk about something. And really unpacking that. And is it because I don’t feel comfortable with the team? Is it because I’m out of my comfort zone in terms of whatever the subject matter is, and I don’t feel like I add anything to the team, and once you start to kind of understand what those limitations or why you’re feeling a certain way, you can start to develop tools or mechanisms for you to channel and be able to work through that, a
So I’ve spent a lot of time understanding what those limitations are for me personally, and figuring out how can I overcome them, or how can I work around them to make sure it’s not limiting me in terms of my growth potential, and I think it’s different for everyone, everyone’s got their own kind of reasons, but it is a lot of self-reflection to really understand what is it gonna take for me to feel psychologically safe in this environment, what is it gonna take for me to be vulnerable.
And it’s different for everyone. So I think the ability to express that to you, whether it’s your manager or if you’re working with a close team, what your comfort level is in terms of sharing, in terms of having that safe space, what kind of support you need is really important because if you can’t express that other individuals working around you don’t necessarily know what you need to be supported, and so it’s really important to do that self-reflection and then be able to communicate and articulate it to those, especially your leadership or the peers that you work very closely with, so they can help to provide that that environment for you that can help you grow and overcome some of those limitations.
Creator of Culture: That’s a great piece of wisdom. What I heard was almost two parts. Bryant, one part was the process and learning how to, I guess, evaluate yourself as to why you’re feeling a certain way introspect and have that ability. And a follow-up question, does it have to be taught? Some people know how to do that, it can be hard to do. And does that take a form of education or a study experience? or even having a coach to help pull that out? Second is, one feels they’re capable of doing that, they’re competent in that sense, is still a matter of trust on how much is disclosed, say in a workplace or a group or a community before they can start saying, “Hey, I can be my authentic self and be real without being judged?” because I realized that this place is supportive because they get it, if they’re not, you’ll never see someone’s authentic, so I just wondered if you could speak up on those two points for a second.
Bryant Vitanza: Yeah, so to the first one, I definitely think it takes… When you think of self-development type things, it takes learning to kind of be able to have that self-reflection, self-awareness, you need to be true to yourself, you can’t make excuses for things, and you really need to take an honest look at yourself, and you may not always like some of the reasons. So you have to be able to unpack that. I do think there’s a lot of kind of tools or ways to teach yourself, whether it’s through books or things like meditation or even things like the therapy and talking to someone else, especially someone outside of either your personal life or professional life that really does not have any skin in the game, and it’s just there to listen to you express things that you maybe have never expressed openly to anyone before and help you assess that, and then on top of that, there’s definitely significant value in finding a mentor, again, I strongly recommend mentors outside of your core professional life that can really help impact some of that and talk to you about some of their experiences in dealing with that as well, in terms of…
This is the second part, that’s where the psychological safety and making sure that whether it’s your community or your job, whoever is in leadership positions at the highest possible level, they are visibly vulnerable and creating that safe space. So you have some comfort that, Well, if they can do it, so can I. But it also comes to accountability from the leadership and making sure leaders at all that was the organization, whether they’re informal leaders are not… Are held accountable for making sure they’re creating that safe space, because the last thing you want is someone to kind of go through that self-reflection and start to be able to express themselves and bring their authentic selves to only be shut down, like you were saying, whether it’s someone else pushing them to the side or judging them, because that’s only gonna be that much harder for them to kind of come back out of that. And so that’s… I think one of the challenges organizations have today is we speak a lot about diversity, inclusion, psychological safety, but there’s not a lot of action in terms of the leaders of the organization openly expressing themselves and being vulnerable, but also holding everyone else accountable in the organization to make sure that they’re creating that safe space as well.And I think that goes for any community organization or even in your professional lives, whether it’s a relationship or family…
Creator of Culture: That’s so interesting. And it brings me to the next point that we’ve talked about in the past and beneficial, I think for our discussion here today, and that’s if you see accountability and the concept of ownership. Now, I’m just thinking about what you just said, if someone went through all those steps to self-reflect, to learn why, to be able to turn around and express themselves only to be shot down… Not a good recipe. Imagine put yourself in that person’s shoes who has had the courage to go down that road, then only to be let down… lost them forever. So… Can you talk about accountability? I know from the ownership perspective, that not only are we “talking the talk”, but “walking the walk” and backing up what we’re saying. Could you explain that a little bit, and if you have an example, it doesn’t have to get names and things like that, but just a general example, Bryant, maybe of something you’ve seen that worked or someone who backfired because there wasn’t ownership…
Bryant Vitanza: Yeah, no, I mean ownership and accountability go hand in hand, right, no matter… I think what you’re talking about, and especially when you get into this area, a psychological safety, diversity inclusion, it’s an imperative that whatever the person’s role or let’s focus in on kind of a leader of an organization, that they actually own it and they’re holding themselves accountable and they’re asking other people in the organization to hold themselves accountable because the last thing you want is you go out and hire a diversity inclusion expert, you bring them into the organization and they start talking about these concepts and people start saying, Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is great, I love this, this is what we need. And then the CEO of the organization is exhibiting the exact opposite of what they’re talking about in terms of actions, they’re talking it, they’re kind of openly expressing support by saying, Listen to this person that’s talking about this, but in their actions, they’re not following through with that and they’re not holding themselves accountable for creating the safe space, so I can speak to a couple examples where I’ve seen senior leaders openly radical people in meetings and I scream at them and read them, and that’s where, again, not only are they not holding themselves accountable, but they’re not actually walking the walk, they may be, again, supporting the word, saying the words, but when people see a senior leader, an organization yelling on a person or braiding a person or belittling them, they’re immediately gonna shut down and say, Okay, I don’t wanna ever say anything in front of this person.
Because what if on the next one on the list… And so that’s where the accountability… And we’re human, right? So at the end of the day, we can’t always hold ourselves accountable, especially when we put ourselves in certain situations, but being able to say, Hey, Mike, I wanna make sure… I’m creating a safe space. Can you hold me accountable? And if you see something in the meeting, please immediately just call me out and say, Hey Brian, I don’t think that’s appropriate, and I’m giving you that, I’m empowering you, whatever your level in the organization is to hold me accountable, and I think that’s really important for senior leaders, CEOS, any level of management, to allow their staff to allow their peers to hold them accountable openly, publicly, because that’s where everyone starts to understand, Okay, this is not just on me to hold myself accountable, this is really all of us working together to hold each other accountable, and that lends itself to, again, the creating that safe space where we all are in it together, working towards the same… Same vision.
Creator of Culture: It’s all interconnected. So Bryant, from your perspective, based on that example that you gave, does a group, a community, an organization, whatever it is, a group of people have a chance if the top is not walking the walk, but say a lot of people in the middle or basically in the field are walking the walk. There’s an organization, a group, a community have a chance to be as transformational or impact culture in a positive way in that sense? So, do they have a chance to be a transformational and impact culture?
Bryant Vitanza: Yes, but I would caveat with that is, it’s much more difficult, and the key to even being able to accomplish any transformation in that scenario is coordination, because what you can’t have, and this happened quite often in an organization, is you have all these pockets of… In change, champions know that they’re driving change, driving positive culture change, and are really trying to bring some of these issues to the forefront and help people understand some of these concepts and why psychological safety is so important and they’re exhibiting themselves. But if they’re all working in silos in these pockets, ultimately, you’re gonna see very little impact if they coordinate across the organization to the point where people are starting to see, Okay, look at all of them, they’re exhibiting this, look how effective they are working together, they all kind of have a common understanding that they have a lot of support, not only may that get some of the CEO or senior leaders interest, but it’s also gonna get more people to buy into that concept. So I think a lot of us find ourselves in situations where we don’t have that organizational support from the top or that kind of psychological safety net, and we’re having to kind of drive it… The key is to drive it together and help that transformation move forward in a way that you will not be able to if you’re trying to throw it on your back and kind of push it across the finish line, ’cause it won’t stick. You may see some traction, but inevitably you’re gonna take a couple steps forward and 10 steps back.
Creator of Culture: Maybe short-term gains it seems, but maybe not sustainable for the future. So just to close this out, from your perspective, how important is culture today and having something that we just discussed all those three particular points that roll up into culture as we say, how important is it (culture) today for individuals, teams, organizations and communities, and why so?
Bryant Vitanza: Yeah, I think culture is critical more than ever, I think as we move into this world, this kind of global world, as we move more towards remote connectivity, whether it’s with friends or with family or within a company, culture is gonna be what kind of pulls everyone together and helps establish what the kind of values of the organization with the norms of the organization and how we all work together, right. And as we said, or it’s not something you can necessarily see, But when you step into organization, you very quickly can kind of feel that culture and whether it’s a good fit or not, and I think it’s really important that we recognize a lot of the diversity, including diversity of perspective, especially that we culture-driven by the same type of person, whether it’s race, or whether it’s upbringing or experience or competency, what you don’t want is a culture-driven entirely by engineers, you don’t want a culture driven entirely by accountants, you don’t want a culture driven entirely by mbas. You want a diverse culture, ’cause that’s ultimately what’s gonna have a diverse perspective and help you to drive that positive change, and where you may have a blind spot, I can see very clearly, and where I have a blind spot, you can see very clearly and you can quickly identify what’s working in the culture, what’s not working in the culture, and help to rectify that.
I think a lot of people traditionally have kind of just accepted the culture and said, This is what it is, I think going forward, we need to recognize it’s a fluid thing, there’s kind of the nucleus may stay the same, but it’s evolving over time as we adapt, and how we work together in our personal lives and our professional lives, I think the culture needs to move with that, and if we can find that symbiotic relationship, I think those companies are gonna experience significant potential and in growth opportunities within their people.
Creator of Culture: Well, that’s great insight, Bryant. It really is. And I think based on that insight, I’m looking at part two of this, I don’t know, dictation a couple extra topics there that all roll up, we have to…
Bryant Vitanza: Yeah… Tell me when!
Creator of Culture: I think the next one you mentioned diversity a group of community and organization built up of these multiple perspectives you can’t have all the same there’s no growth and it’s not sustainable that needs to be our discussion for next time so I love it. With that being said I wanna thank Bryant Vitanza a transformational connoisseur and really appreciate the insight… nuggets of wisdom it’s so impactful in today. So, thank you Bryant.
Bryant Vitanza: Thanks for having me Mike I really appreciate it have a good night
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