Building A Healthy Corporate Culture With Chellie Phillips

Everyone knows that corporate culture is vital to the success of any business or corporation. However, not everybody understands how to properly build it. In this episode, Andy McDowell sits down with business coach and motivational speaker Chellie Phillips to discuss what it takes to develop a well-rounded and inclusive corporate culture. Chellie explains the important role of storytelling in culture building and the right way to incorporate foundational values into your team. She also talks about her book Culture Secrets and her experiences helping leaders create a positive impact in their own companies.

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Building A Healthy Corporate Culture With Chellie Phillips

Welcome to the show. I can’t thank you enough for taking that valuable resource of yours called time to spend this with us. This is going to be one of my favorite topics in business as well as in life. When you hear the term, a lot of the time, you immediately go to the arts and some things in life, but the reality is the word culture plays in so many different areas in the world. It plays in business, life, art, and so forth.

It tends to be one of these gray things. Everybody knows it’s out there, but nobody can put their finger on it and touch it because it has so many facets. It’s almost like a diamond. It’s got so many facets to it with this term, culture, that we’re going to have an easy time filling up 45 to 50 minutes worth of conversation on this topic.

My guest is my first guest that on a one-on-one basis is coming back for a second time. She’s a local. She’s on the other side of the city from me here in the Atlanta, Georgia area. Her name is Chellie Phillips. She does a lot of work, particularly in the utility market, but also in other industries from a business coaching perspective, a culture perspective, and a company employee engagement perspective. She, in 2023, came out with a book. I really like the way that she put it together. It’s called Culture Secrets. I have the distinct honor of being asked by Chellie to make a recommendation on the book when she launched it, which I’m eternally honored and grateful for.

As I typically do, let me remind you for those who are tuning in to Chellie for the second time what her bio is. For those that are new to Chellie, it’ll give you some background, and then we’ll bring her in and get to know her a little bit more and talk about this nebulous but important topic called culture. Chellie’s bio reads Chellie Phillips is a Southern, sweet-tea-sipping seasoned professional who has spent over 25 years in the utility industry working to build people-centered cultures that promote success and growth for both employees and businesses.

She’s a coach, corporate trainer, motivational speaker, and international best-selling author. Her books include Culture Secrets, When in Doubt, Delete It!, and Get Noticed, Get Hired. She has expanded into the children’s market with her Susie The Detective Series designed to encourage children to be problem solvers and recognize the unique talents of others.

Chellie has received numerous state and national awards for excellent communication and public relations skills, including the 2022 LaBerge Award for Strategic Communications, and presented on stage for various organizations on topics related to workplace culture and employee development. I’m going to stop there. Chellie is one of those people whose bio can go a page and a half. I know you’re not here to read a full bio. You want to meet the person.

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Chellie, welcome back to the show. I can’t thank you enough for coming back. I did an okay job with you that you were willing to come back.

I’m tickled to be here. When anybody asks me to talk about one of my favorite topics, it’s hard for me to say no.

Looking Back

I know the feeling. Maybe before we dive into culture, you could spend maybe 2, 3, or 4 minutes to remind folks what your background is and how you got to where you are.

I came up in the world of journalism. That was what my degree was in. Early on, I thought of myself as a storyteller. What that did for me was it really got me invested in learning what made people who they were and why they made the decisions that they made. Throughout the course of that, it has taught me how to engage with people, how to build strong teams, and how to listen and find out what matters to people.

When you translate that into the corporate world, I was a features editor at a daily paper for a while, and then I moved into the corporate PR side. That’s really telling the story of an organization and getting people to think, “How do I connect an organization with somebody?” That in itself is connecting with the values that matter to each of you. Are you representing the same things? Do you have things that people care about in common?

After being in that world for so long, moving up through the leadership ranks and everything, and having my own team of people to lead, that’s where I got invested in creating strong cultures. The larger the organization is and the more branches it has or the more departments it has, culture can get tricky because all of those areas seem to have their own cultures. How do we bring people together so that we’re all functioning in a way that’s driving us towards a shared vision of what’s going to happen?

I’ve been really blessed. I call it learning on the ropes. I’ve lived it and I’ve seen the good and the bad. I left a job because of bad leadership and then found a new role with great leadership that allowed me to even become a stronger leader than I was previously. It also gave me the courage to talk about it, share it, and talk about how one person can make a difference in that environment, whether that is from a cubicle or a corner office. It doesn’t matter.

I tell everybody that leadership is not a title. Leader is an action. It is a verb. That means that you’re willing to get out there and do things that matter, and you’re willing to show up the way people are expecting you to show up so that they will be willing to follow you and follow that lead to go down the same path.

Culture Secrets

A huge advocate of storytelling and a huge advocate of culture. The fact that storytelling is a massive tool that a leader can use to help tell stories to explain the why, which, to me, is so important when you want employee engagement as part of your culture. Let’s talk about your history or your journey with the book, Culture Secret. Other than being an advocate or a fan of culture, what were some of the other reasons or goals that you had in writing the book?

A lot of it boiled down to the fact that I wanted something that shared the things that I had learned along the journey. They’re things that I had learned from other people who were willing to stop and tell me, “This worked. This didn’t work. This really sucked,” or, “We had great results with this.” Shared knowledge is one of the best things that we can do between ourselves as leaders and as people as a whole. It’s not having to start from scratch. It puts you so much farther ahead when you can learn from the lessons of others.

I wanted a guide no matter what level of leadership you are. Sometimes, we think we have to be the CEO or we have to be the president of an organization to be able to make an impact. That’s not true. You can make a difference from a cubicle like you can make it from that corner office. It’s a matter of how you show up, how you engage people, and how you treat them.

The other thing with that is that growing up, I was learning culture from my dad. He was a business owner. He was an entrepreneur. He was a hairstylist. He had his own business for over 50 years and was incredibly successful in that role for him. I was watching him build this culture day in and day out, and I didn’t even know it then. I remember going to work with him when I was younger. I would be there with him. I would be cleaning mirrors or I’d sweep up hair when he’d do haircuts or whatever because it was limited to what you could get involved in at a salon at 8, 9, or 10 years old.

What I remember distinctly is the time that he took to interact with every one of his customers. He knew them personally. He knew their stories. He knew about their family. He knew about the event he was getting them ready for. He knew, “I was getting ready for the work week,” or either, “I was getting ready for a daughter’s wedding,” or, “I was getting ready for some church event,” or whatever was going on.

He knew what made them tick and what mattered to them. They were loyal customers throughout his entire career. Many of them I remember as a child, and then they were at my wedding and later on in life at his funeral. They had stayed engaged with him. They were so strongly connected to him as a person that it wasn’t just because he was a business anymore. It was because they felt like they knew him as a person and he related to them as a friend as well. That’s something you learned over the years. It became ingrained.

That vision of how he built his business and how he was able to create a culture when it wasn’t even called culture. That was the way he did things because it mattered to him. The fact that he was an entrepreneur. He was not this huge corporation. Culture matters whether we’re our own boss or we’re someone else’s boss or whether we’re creating employment engagement or creating customer engagement. It can work both ways no matter what type of business you have.

I wanted the book to be a reflection of that. I wanted it to be something that was super easy for people to remember. I wanted it to be something that would stick with them that they would be able to carry with them throughout their career and be able to incorporate it as they moved up and down the levels of the organization.

In the episode we did before, we talked a lot about personal branding. With your dad being mostly, I presume, a solo entrepreneur, if he only had 1 chair, the culture and personal brands go hand-in-hand because only 1 person is involved. It’s really about that engagement and recognizing the person in the chair who’s cutting your hair as a human being. They have their own story. They’re looking for engagement. They’re a captured audience.

It’s almost like they’re being a bartender. If you’ve got regulars at the bartender, you end up being a therapist of sorts or a listening ear for your regulars about what’s going on in their life. I have to imagine your dad did the same having sat in that chair myself on a number of occasions in my life and the conversations I’ve gotten involved in with perfect strangers.

It really does have a major impact on people coming back. They feel like it’s an inviting, accepting, and non-judgment of, “I’m here for you,” or, “I’m empathetic. I’m an ear. I want to hear what’s going on. I’m willing to be vulnerable with you about my own life,” and so forth. That’s what keeps people coming back. Those are hallmarks of a great culture.

That’s a huge piece of culture-building. In the way you show up as that leader, that personal brand, are you living the same thing that you’re telling people that you’re expecting out of them? My dad, for years, was by himself. Later on, he opened up his shop and had 1 or 2 people that would rent the chair, do chairs for him or whatever, and have a couple of other stations.

Most of them stayed for years with him because he wasn’t afraid to invest in them and share his business knowledge with them. Some of them went on to even open their own places later. He wasn’t jealous of that fact. He wasn’t like, “You can’t go do your own thing.” In fact, he was very celebratory of that. It is like, “This is the next step for you. You’ve put in the time. You’ve trained and you’ve done.”

He was really passionate about working with youth as well. As part of the votech program at the high school, he would go and talk and share about business experiences and everything. That side of the leader or that side of that personal person that is like, “I’m willing to mentor. I’m willing to share. I’m willing to invest in that next generation that’s coming through here,” is so vital.

Shifting back to the corporate side of things, that’s even more important in the corporate world because we have so many generations in the workplace. We’re competing for talent in such a different way. Things matter to different people based on our life experiences in different ways. We have to build all of that in. It can get overwhelming if you let it about, “How am I going to do this? How am I going to do that? How am I going to present this idea so that everybody’s on board?” When you’re all focused on getting to the same place and you all have the same value system around you, it’s so much easier to get people no matter where they’re coming from to be part of that solution.

Leadership Journey

I’m curious. Being that you asked me to do what I did for you when you launched the book, I got access to the book early, and it shaped my comments based on what you had written. One of the things I really liked that you did in the book was it wasn’t just you. You actively took the time to go find other leaders and business leaders in the world that have been very successful in getting their input, takes, likes, dislikes, and stories, if you will, about culture and their own business and leadership journeys. You’re adding a lot of credibility to what you’re writing because it’s not about you and your experiences. It’s bringing in some folks with some credentials. What was that journey like for you A) To make that decision and B) Go out there, have those conversations, and take the time to go do it?

That was probably my favorite piece of the book. It was being able to engage with people who were doing things better than even I was doing them. The thing that amazes me, and people don’t understand, is that your leadership journey or your professional journey doesn’t need to be a solo journey. You need to find people who are willing to breathe into you, share with you, and mentor you. It makes us all so much better collectively in everything.

This book really opened the door for me to be able to speak to some highly regarded people. The thing that became very clear is that they were so willing to share because what they had learned had made such an impact on their journey. They wanted to be able to share that with other people so that they could continue having that same impact. People are not unwilling to share. A lot of times, it takes the fact that you have to ask to make it happen.

I’ll share a particular instance from the book. One of the people that I got to talk to was Garry Ridge. He’s the CEO at WD-40. I had followed his messages and teachings for several years. In fact, I would strongly say that anybody interested in leadership needs to be listening to what he has to say. Go find his podcast. Go find his articles. Do whatever you need to do and listen to what the man says because he’s super smart in that area.

He wasn’t on their website. It was one of those things like, “How am I going to find him?” There were other people on their website, and it was first name and last name @WD40Company. I’m like, “What are the chances his email is the exact same thing, and it’s not listed?” I emailed him. It was out of the dark crapshoot. Garry Ridge doesn’t know Chellie Phillips from Man on the Moon.

I took a few minutes to tell him what I was doing, that I was working on this project, that he had been an inspiration to me in my career for several years, and that I would love to talk to him about some specific things that they were doing there. They call their culture a tribe. He has a failure culture. They celebrate mistakes. These are some very big things that people can do. Those were two specific things that I wanted to talk to him about, so I shared them in the email.

I also shared a personal story with him. I told him, “Whether you talk to me about the book or not, there’s one thing I want to share with you. I want to tell you a story about my grandfather.” My grandfather was a World War II vet. He was a farmer. He was always into something. I loved and adored him, but every time I went to his house, there was a can of WD-40 sitting on the coffee table. You might think, “He’s going to use that on some farm equipment or something that he’s got out in the barn or the shed.” My granddad would spray it on his elbows and his knees because somehow or another, he decided that WD-40 helped his arthritis.

I took a minute to share that story and told him, “I want you to know every time I see the can in the store, I think of my granddad. It’s impossible not to.” I got an email back within a couple of minutes of sending it. He connected me with his assistant and said, “I would talk to you if nothing else for you sharing that story and making my morning.” It really is sometimes about making that small connection with somebody and being willing to open yourself up and be a little bit personal.

One of the things that I learned is that one of their values is about making memories. It’s not necessarily about taking the squeak out of something or loosening something. They’re doing those things to be able to make that memory with somebody. They’re putting a toy back together again or doing that kind of thing. I didn’t know at the time when I sent him that email that memories were a big part of their values and the things that they were doing. I couldn’t have picked a better story probably to share with him and then how that became a memory for me of my grandfather and how it connected me to that product.

He was so gracious with his time. He even went over our allotted appointment time because we were having such a great conversation. I probably could have talked to him for four hours straight and never ran out of things to ask. It is those kinds of relationships that you can build and make. That’s one of the reasons that the book has been as successful as it is. It’s because it’s not just me telling people my story, my thoughts, or my ideas. The stories in that book come from real successful organizations that were happy and willing to share their struggles, what they overcame, and how they’ve been able to use that to create the successful businesses that they have.

What a terrific story. WD-40 reminds me of duct tape. I put it in the same category where it’s a product that has 1,000 if not more uses in it. I always get a kick at times. Coming from the aviation world, there is a certain tape that’s made for aviation but it’s in the same lineage, if you will, as duct tape. There are certain applications and times where the FAA allows an airline, particularly out on the wings, to use this specific aviation tape to seal up areas and allow the plane to still fly its flight. It’s not a permanent fix, but to get through the operations of the day until in the middle of the night, they can go and truly put the permanent fix in. You’re allowed to do it.

I get a kick at times when I see it show up on social media where people are gast that the airlines could use what looks like duct tape out on the wings or the airplanes and they’re going to go fly in it. That’s the versatility of the product that’s like WD-40. It’s got magical uses everywhere. That’s such a great story.

A-ha Moments

I’m glad he responded to you with that. You were adding some value to the conversation as opposed to a request. You were like, “Here’s a little bit of value I can put in terms of a story that may create a little bit of a connection even before you get to meet me.” It then led to such a great conversation. Did you have any a-has out of those conversations like, “I didn’t really think about that in terms of culture,” because you never ran into the situation yourself or it was a novel idea that isn’t included with most culture-type conversations? Was there anything like that that fell out for you?

A couple of different areas. Part of that is when you’re identifying your values that matter. In WD-40, part of their value is the memories, making memories, and that kind of thing. I would’ve never thought of that probably as a value for that company to begin with. To me, that was one of those a-ha moments when we’re really coming down with, “What are our core values for this organization going to be? What do we want to be known for?” It’s not the who, what, when, or where. It is the, “Why are we doing this? What is the difference that we’re going to make?”

We need to make sure that we’re really doing that deep look and look at it because that is where the connections are made with people. That is where the connections come from your employees. It is focusing on that. Your values are not necessarily, “Our productivity is going to be XYZ this month.” Those are values that you need. You need to meet your goals and different things like that but don’t forget some of the bigger picture pieces of that, the things that connect people to you and why you’re doing the work.

The other thing is that culture has a bad rap. It gets talked around in some industries that it’s fluff. People think culture is the swag, the pizza parties, the logoed shirts, the T-shirts we give away, the Taco Tuesdays, or something that we do. They’re like, “That’s employee engagement.” That’s not employee engagement. That’s more of a day to goof off and have a good time. It is a piece of it because you want your work environment to be fun because it has been proven scientifically that people who have fun at work are more productive, stay longer, and everything is great. That’s not culture. That’s not what it is.

Sometimes, you have to not be afraid to get rid of people to build culture. That was one of those a-ha moments for me. One of the stories in the book that illustrates that very well is Stephen Childs who is the Head HR person for Panasonic Global here in Atlanta out in Peachtree City. He was talking about when he took over the role and that culture was the buzzword and people were like, “We need to build culture,” he went on this expedition of sorts talking to all these different Fortune 500 companies. These companies made the top of the Best Places to Work list. He made appointments with them to talk about culture building.

When he came back, he said, “I came back with that we need better cafeteria food, fancy coffee bars, and ping pong tables. Morale improves a little bit, but it doesn’t stay.” He said the lesson for him is that that’s not culture. Culture is much deeper than that and everything. The A in my value form is the Accountability piece of it. Everybody has to be accountable for their role in creating that culture. It can’t be one level or another .”

He shares a story that you can read in the book about firing an engineer. When they shifted to the culture, they made the commitment to train their leadership to be coaching leaders. They wanted everybody to be on board with that. They were like, “How do we do that?” They were willing to give people, you know, a grace period, almost like a, “Three strikes and you’re out,” kind of thing. It was like, “We’re going to work with you. We’re going to get you there. We’re shifting everyone’s mindset, and we don’t expect you to be there overnight.”

They had a particular engineer. He said he was a fabulous engineer. He was well thought of in the industry. He did a lot of great work, but he really sucked as a leader in that organization. His teams didn’t want to work with him. As soon as they got a chance to transfer teams, they were gone. He said they finally had to get to the point because he would not come on board with it where they gave him a nice letter that said, “You’re a great engineer, but we no longer want you to work here.”

Being okay with letting people go that don’t align with where you want to go, the type of atmosphere you want to create, and the type of leaders that you want to have can be hard decisions in a business to make. Maybe they are very creative in their job or they’re innovative and they’re doing big things, but they’re also destructive in another way that can be even more detrimental to you than what they’re creating and bringing positive to that side of the organization.

A very common problem in businesses that are in the technical world is thinking that skill, competency, proficiency, and excellence on the engineering side immediately translate to leadership. I saw it all the time with my previous employer over on the aviation side. Leaders who were thinking about promoting people to those roles don’t give little test projects or whatever to them in leadership. Not that they pay for it, but a project lead or something of that nature to give them the opportunity to showcase some leadership skills and see if they’re ready for it. If you don’t do that, test it, and remove that red flag, then you don’t want to do it.

Foundational Values

They’re still a great technical team member and get the job done from the engineering side. You still want them around, but you need to figure out a different route to find a good leader for the team. Culture is an environment. It’s the mixture of the why and the how. The values that you espouse and want to exist or be the driving force within your culture need to be identified. That’s why it’s important that you don’t want to say your values are, “We’re going to have a certain level of productivity.” That’s not a value.

A value is more along the lines of values like empathy, emotional safety, respect, or recognition. Things like that are value statements that you want to not only state, but your actions of your leadership and others within the community, in which case, the community is your business, are going to live up to. In other words, if you were a fly on the wall and were watching all the interactions during the day, you could jot down in your journal instances where those values showed up in actions, conversations, or whatever it may be through the course of the day. What do you feel are some important foundational values or cornerstones, if you will, of a culture that leads to success for a business? What would you put your finger on?

Values are very personal and are different for every organization. There are some basic human values. We want to be trustworthy. We want to be empathetic. We want to be respected. We want to be honest. We want to be transparent. There are a lot of those human values that can translate into the corporate world as well.

One of the things that is critical for leaders to do in that organization is to get their team involved with those values. The way I lay out the process, and you’ve had a chance to read through the book, is I use that VALUE statement, the VALUE acronym for building culture. It’s Vision, Accountability, Leadership, and the Uniqueness of your people, and then you ultimately drive that Engagement that you get.

If you take that first piece, that Vision piece, and that VALUE piece, you’ve got to create that vision based on values, but it can’t be your vision alone. You have to have your team’s input on that. A lot of times, that’s where things go wrong. It’s when we sit in an office and say, “These are the values that matter.” They may matter to you, but they may not matter to some of your other team members. They may have some stronger feelings about other values that really need to be, “That is what we’re doing, and that is why it matters.”

It doesn’t translate into their area of business. I had that issue.

One of the biggest things that you can do when you start investing in culture-building, whether it’s on your team or whether it’s organization-wide, is you need to sit down, have a discussion with everybody, and get the input, “What will our five values be as this team?” When you can create those values together, what that does is it allows you a set of behaviors then that, “We’re going to do X, Y, and Z because that’s going to exemplify this value.”

When you can create the behavior expectations based on, “This value system that we’ve all agreed upon is what we’re going to do and how we’re going to get there. That gets us to that vision that we’ve created,” then you have everything in place that you need as a team leader at that point in time because you have the continuity of everybody involved. They’re all on the same page. They’re all heading in the same direction. They’ve all got the same mindset of, “This is what matters to us all. That’s what’s going to get us to the success point that we’ve agreed that we’re going to.”

You then have the behaviors. As leaders, we have our mid-year evaluations, our end-of-the-year evaluations, and all of those things that we have to do to evaluate performance. You name it. There are all kinds of things that we have to do. When you have that defined set of behaviors, there’s no question as to what I’m looking for as your leader when we’re having this discussion twice a year, quarterly, or whatever it is that you’re doing inside your organization.

If you are showing up doing these things day in and day out, you are going to be living our values and pushing us toward that vision that we have. As far as values go, I don’t think there’s necessarily one specific value that you have to have. They have to be a shared set of values, and that is very individual to each organization as they come.

With the foundation of the values, the got-to-haves for me are those heart-centered human being-based values that, in my mind, every organization should have. We’re all people-based. There is no such thing as a completely computer-based organization that I’ve seen yet.

Somebody had to program it.

In that programming, values had to be put into it. If you don’t understand that, go watch a movie called I, Robot from that perspective. The rest of it, if you lay that as a foundation, there are other items that you can stack on top of it that our values can be unique to your organization and don’t have to be the same as everybody else. It’s like a common layer foundational that are human-centered ones that everybody should have, and then on top of it are values that can be different but still human-centric. There are still going to be thriving communities because of it.

The L in the VALUE thing is Leader in the VALUE formula that I use. That Leader is responsible for showing up and being that beacon for, “I want you to emulate these things that matter. If I want you to care about the person sitting in the cubicle next to you, I’ve got to show you that I care about you. Y I need to be respectful when I’m having a conversation with you if I want you to be respectful with the customer on the phone that you’re having the conversation with.”

It’s hard for me to separate personal branding from culture-building because how I show up as a person, as that leader, how I deal with my team, and how I deal with my customers is such a reflection of the overall culture that comes about. You can’t have one without the other, as far as I’m concerned. You could have a bad culture if you have really bad leadership. If you want it to be thriving and successful, and you want your people to be happy to be there, to be long-term employees, to be engaged, to feel part of the success of the organization, and that their contributions are valued and matter every day, then you cannot do that as a leader that does not invest in the people side of the organization.

Hiring Process And Team Building

There are two things that I feel companies don’t do well over and over again. One is those that have some kind of bonus system or systems that compensate based on actions. Typically, those systems are based on financial performance. They don’t build into the human, the heart-based, or the values. They’re not built into the bonus system. What are you incentivizing? You’re incentivizing behavior that brings about financial results at whatever cost. A lot of times, it’s a human cost, whether it be people leaving the company, a bad reputation, a bad brand, a bad culture, or whatever it may be, that is not thought about when those systems are built. The other is how you build that into your hiring.

I love that.

In a hiring process, we build a job description. We’re hiring a candidate or a person for this position. All the questions and all of the activities are geared around skills, talent, experience, and whatever, but nothing is done about how well of a fit this person is into our culture. I’m starting to see a little movement in the proper way, towards that.

For the most part, you get instances where a person comes in. They can do the job and the activities, but they’re not a good fit within the team, the business, or whatever because we didn’t look or ask about that or pay attention to that in the hiring process. Even in the onboarding process with the explanation of, “We’re going to ask you to do these things in your job. Here are the reasons why we ask you to do that. Are you willing to do that?” If the answer is no, then it’s like, “Here’s the door. Sorry. We made a mistake in hiring you.”

I agree. Hiring is one of the biggest impacts that you can have on the culture of the organization. Who people have to work with on a day-to-day basis is so impactful on how they feel about showing up for work. A lot of times, those people don’t have any say in who’s coming in next to them or whatever. To me, it is crucial that you have that defined culture and a vision and value statement before you start looking for people to be in that. When you have your team that has been part of that developing that, then you’re all agreeing, “These are the kinds of things that we’re looking for in the people that we’re bringing into this team.”

You do have to build that into the job description at some point. When you have defined those behaviors and you’re going to take the values and say, “If we do these things, that means these values are going to be part of what we’re doing,” then you have some language that you can use in your job description at that point in time about some of the metrics that you want them to do, whether it’s customer-focus, innovation, or teamwork. There are different things that you can build into that job description that will give people an idea of what your culture is.

The interview is the time that you really need to focus on why that person is there and what impact they’re going to have on your team. You probably would not be interviewing them if you did not think they had the skills. To me, the skill-focused part of what they’re doing is probably a 20% or 25% part of the interview because they wouldn’t have made it through the vetting process, your initial prep calls, or whatever if they did not have the skills that were there.

It goes back to that storytelling that we were talking about. Ask them to tell you how they have done these things previously. Make them give you actual examples of a team situation that failed and how they recovered from that. Ask hard questions. They don’t have to be like, “Tell me your biggest strength and weakness.” Anybody can answer those in any way they want. When you ask me, “Have you ever led a team that failed? As the leader of that team, how did you come past that? How did you grow from it? How did you fix it going forward?” That’s a much stronger question than, “Tell me your greatest strength.” It shows the thought process that people put through it and what they learned from it.

A lot of times, you can teach skill, but you can’t teach being a human being. If I can’t learn from failure, if I can’t learn from mistakes, or if I am blind to see that there are areas I need to work on as a person, then I can’t help you down the road. Being able to focus on those parts of that interview is really a great thing. I always think it’s great if you can involve other people who are going to be working with them in that hiring practice. That way, they can get a feel for what it would be like to work next to them.

Rich Sheridan is another person that I interviewed in the book. He calls himself the Chief Storyteller for Menlo Innovations. It’s a tech company. They do teach very differently there. He was telling me about the interview process that they do. They bring in three people when they do an interview and interview them at the same time. Each one is told, “Your job is to convince me the other person is the better hire.” That’s an awkward place to be put in when you’re the candidate there. He said what it shows them is how they treat other people and how they recognize other skills.

As that leader, sometimes, you have to make the hard decision of who you’re going to put teams together with and different things like that. Putting them in that situation together, he said, “It’s not about them coding. He said they wouldn’t have made it to the interview if we hadn’t seen the examples of their work and knew they could code. Most everybody who makes it this far, we know they’ve got the skills, but I want to know how they’re going to impact my team.”

They build their teams a little differently there. Going through that interview process that way, when they do become employees there, they already know. They have that expectation of, “My job is to take care of that person next to me as well. It’s not just about me being the solitary coder sitting in a cave with my headphones on and staring at my computer all day long.”

In fact, they code in teams. He said, “Those teams rotate every week,” if I’m remembering correctly. Every week, you’re working with somebody different on code. He says what it allows them to do is to recognize problems so much faster. When coding is solitary, he said, “You go through the whole thing and you don’t realize until the end that something’s not working. When I have all these eyes and all these people in it, the code is much better. We identify mistakes or problems much faster and we fix them. It’s not me. It’s we.”

There are particular things that you can do to make sure that the people that you’re bringing into your organization are the right fit. Do we get it right all the time? No. There are some people that show up great in an interview. They’ve been coached really well and they know how to do those kinds of things, but when you put them with other people, that’s not the same person you interview.

They can talk the talk but not walk the walk.

That’s what the 90-day probationary period that you have is for. People need to not be afraid to say, “You have great skill, but you’re not a fit for us.” It’s like what Stephen was talking about at Panasonic. It’s, “We gave you a chance and you’re not showing up the way we need you to show up.” Go ahead and get rid of the problem before it sits there for 5, 10, or 15 years and festers on and on. That takes a strong leader.

Nobody likes to fire anybody. It’s not a good day for any person. It’s not a good day for that supervisor. It’s not a good day for the person involved. It makes everybody’s day a bad day, but it is best for the organization at times to be able to say, “You are not a fit anymore. For us to both have a great experience doing what we’re doing, then we need to make sure that that is not what’s happening anymore.”

Translating Real-Life Experiences

I couldn’t agree more. Check all those boxes. I have one last question, and we talked a bit about it in the green room. How would somebody translate your thoughts both through your interview process and your own thoughts about culture? You’re talking about personal brand. In my coaching business, I like to use business language to talk about the individual person and the client sitting on the other side of the computer screen, the table, or whatever. There’s not a lot of difference between a human being and a business.

A company has a brand. We have a personal brand. A company has a culture. We have a culture. There’s a culture that’s inside of us that exists because we live our lives with certain values and other things that are the make-up of a culture and a company. They’re a make-up of a human being and their life from that perspective.

Do you think somebody reading your book could read through it and then take that notion or that context and go, “I have enough knowledge from this book that I could sit down with my own life and think about what my why is in life, what the values are that I feel like I want to live my life through, and how my interaction is with my teammates?”

In this case, teammates are family, friends, neighbors, teammates in an organization, maybe a nonprofit, or something I do on the side that’s not money-making for me and my family, or whatever it may be. This notion in this book from a self-leadership perspective gives you enough to work from that you can not only think about it in your business, particularly if you’re a leader or a business owner but then how does it translate to myself in my own life?

It translates seamlessly because at the core of culture is that leader. It is that person that’s willing to step out and do that. That is a personal mission that you’re on. It does translate. You have cultures in your family. You have cultures in your church. You have cultures in the organizations that you’re part of. Culture impacts us everywhere.

If you walk through that VALUE formula and identify your core values and the Vision that you have for your life, and let’s talk about life personally, it is like, “How do I want to show up for my family? How do I want to show up for my friends? How do I want to show up for the people who are counting on me?” If I ask five people, “How do you see me? What are the three things that you immediately think of me? Are there going to be those five values that you feel like, “This is what I want to be known for, this is what matters to me?”

Whether it’s honesty, trust, dependability, or faith, any of these things can be the value that you have, but you need to do that deep reflection and see, “Am I showing up that way for everybody? Would someone say that I am dependable? Have I always shown up where I told people I was going to show up? Have I always been trustworthy? Have I told them the truth? Have I lived those things in my day-to-day life?” If you start with that V, identifying those values and that Vision, then we have to be authentic to who we are. We’re like, “I’m going to show up that way every day.” When we define what those are because they’re something that truly matters to us, it’s much easier to show up that way. We don’t have to think about it. They become ingrained in who we are.

Our values change over time. My values at 50 are probably not the same as they were when I was in my 20s. That comes from experience and what matters. You learn how it feels to be treated in different ways or you learn from disappointments that you’ve gone through. You go through tragedies. You go through sorrowful times. You go through grief. You go through all of these things. They all add to your box of emotions and experiences. You know, “I don’t want someone else to feel this way, so I’m going to always try to be X, Y, and Z.”

Culture can evolve, and your values can evolve. That’s the thing that is not something that becomes very stagnant. We need to be reflective on it. It’s something that we need to look at over and over again. If you have identified those values, whether that’s corporate or personal, that’s something that you can live in both worlds, my personal world or my business world.

There’s Accountability. If I’ve agreed that these are my values, this is how I’m going to show up, and I’m going to do everything I can. One of the things that we can do in life is have our own accountability partners. In the business world, we call them mentors probably, or they’re our supervisors, they’re training that we go to, or whatever.

I have that circle of people in my life who are going to call me out if I’m doing something that is not in alignment with what I say I’m doing. If it crosses in a line, they’re going to be the very ones that look at me and go, “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? This is what you said?” or, “You’re showing up this way. That’s not you. What’s going on in your life? There’s got to be something going on that’s making you act a different way than normal right now.” We need those truth-tellers in our life. We need to be those truth-tellers for those people that we led into our circle, that we count on, and that we believe in.

That Accountability piece is what I’m willing to show up for. I’m willing to be called out on it. I’m willing to learn from my mistakes. I’m willing to grow from them. I’m also willing to tell others, “I need you to show up this way for me and not be afraid to have those conversations as well.” The L is the Leadership part. That’s leading by example. It’s like, “If I’m going to talk the talk, I’m going to walk the walk.” It doesn’t matter if you’re a father, a mother, a sister, a student in a classroom, or a leader in the office. You’re like, “I’m going to agree that I want people to see me this way. I’m going to show up that way. I’m not going to give people a reason to doubt that that’s who I am and what’s going on.”

There’s recognizing the Uniqueness of other people. We’re not all the same. We all have different life experiences that turn us into who we are as adults, as teenagers, and as everything else. It is recognizing that there is value in everyone and taking the time to really get to know someone to find out what that value is, what makes them unique, and what’s in their background that has made them the way that they are. That’s where you build that personal connection. The stronger our personal connections are with each other outside of the office in our personal worlds, the better those relationships are going to be, whether that’s a husband-wife relationship, a father-child relationship, or a sibling relationship.

It’s amazing to me how many siblings once they grow up don’t get along. I’m very lucky I have a brother that I love and adore. I told him several years ago, “It wasn’t until I went to college that I realized I really liked you.” It was because we spent all of our middle school and high school years fighting all the time. He was four years younger, always wanting to be in something and I was too grown and cool to be hanging out with him.

It wasn’t until I went away that I realized I missed him being around all the time. He did have some great qualities. I did love him and I did care about him. We joke about it since we’re way grown up, but that’s the truth. You have to take the time to get to know someone and really value what they bring to your life. That’s also in your personal life because you can’t always do it in the business world depending on where you work.

You also need to know when to walk away from some people because their values and your values don’t align anymore. That relationship is not going to improve because we’re never going to be on the same page. I don’t need to continue fighting and investing in this when I can be investing in others. That relationship is much more solid and much more impactful to what’s going on.

Engagement is showing up, being an active part of something, being happy to be there, and taking the time to acknowledge that someone else matters. You recognize the importance of what they’re doing. You recognize their value in the family or their value in that organization. You recognize what they’re bringing to the table. You’re giving yourself the opportunity to engage with them, which is about you giving up something that is super precious to you. That’s your time.

When I’m saying that my time is worth giving to you and I want to engage with you, whether that is through conversation, whether I’m watching a movie with you, or whether we’re out playing in the yard or doing whatever it is, that time where I know that we have that one-on-one where I am involved with what’s happening to you is so vital in us building those strong relationships that we talk about. The culture-building formula that you find in that book really does translate to your personal life as well. You can use it not only on yourself but as well as the other members of your family and organizations.

Work through it together. How awesome would it be to sit down with your kids and go, “Let’s come up with five values that our family is going to exemplify, and then we’re going to come up with the behaviors that I’m going to ask you at supper at night. How have you shown somebody today that you were honest? How have you shown somebody today that you were trustworthy?” You rebuild that into that fabric of who you are and who your family is. All relationships take work. At the core of it, people want to feel like one of our basic human needs is the feeling of belonging. That’s what culture-building does. It gives us all that connection and makes us feel like we belong and are a part of something.

Can you imagine the power if a husband and a wife called a family meeting, sat down, and said, “We’re going to figure out what the why of this family is and the values and the culture that we want it to be. You get to have an input in there. It may not be the final decision, but you’re going to have input into it.” That’s crazy to think that that might happen in this world. I would be flabbergasted if somebody told me that they thought of that and they sat down and did it. I might stick them all over social media and so forth to show them as an example.

That’s your readers’ challenge. We want to know who’s doing that out there.

We want to recognize you, applaud you, and get you to be a spokesperson for culture out there to say, “It’s important enough to me that we sat down and did this as a family,” or as a couple that did it for themselves. Our time is coming to a close. I can’t thank you enough for coming out and sharing your wisdom with us again. What’s the best way people can find your book, reach you, get engagement with you, hire you for your services, or whatever it may be?

The books are on Amazon, or you can go to my website, which is ChelliePhillips.com. I’m also all over LinkedIn, Facebook, and all the social profiles. I love to engage on social. I’m pretty much a prolific poster. You’ll find stuff from me pretty much every week, whether it’s a blog post, sharing some tidbit of leadership advice or information, or asking for feedback on something.

Building For The Future

I have one last question. You and I talked about it in the green room. We have to twist it a little bit since you’re the first visitor, if you will, to the show. What do the words generate your value mean in the context of culture, do you think?

We talked about that in this whole conversation. What it really means as far as culture is generating that value of that culture means that you’re building for the future. It means that the people that are going to be involved in it feel heard. They feel like their skills and talents are being recognized. They feel like they’re part of that solution.

It means that you’ve got the right people leading that organization because they’re in alignment and accountable for the decisions that are made. The value that they’re generating is that the leadership at that point in time is invested in the people who are doing the work, making sure that they’re seen, that they’re getting the training that they need, and that they have the tools that they need to do what they’re going to need to be doing. Your employee base is also generating that value from the interactions that they have with the customers and with each other, whether that’s from building that relationship so that they’re a repeat customer or whether it’s because you’re getting that endorsement from them.

They’re telling their other connections in the business world, “You need to do business with them because they’re going to show up, they’re going to deliver, they’re going to do what they say they’re going to do, and the product’s going to be extremely well-made, “or, “The service is going to be crafted in a way that meets our absolute needs.” Generating your value is perfect for culture-building because it ties into all aspects, whether it’s the financial success of the organization, the people’s success of the organization, or the vision and direction that that organization has.

Closing Words

All the above. The reason why I call my business Generate Your Value and why it’s so important to me is because it hits so many areas of life, particularly when it relates to culture and personal brand. I can’t thank you enough for coming back on the show. It means a lot to me for you to come back for a second time. If I had met somebody on the street and they told me, “I’m building a business plan. I’m going to start a business. What would be ten books you would recommend to me to go read to help me out on the start of my journey?” Chellie’s book, Culture Secrets, would be in that top ten list of books to read on a very important subject when it comes to business and success in that realm.

I appreciate that so much.

With that being said, we’re here every Tuesday. I can’t thank you once again enough for joining us to know the stories of people as great as Chellie is in their success and life. You might be able to get some golden nuggets out of our conversation to integrate into your business or your life from a self-leadership perspective to help you find those great things called joy, happiness, and success in your life. Episodes come on every Tuesday. Hit the subscribe button so you don’t miss any of the episodes. I’ll finish up by saying have a great day and have a great week. We’ll see you here next time on the show. Take care.

Important Links

• Chellie Phillips
• Culture Secrets
• When in Doubt, Delete It!
• Get Noticed, Get Hired
• The Power Of The Personal Brand – An Interview With Chellie Phillips
• LinkedIn – Chellie Phillips
• Facebook – Chellie Phillips, Author

Chellie Phillips

Chellie Phillips is a Southern, sweet-tea sipping, seasoned professional who has spent over 25 years in the utility industry working to build people-centered cultures that promote success and growth for both employees and businesses.