Creating We: How Great Leaders Build Abundant Organizations That Win

Our guest today, Judith Glaser, has a wealth of experience in this area. She's an Executive Consultant and Coach, and the CEO and President of Benchmark Communications Inc. Her illustrious client list includes the likes of Donna Karan International, Merrill Lynch, Citibank, Clairol, Lipton and Pfizer. Judith is also the author of two highly acclaimed books, Creating WE and The DNA of Leadership. Creating WE is a kind of blueprint for creating healthy organizations, while The DNA of Leadership is more of a 'how to' guide for managers who want to reshape their organizations for the better. Although both these books are aimed at corporate leaders, there's a lot of useful information for employees at all levels who want to help create a thriving company. Judith joins me on the line from New York. Good morning.

Judith Glaser: Good morning, Rachel. It's great to be here.

Rachel Salaman: It's great to have you with us. Well if we could just start at the very beginning, how do you define corporate culture?

Judith Glaser: It's very interesting, but culture is something that is actually embedded in how people work together so, if it's simplified for people, it's the norms; it's what is normal for us. That's when we say one culture is different from another it's because what they consider to be normal and healthy, and in some cases it's not healthy but normal, is what is the consistent thread behind the organization, how people behave. There's a certain set of dos and don'ts that get embedded in how people interact with each other and these get translated into what we call corporate culture.

Rachel Salaman: Can you give an example of that?

Judith Glaser: Sure, and you mentioned Donna Karan, one of the companies that I work with. When I was interviewed to work with the company, I prepared for the interview. I got all dressed up in beautiful clothes because I knew that design and fashion was important and, when the door was opened for me to step into a room with 31 of the top people in the company, I looked down and I instantly knew I wasn't dressed right. They were all wearing black, which is the corporate culture, that's the color of the culture, and I was wearing color. And so, while that may sound like it's a superficial issue, it's really not, because that was an example of what I became aware of as I did start to work in the culture, that all the subtle stop signs, 'you can't do this, you can't do that', that come in everything from do you get to challenge the CEO of the company in a meeting or do you talk afterwards with your colleagues? I mean, that's the subtleties of where culture begins to play out in terms of what people believe are right and good, and what they can do, and do and be supported, versus punished, in a sense. In a lot of ways culture gives feedback to what is good and bad as well.

Rachel Salaman: Well, you're an expert in changing corporate cultures. How do you know when an organization's culture needs changing? What are the signs?

Judith Glaser: It's very consistent throughout the world in any company of any size. When you begin to see things like toxicity – we call the word toxic, but relationships are toxic, and that translates into people not being able to speak with each other directly, but instead triangulating and speaking to other people about what's really on their mind. That's an example of a company that's not being healthy. When people are – so conflict avoidance is high, passive aggressive behaviors are high; people have favorites and the favorites drive; individuals begin to drive and dominate if they are 'the favorites' of the CEO, so it's that type of behavior that we translate into being an unhealthy, toxic culture.

Rachel Salaman: If you're trying to change the culture of an organization, who or what are the drivers of change within organizations?

Judith Glaser: First of all I want to redefine culture change, because I think so often we think of changing the culture which is something like changing your hair color, it's something that you can do, it's a single choice, and then you can make it happen. So much of what – I'm going to reframe it to say that culture change, behind that is really a question: do we have a healthy organization and what creates health in an organization? Because what we learn is that, when you do the things that enable people to feel healthy and be healthy together, then they grow and change as a result of that type of relationship or those types of dynamics. So where we've gotten trapped in the past is that we think of culture change as a 'push' strategy. I've got to force or request or suggest or move you towards something that I think you need to be moving towards, and that is in fact what causes more resistance in a culture, rather than the desire and the aspiration to change.

Rachel Salaman: I think what might be baffling to some people is that the organizations we're talking about, some of them are made up of thousands and thousands of employees. How can the culture reach all of them?

Judith Glaser: It's so important that an organization learn and this does start at the top. And the top could be, by the way, the manager in a department; so it's not just the CEO of a company, but any time you bring a group of people together and they're called a team, or they call themselves an organization. That what enables healthy cultures to grow is when there's a common conversation; when everybody in the organization is on the same wavelength about what's important, about where we're going, about what the key challenges are, and everybody feels like they have a role in moving that strategy and that vision and that purpose forward. That's so critical: inclusion is just about the most important thing, and the challenge of a leader is how do you create that conversation that we're all participating in together?

Rachel Salaman: And how do you?

Judith Glaser: And how do you? It starts at the top; it starts at leaders not closing the door and feeling that just the 'C Suite' needs to be talking about these things. The old way of thinking is, "We'll figure it out at the top. We'll come up with the vision and the strategy, and then we'll turn to all of you and say, "Here, here's your marching orders; this is what you need to be doing."" That in fact is the very old way of thinking, the dinosaur of the past because what it does is it asks people not to think but to just use their hands. So the new way is really to engage, for the leaders to put on the table questions for the employees to answer with them about, "What are our big challenges that we're facing? What do we aspire to be when we look into our future?" So that everybody at every level in the organization is beginning to think about and beginning to see the same reality and the same set of challenges together.

Rachel Salaman: In practical terms, does that mean putting aside time for those conversations?

Judith Glaser: Every conversation we have can be treading towards the same end result. I think we think that you have to pull away and do it as a separate thing. I believe that, in the healthiest cultures, every conversation I listen to is about where we're going, in some form or another, and what's my role and how can I help? And so it's not as though you have to pull out at a separate time although, if leaders can do it and choose to do it, it's wonderful to be able to pull away and go to retreats and go to off-sites where you can do this. IBM did something really wonderful, and it's true that they are a technology company, but they created a virtual website and they called it a World Gym. And in 72 hours they asked people in the organization to submit ideas and suggestions for where the company should be focusing attention. And, at the end of this, they had a million data points of insight that came from their organization, which they looked for themes inside of and found that there were 19 key themes, and they turned those 19 key themes into 19 projects. Everybody had a hand in it, and that's 350,000 people globally, so people with small companies can do the same thing using their own technology. We've come to think that big is hard to master when it comes to enabling an organization to think as a collective, but I think that's, again, part of our old thinking.

Rachel Salaman: From your experience, what challenges do people run up against when they're trying to create a healthy culture?

Judith Glaser: Again, I think the old thinking is, it comes from our old 'push' strategy, that leaders need to go around the organization, tell everybody what their vision is, and then see who gets on board; that's, you know, who's going to be aligned to 'my vision' and that's an artifact of the past when leaders do that. An example is Jacques Nasser, when he was trying to move forward at the very end of the last century, 1999, and he was the right person at the right time who seemed to have the right strategy. 150,000 people: he was enthusiastic and everything was going to be wonderful except, as he did go around and talk about his vision and talk about his vision, he found that not everybody got it, or not everybody was on board, and he started to separate out the haves and the have-nots. These are the smart ones, they get it; these are the ones that don't, and people feel when they are getting feedback that says, hey, you're not getting it. And so it started to create, in a sense subtle, but what became even bigger "Those are on board are on my team; those who aren't, we have to ask to leave." And that creates a fear inside of a culture, and as a result it created resistance, and as a result he pushed more, and the more he pushed, the more resistance he got, and ultimately the Board asked him to leave. So that is a pattern that we see in many culture – what people call culture change projects is that 'push' strategy, rather than the engagement strategy.

Rachel Salaman: That's a great example of what not to do.

Judith Glaser: Yes.

Rachel Salaman: Have you got an example you can share with us about how it was done well?

Judith Glaser: Absolutely. Many of your listeners will have heard about or even used technology and the web and, in doing that and creating any kind of transactions where they buy things, they will see a seal that comes up that says "approved by VeriSign" or "validated by VeriSign." VeriSign is one of the largest facilitators companies that has helped us facilitate commerce around the world globally and, during the big internet boom, they were one of the few companies that lasted beyond that and has grown and grown and grown through major acquisitions. In order to create a whole company imagine 30/40 different companies coming together globally, the CEO had to create a strategy that would engage people in sharing not only a common vision for where the company was going, to be a company that builds trust globally, and that's one of their themes, but they had to create an environment where the kind of conversations could take place, that people could vet the challenges together. Again, my theme is we need to have one conversation going on inside the company. And so the leader created a norm, and we talked about earlier what is a cultural norm that people need to put the tough issues on the table. If you put the tough issues under the table and we don't see them, then we can't respond to them quickly and we can't work on them together. In order to put the tough issues on the table, people have to be willing to handle the potential conflict that people might have different ideas and perspectives about how to handle them. And so, not only did he say, "Put the tough issues on the table, but we're going to vet the challenges and the perspectives and the conflicts together, so that we all know that we're hearing and seeing the bigger picture of possibilities for what could lead us to the right answers." And every meeting started with the challenge to the team of, "This meeting is going to be a place where we can vet our issues, we can handle all the potential conflicts and perspectives and look for bringing together all of us towards a bigger solution than anyone would have thought of, together." And once the leader starts to do that, and again this can take place in meetings in small companies as well as large; you set a norm in place to operate differently as a team, and people seem to rise to the occasion when they're given that type of permission and support.

Rachel Salaman: Creating WE was published in 2005. What was it about your experiences that made you think this book needed to be written?

Judith Glaser: Well, the reality is I'd been writing this book for over 40 years, so I felt that a change was taking place in the world, and the change was about how the 'I' lives inside the 'We'. Many people think that it's 'I' against 'We' or 'Us' against 'Them' but that is the either or mindset that has been, again, an old artifact of the past. And I was seeing and desiring and wanting to be part of a movement that was enabling the 'I' to live inside the 'We'. How do we nurture and encourage and engage each individual to reach their highest potential; to materialize or realize their DNA inside of organizations? And so that was my bigger thrust years ago. In the last ten years I started to find examples of companies and leaders that were doing this; that were taking this new way of thinking and embedding it in the culture and, as a result, seeing extraordinary profitability gains, brand expansion and market share expansion.

Rachel Salaman: What's the response been to the book?

Judith Glaser: It's been incredible actually. I've gotten phone calls to travel all over the world: South Africa is a recent one I'm doing in March. The book's been translated into Chinese and Korean and Spanish and Russian and I'm beginning to find that there's a thread of universality that is hidden inside this book that people are beginning to say is really a blueprint, as you used the word, the blueprint for the future.

Rachel Salaman: What's it like to work in a 'We' organization versus an 'I' organization?

Judith Glaser: It's as though the nutrients for growth are resident inside of these organizations. People are open and sharing; they realize that giving power or giving information is going to, if they do it, that what they'll get back is multifold. People are appreciative and supportive of each other rather than being judgmental about people having differences in point of view. There's an appreciative sense of, oh my God. I really need to be listening to you because it's different in the way I think, and therefore I need to grow from what I'm hearing. So there's appreciation, there's inclusion, there's a feeling that we're all in this together; that people actually get endorphin highs when they're connecting with others, and they feel as though they are part of a winning team, and 'We' cultures seem to have this. It's as though the chemistry at the both genetic level and the chemical level, as well as the conversational level, it feels good and you look forward to coming to work.

Rachel Salaman: Is it difficult for managers to strike a healthy balance in this, because you make the very good point that authoritarian leaders are often less effective than collaborative ones? But surely managers wouldn't achieve much if they let anarchy rule. There has to be a certain amount of authority.

Judith Glaser: I think that's one of the things that people – and, again, there's an old way of thinking that at one end is a dictatorship and at the other end is anarchy, as though that's a pendulum that swings back and forth. What I believe both of my books talk about is how to bring together the tough, in other words the disciplined approach to doing work together where we have to actually demand things of each other, but in a positive way that creates accountability and also a caring or a heart, in other words that appreciates the uniqueness of each individual. So a leader can't say, "Hey, do whatever you want." That's advocate – that is giving up, if you will, their role as a leader. It's really about creating an environment where this – where the 'tug' and the 'pull' and 'push' come together, and where people struggle together around candor and caring, in other words really putting – raising the bar with each other, face-to- face, with great candid conversations, and that's a different way of thinking. That's not dictating or anarchy. It's a whole different way of working together that is about engagement and wrestling down the difficult issues together.

Rachel Salaman: Well, as an idea, creating 'We' is not just about 'We' versus 'I', is it? It's also about 'We' versus 'They'. What does territory have to do with culture change?

Judith Glaser: We believe, in a world of scarcity, we believe there's minimal resources and, for you to be successful, you as an individual, or you as a leader, or you as a division that you need to own as many of those resources. That's the old mentality, that's the old way of thinking, and, as soon as we feel that we're 'in competition' with another division, or another leader, or another colleague for that matter, we go into 'protect' behaviors, and that causes us – it's like the dog who if you've ever, you know, watched how dogs, they pee on all the trees that they pass, they're marking their territory, and that's again the old dominant, alpha dominant way of thinking. And that is resident when people have that fear that, if I give to you, if I share with you what is my unique power or information, then I'm going to weaken myself, and that's again an artifact of the past. We know that the more we can break down silos in organizations and bring people from different divisions together, as VeriSign did, when they have acquired so many companies and created an environment for rich sharing and conversation, to look for how to maximize the ideas that all of us bring to the table. When that happens, all of a sudden the territorial issues dissolve, and what does come out of that is that sense that, hey, we really have a great winning team.

Rachel Salaman: Well, in your second book, The DNA of Leadership, you take a closer look at healthy cultures through another scientific metaphor, genetics. How did you come up with that idea?

Judith Glaser: Interestingly enough, my husband became the CEO of a small research and development company in the area of cancer and, what they have discovered, which is incredibly innovative, is that they've discovered a little peptide in the human body that has something to do with creating health and turning cancer cells back into healthy cells. Literally, when you inject this peptide around the cancer, it reinstructs the cells how to be normal. And, in conversations, when I was writing my book with my husband early in the morning, I realized that that metaphor applies. If it applies at the genetic level, it has to apply at the organizational level, because we are in fact all genes and cells working together towards some common goal. And so I started to think about, well what would happen if I wrote the book using the genetics of leadership and the DNA of leadership: would that help us leverage our thinking in a new way? And, in fact, what it helped me do is take all of the things and all of the patterns that I'd been observing in healthy cultures and toxic cultures and give them a framework, and begin to put them in to buckets, not only buckets that I saw but buckets that seemed to have a universal theme throughout all the companies and the cultures. And even the timeframes that I've studied, having worked in anthropology and archeology, what applies to the DNA in the present time, has applied throughout all of history.

Rachel Salaman: So do all companies have all the genes you identify?

Judith Glaser: We all do. We all do, and the question is, are we nurturing and cultivating those genes to grow to their fullest? That's really the big question for leaders. And what I'm finding is, when leaders get together and begin to talk about each one of the genes and talk about how they are handling those genes, managing them, manifesting the results in their business, the conversations begin to inspire a new way of looking at how to move culture forward, not from the standpoint of pushing it or trying to change it, but from the standpoint of nourishing it.

Rachel Salaman: Well, for the sake of the listeners who haven't read your book yet, the book explores seven genes, represented by letters that neatly spell the word 'CHANGES'. For each of these genes you present a leadership principle, a leadership step which is an action, and a note on how the gene affects the culture of the organization. If we could just focus on one of those genes, which one do you think is most relevant?

Judith Glaser: It's hard to say which one is most relevant. What I can say is that the first one is the one that sets into place a theme or a mindset that, if we don't do the first one then all the others are going to have difficulty manifesting. The first one is a 'co-creating' community, that's the C gene, and what that means is that leaders focus on engaging the organization to become part of the whole, as we talked about earlier, to shift the organization from a mindset which is what we call, 'win at all cost' which has come out of the competitive environment but, when we bring competition into organizations and use that as the driver for how we interact, then all of a sudden you're breaking down an organization from a collaborative co-creative environment to one that is competitive, where people do compete against each other, so that's the first and most important one. The next two actually I will say support that, which is the H gene or 'humanizing' is based on not judging people but appreciating people. Strength based and appreciative based conversations do more to elevate people to achieve their potential than almost anything in the world. And the third is 'aspirations' and the word 'aspire' means to breathe together and, when human beings share their aspirations and their dreams, and they do it in an appreciative way, all of a sudden there's again this very amazing energy that begins to emerge out of our conversations, that helps people move to that next level of greatness.

Rachel Salaman: In order to give a complete framework of your ideas to our listeners, perhaps you could just run through the remaining four genes.

Judith Glaser: Absolutely. The next four really have a lot to do with how we engage with each other. The first three were about mindset, and the next one is the 'navigating' gene, and that's how do we navigate together? Do we share power, and the key word is 'sharing', versus withholding? And when we begin to focus more on sharing power, we break down silos and we break down territorial, and that's a natural result of sharing. That's the N gene. The G gene is 'generativity' and too often in corporations we fall into consensus building and 'group think' without even realizing. We think that that's good because we're all on the same train or all on the same bus, but too often that is done at the expense of people who have different ideas being able to speak up. And so the G gene is really about moving from the 'group think' to generative thinking, which is again building on the next generation thinking from everybody's inclusive ideas. The next one is the E gene, and that's about 'expression' and expressing one's voice and it's so easy for leaders to fall into the dictating side of this particular gene, which is the regressive side, as opposed to the developing side, which is the side that really, again, develops individuals' leadership voice. And the last one is the S gene, the 'spirit' of reinvention, but it's also about 'synchronicity', how do we create an environment where we're all connected, and the theme behind that is celebrating our mutual successes. Even failures become something to celebrate when we know that, every time we've done something together collectively, we've learned how to move from what's not working to what's working and so celebrating in the spirit of reinvention is the last of the gene set.

Rachel Salaman: Most of these visionary ideas about healthy cultures are focused at the top of the corporate hierarchy. How can they help people who perform non-leadership roles?

Judith Glaser: Again, we fall into so often the belief that, if you're at the top you're a leader, and if you're a leader then you do things differently. What I'm talking about in both of my books and the work that I've been doing is that creating health inside of organizations takes place at every level, whether you're someone who has just come into the company and just starting out; whether you're in the mail room, whether you're in, you know, an administrative position; all of us need to think about conditions for health. And, when we do this, and we give each other feedback about whether we've achieved those aspirations in how we work with each other in an environment – there are three things that people thrive from, more than anything else, and I learned this from my husband's work. One is that we can throw up our flags, send up our flags and ask for help when we see problems and challenges. When organizations do that and when organisms do that, we build an immune system that's healthy and that can fight off any disease and problems that are around us. So being able to create an environment at every level in a company where flags can come up, people can talk without feeling that they're being judged and criticized; where we can give each other feedback for around what is working and what is not working; what does ten in success look like, mutually, and we give each other feedback as we move towards that ten goal together. And then lastly that we focus on the future and we don't look in our rearview mirror all the time and say, "What didn't you do right?" We focus on the future, on taking on big challenges together, on looking outside at what our customers want. Those three things alone, at every level in a company, begin to shift a culture. You don't have to force people to change, that automatically is the outgrowth of creating these conditions.

Rachel Salaman: So, Judith, if some of our listeners want to find out more about your ideas, what should they do?

Judith Glaser: Well, what they should do is go to my website, which is www.creatingwe.com so that's the same name as our first book Creating WE, and they'll find tons of resources there. There's free assessments; there's articles, so that would be taking small 1,500 or 2,000 word articles from many, many magazines and newspapers and things and giving you sound bites. It's like going out and ordering a dozen appetizers and you can taste some of these ideas in smaller sound bites and see, you know, try them on and see if they fit. So lots of resources, lots of interviews from TV, NBC Today show, and many, many other things, so you get to see me talking about all of these issues over and over again, and begin to find which ones you resonate with. And then hopefully you'll be able to go to the site as well and click on both of the books, which are also on the home page, and order them directly.

Rachel Salaman: Well, if there was one piece of advice that you would give to leaders and aspiring leaders and anyone else in our audience, what would it be?

Judith Glaser: The most important thing is that we must be the change that we want to see in the world. That was Mahatma Gandhi, and it is the most important thing that we can focus on. We can't force others. We always fall into this habit of saying, "Well, if only they would change, I'd be able to do it. If only they'd be different, then I could be nice." If we reach out and put our hand out across the table to people with whom we have not had great relationships and say, "I want to make up, or I want to work with you, or let's see what we can do differently." That act of being the change yourself is what in fact creates the culture change that we've been talking about.

Rachel Salaman: Judith Glaser thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your inspiring ideas about healthy cultures within organizations.

Judith Glaser: Thank you. It's been terrific to be here with you, Rachel.

Rachel Salaman: Judith's website again is www.creatingwe.com and I thoroughly recommend taking a look. I'll be back next month with another Expert Interview. Do join me then. Goodbye.

[This interview was recorded in 2007. Judith Glaser sadly died in 2018. We are grateful for her contributions to Mind Tools including her second interview with us, in 2017, on Conversational Intelligence.]