Welcome everyone. We're recording.

Welcome everyone to Culture Community, the best day of the month. Who here is a first-timer to Culture Community? Raise your hand. Yay. Welcome. We are open. We are an open place for everyone. We are so excited you're here. We love seeing all the new faces, old faces, all that good stuff. Who we are here at Culture Community, we are a group of people who are passionate about being great leaders. We are passionate about intentionally building great cultures, and we are passionate about not doing it in a silo, not doing it by ourselves. We are passionate about coming together as a community to learn and grow together. We have intentionally created this to be a space where you can learn, develop, and grow, a place for connection. Also, something that's really important to us here at Culture Community is that we don't just want to be inspired by the content that's shared. We want to be inspired, but then actually go and do something with it. Be activated to make change. To take action to make our Our leadership better, our culture better, our teams better, the world better. So that's all about who we are.

Excuse me. So when and where we meet, we meet online every month right here. And next month, we're really excited to have Emily here. She will be presenting on Unstuck and Unstoppable. As all of you know, as humans, we get stuck. And a lot of times as leaders, it's our jobs. We're like the director of unstuckness. We need to help those around us, help our team to become unstuck to make progress. So Emily is to talk about tangible ways we can actually do that to help ourselves get unstuck and help those around us get unstuck, too. A little bit about the perk for those of you who weren't here to hear Troy's amazing testimonial at the beginning. Thank you again, Troy. Who we are here at The Perk, we are Premier Leadership and Culture Development Studio, and we are on a mission to build the world's best leaders, the world's best teams, and the world's best organizational cultures. You can see down there some of our amazing clients that we are so grateful and so fortunate to work with. You will We noticed that we work with clients who are from all different industries, all different sizes, all different stages.

The leadership skills that we focus on coaching, training, and developing with our clients, they are not specific to one industry or to one size of a company. We are teaching things like curiosity, listening, setting clear expectations, delegation, accountability. These are skills that all leaders, that all organizations need to be successful in the world of work today. While there are a lot of other companies out there who do what we do, who do leadership and culture development, and many might do it for the same reasons why, maybe they're also on a mission to build the world's best leaders, where we differentiate is in our approach and is in how we do what we do. Everything that we do, we make it fun, we make it human, we make it We make it safe, we make it custom, and ultimately, we make it last. We do lots of different and fun, amazing projects with our clients, but what we are most known for are our Custom Leadership Development programs. These are 6-12 month programs. They include live training, group coaching, one-on-one coaching. We're also known for our high energy, high impact team workshops. Then two of our programs that we're really well known for is our Clear Leadership Operating System.

This is a seven-month training program that teaches leaders the skills that are essential to lead in the world of work today, and then also our Trust by Design Leadership Program. This is a framework that we use to help teams and organizations build and scale trust. With that, I will now turn it over to our amazing Cori, who is going to into the power of we.

Yay. Thanks, Leah. Hello, hello, hello, everybody in Culture Community. As Leah said, my name is Cori. I'm a leadership coach and culture consultant here at the Perk. I just want to start out by saying that not long ago in my previous role with a different organization, I would regularly attend Culture Community. I always so much admired the speakers that came into this space for their passion and knowledge and just the topics that they came and talk about. I would often think, That's so cool. I wish I could... I would like to do that someday. I just never knew how that would fit into my story. Look at me now. Here I am. I'm at Culture Community. I've got my dress shirt tucked into my sweat pants. I am ready to be here and so excited to be here with with all of you. I only hope that you leave with just as much inspiration and motivation to take activation in the world just as I did when I participated and as I still do as a member of the park. Let's get to it. We always like to start out our sessions with ground rules and expectations to set everybody up for success in our time together today.

First of all, be Be present. Be present, not the president. Be present. Eliminate distractions as much as possible. Set aside those text messages, phone calls, emails. They'll all be waiting for you in just under an hour. Give yourself the gift of this time and space to learn and grow. Please ask questions, engage, and participate. This is cultured community. It is all about community. We love hearing your thoughts and perspectives as well. There's no such thing as a stupid question. Be open-minded. Maybe step outside of your comfort zone today. Do something you wouldn't normally do, and take this mindset with you into the session. Everyone has something to learn. Everyone has something to teach. Last but not least, we have the park. We love celebration. We love confetti. You're going to learn lots of things today, but we want to have some fun along the way as well. Sound good? Great. Let's do it. Why are we here today? What is the purpose of our conversation? We are going to be talking all about the multi-generational workplace. We'll be understanding some intergenerational dynamics. We're going to use the thought model to cultivate an environment of connection and collaboration.

And best of all, you're going to walk away with three, maybe a couple more skills that you can take back to your teams and organizations right away. This is curiosity, level three listening, and yes, and. So get ready to unlock the full potential of your team. And to kick things off, we're going to do a little annotate. I love to hear from the group, what challenges are you experiencing when it comes to a multi-generational workplace? We have some ideas up on the screen, but there's another category category as well. If you don't see something that you're currently experiencing or maybe have experienced, you can put it in the other category. In order to annotate, there's a little green pencil in the bottom left corner of your screen. If you click that little green pencil, it's going to open the annotation, and then you'll have stamps. You can use stamps to click on one of these circles to indicate the challenge. Technology, stereotyping your Yes, yeah. Career progression, communication styles. Yeah. Values and expectations, great. Interesting. Perceptions of authority and leadership. That seems to be a big one. Communication is a big one. Technology gaps. Amazing.

Yes. Lots of variety here. Thank you. Thanks for sharing. If somebody on the team wants to clear those off for me. Thank you. Great. This will be showing up later on in the session as well. Let's take a look at some of the factors that might be at play here in some of those challenges. Our workplace is more generationally diverse than ever. If you take a look at this image, 2022, we're quickly approaching 2025, we have good chunks of each generation represented in our workplace. If we break it down even further, we can see the evolution over time towards 2040. We've got baby boomers who are currently around age 60 to 78. They're dwindling and largely retired by the year 2040. Gen X is our stable group. So these are folks, they're around 44 to 59 years old right now. They maintain pretty steady through the years, but again, start to taper off towards 2040. And then our millennials, Gen Y, who I am calling our dominators. They are dominating much of the workforce now and well into the future. And these are folks 28 to 43 years old. And then our Gen Z. These are our rising influencers.

They're currently 12 to 27 years old right now, and they're growing substantially by 2040. The workplace is evolving, and with all of this representation in the workplace comes lots of different perspectives, lots of different backgrounds, and that is from a variety of factors. We've got historical events, social norms, economic conditions, technology advancements that have all influenced how we show up in the world, how we communicate, and how we lead. I found this image to be really interesting. My dad My dad is a baby boomer, and I was noting the directing leadership style. I called him. I was preparing for the presentation. I wanted to learn more about his experience as a baby boomer and to see if I could learn more about that directing leadership style that is attributed to his generation. He's been retired for several years, and I was asking lots of questions. I wasn't really getting much out of him. Then I asked, What was it like to lead people who were younger than you in words were... It was difficult. I really tried hard to instill my work ethic in them, but they had their own ideas. I was just like...

The light bulbs went off. I was like, Ah. They really exemplified his top-down approach in trying to instill his work ethic in others, as opposed to maybe the more collaborative or autonomous style of the younger generation. I thought that was interesting. It was a good conversation. If we zoom in a little bit further, we can make some more observations. One that I thought was interesting was the leadership style for the coordinating for the Gen X. If you think back to the representation of generations in the workplace, they're sandwiched between these baby boomers who are leaving the workforce and millennials who are dominating the workforce. I thought that was really interesting that they have this coordinating role as they're moving through this transition. Then the music piece as well in the evolution of Walkman for Gen X to Spotify and Gen Z. We all have a connection to music in some shape or form. We go from limited options with the Walkman. We have limited genres, little limited artists that we can listen to at one time to instantaneous any artist, any song at the touch of your fingertips on any device and how that could influence our preferences around communication.

When we look at different preferences in these generations, baby boomers, for example, in communication, they prefer structured, systematic, face-to-face versus millennials who want instantaneous communication. We can see where these challenges in communication start to rise because you have one section of your workforce that they want their annual structured performance performance reviews in a face-to-face setting. Then on the other hand, you have the millennials in your workforce who, as soon as a task is done, a project is completed, a presentation is done, they want that instantaneous feedback. Leah, if you could give me some feedback after this presentation, I would really like to know how it went.

It's coming.

But my personal favorite when we're talking about generational differences is, I'm showing my true millennial form here, is the funny social media posts that you'll come across for generations looking back at how things used to be and comparing it now to what people are used to. We've got parents explaining how to roll down a window, what a floppy disk is, what the film canister is, what distractions were like back in the '90s. I just love these. I think they're so fun. If you come across any, feel free to email them to me or tag me in the post. I'd love to see them. What do we do with this information? Do we identify people by their generational category, put them in a box, define specific strategies for each grouping, and treat them according to their preferences, and voila, we have a high-performing team? No. That is not what we're saying. That is not what we're here to do today. While the generational characteristics are informational and they provide us great insights, they are broad trends and not necessarily universal truths for each generation. We really want to embrace a curiosity mindset and not a judgmental one.

We want to approach our teammates with curiosity to foster that genuine connection We want to focus on understanding the human, the individual, and not just the generation that they belong to. Ultimately, sorry, I should be advancing the slides here. Ultimately, we want to create an environment where everyone truly feels seen, heard, and valued for who they are as a human, for their contributions, and not just their generational identity. We're embracing curiosity to understand those unique perspectives and and experiences in order to elevate the organization. We love this quote, Ideas are made stronger by the diversity of hands that touch them. Really embracing those different perspectives in the workplace. How do we do this? How do we approach it with curiosity and not assumptions and judgment? Sorry, tripping over my words. We do it with the power of mindset. When we talk about mindset, It's your thoughts. It's what we think about a situation or a circumstance. Our mindset is super powerful, which is why it's important to understand it. It impacts the results that we're getting. It can be our best friend and help us achieve our goals, and it can also be our worst enemy.

It can hold us back and keep us from reaching our full potential. We need to understand it and understand that we can control the outcomes and get the results that we actually want. How do we do it? With a super tool, it's called the thought model. If you've been to Culture Community, you've seen this a number of times. We love the thought model. It has applications all across the board. I used it this morning to prepare for this presentation and get me in the right mindset. We're going to use it today to talk about shifting from a judgmental mindset to a curious mindset. The thought The thought model is derived from cognitive behavioral psychology, and it says that in our life, there are circumstances, there are things that happen, they are out of our control. We have thoughts about those circumstances. Those thoughts evoke feelings within us. Those feelings drive our actions. If you love culture, you love this part of the thought model, culture is built by the actions, the behaviors, the things that we do, and the actions create our results. I said that we want to approach the multi-generational workplace with curiosity.

Let's take a look at some examples of what shifting our mindset could look like. On one hand, we have a judgmental mindset. You might be thinking something like, They don't like the new process. You're in that judgmental mindset. If we try on a different a thought, take on a curious mindset, we might ask, I wonder what concerns they have about adopting a new process. This is demonstrating how you can approach a challenge, maybe a multi-generational challenge, with curiosity and openness instead of assumption and judgment. Another example, a judgmental mindset could be, they're not interested in a conversation. If we try on a curious mindset, what's their preferred communication style. Judgmental mindset, I would never do it that way. Curious mindset, what can I learn from their approach? If you think If you think about this, if you think about the judgmental mindset, where do you go from there? If you're thinking, I would never do it that way, what's next? What results could you expect from that? Versus a curious mindset, trying on a different thought, where could that lead you? Our mindset is powerful in achieving desirable results. We're going to walk through an example together.

Our circumstance is, I sent a team email about a new process, and nobody responded. I'll need you to take yourself off mute. We're going to go judgmental mindset. What thoughts might you be having about this circumstance if you're in judgmental mindset. They don't care. They didn't read their email. They don't care. Yeah, thank you.

They don't understand why this is important.

They don't understand. They hate change. They don't want to change. They hate change.

Too long, didn't read.

Too long, didn't read. Too busy. Too busy. All right. From those thoughts, they don't care, they don't understand, they don't It's too long, didn't read, they're too busy. What feelings does that generate?

Frustration.

Frustration.

Anxiety.

Yeah. So the thoughts you're thinking, they don't care, they don't understand, they don't like change. I'm feeling frustrated, anxious. What actions am I likely to take?

For me, I might not I might not take any action. I might just ruminate and complain about it in my head.

Yeah. Next time, I might not send a communication, shut down on it, right? Wasting my time. Nobody cared about this. Why do I do this? Could it become passive-aggressive?

Absolutely. And what results are you likely to get if you're ruminating and complaining, shutting down, become passive-aggressive? I see some smiles. Also- In action. In action. No action. Negative results. Negative. Are those the results we want? Is that the team we want to be on? No. No. So let's shift it. Let's go into curious mindset. Same circumstance. You sent an email, nobody responded. If you try on a curious mindset, what thoughts might you have?

I can start with a simple like, wonder why they didn't read this? Did they not see it?

Yeah. I wonder why. Does that mean everybody just approved? I'm sorry, what was that? Does that mean Everybody just approved? Approved.

It was perfect.

What other thoughts?

I think being curious and opening up your mind creates a new perspective. You might learn from someone what maybe you could have done better to rely this information to them and be more successful in the future.

Wow, learning opportunity.

Yeah. How could I have communicated it differently?

What could I do differently? Did I get the right audience? Yeah. What feelings might come from those thoughts. It's a learning opportunity.

You have to feel energized, right?

Yeah.

I feel curious. I feel the genuine curiosity and a little activated.

Yeah.

But I think it can also stir feelings of vulnerability, being a little nervous about what people might say about your approach and feeling a little on the spot, a little small at the moment. It can be. Yeah. Absolutely.

What actions might we take from that place? Requesting feedback, asking for individual's perspective on it. Yeah. Love that. So what results might you get? You're feeling energized, you're feeling curious, maybe a little bit vulnerable, you're requesting feedback.

Yeah, some ideas on how to approach it differently next time.

Absolutely. Yeah. So again, in the judgmental mindset, we're feeling frustrated, anxious, leads us not to take any actions, negative results. We shift it, we look at it from a different perspective. We're feeling energized, we're feeling curious, maybe a little bit vulnerable, But we take action. We request feedback and we learn something new, learn new ideas. This is just an example of showing how being in the right mindset can help us tackle some of the challenges that we might be experiencing Everything. I'm curious. What's coming up for people? Take a pause here. We've learned some generational dynamics. We've talked about switching our mindset, being curious. What's coming up for folks?

One thing that's coming up for me, I shared the quote in the chat, but I love this quote of, Judgment and curiosity cannot coexist. It's just a reminder of when you find yourself starting to judge a situation or something, just a reminder of what would it look like to get curious here? I like to ask myself that question, just shift over to remind myself to get into a curiosity mindset. This is just a really good visual reminder of That's the power of doing that.

I love that. Great. Well, now that we're in the right mindset, we're ready to create that collaborative, connective environment that builds that cohesive team, let's talk some more about those challenges that we identified at the beginning. We know that a foundation of a great culture is built on these three things: trust, alignment, and communication. If there's something that's not quite right, you have a challenge in your culture, it's likely the result of one of these three things, or maybe multiple of them. So bringing back those challenges that you all annotated at the beginning, we can boil them down to these categories, communication, alignment, and trust. And there's multiple ways to do this. This is just using some broad categories. So you might switch these around depending depending on your experiences. But we're really going to dive into these three categories, communication, alignment, and trust, and talk about ways we can help bridge the gap in these areas. So starting with communication. Raise your hand if you think communicating now is harder than it's ever been. Yeah. Some of you agree? Yeah, I would tend to agree with you. Communication is is complex. Our brains are amazing.

The average person processes 6,000 to 10,000 messages per day. That one process that you need to distribute is competing with 10,000 other messages that people are trying to process. And it comes in all forms: nonverbal verbal communication, talking to team members, reading a text message, hearing background music or sounds in your environment, all of the signage that we see on a daily basis, billboards, reading emails, notifications on social media from our phones, phone calls. It's a lot. A lot of communication happening. And we can look at some additional complexities when we look at this through the lens of the communication process. If you were here for a couple of sessions ago, we talked about really impactful communication. It's a recording on our website if you want to take a look at it. But this is where we were introduced to the communication process. And if we were to map it out, we have a sender who's generating messages, and they're going through the encoding process. So this is how we convert our thoughts or ideas into messages that need to be communicated. We send those messages out, and it goes into a decoding process. The person receiving the information, process it based on their experiences, assumptions, and perceptions.

If we zoom in on this encoding and decoding, we see these filters. When you're creating the message that you're sending out, it's under filters of your generational background, your personal experiences, the emotional state that you were in when you wrote it, your knowledge and skill, and so much more. Then you've got the person decoding the message, applying their own filters, their own experiences, their own emotional state. It's complex. It's hard. I'm sure you've all experienced this where lines of communication have crossed. You've probably heard somebody say something like, What are you talking about? What did they just say? I wanted to have a little fun with this. We have a Slido question for you. What is a word or phrase that you've heard that made you think, What on earth does that mean? Maybe it's in talking with your kids or your parents or grandparents or coworkers. You can participate in this by going to... You can open a browser and go to slido. Com. The code is the perk. Or you can just scan the QR code with your phone. You can enter as many words or phrases that come up for you. That slaps.

That's it. That's all we got. Sigma. I don't know what that is. Drip. Lady boss too close to the sun. Ohio? What is this? Skibibdi? Skibibdi? All right. I need somebody to take them. Somebody has to come off mute here. Get a little lesson in.

I can understand the Ohio one. We have an office there, and all of us that don't work there are like, we're never going to find anybody that wants to work and move to Ohio. It wasn't me that typed it, but I get it.

Oh, gosh. Hi, Cari, by the way.

Hello.

Bustin. She's so proud. Oh, my gosh. I won't put my fingers where they won't belong. Hi. You open this can of worms, Kari. No offense. No, this is great. This is fun.

Does anybody know what drip is?

I use it the wrong way every damn time, apparently. I get scolded by my- I think it's like your style, right?

Yeah, but it's like- I'm 31, but I think I'm getting a little old because I don't really know either.

Is that how you say it? You don't use it properly?

Yeah, I've never used it, but- Isn't it in correlation with jewelry and accessories?

It used to be bling or something like that, and now it's drip, or maybe my son would probably be rolling his eyes so bad right now. We have somebody who coaches teenage kids soccer, and he has an Excel sheet on his door where you can look up the words that you are hearing and see what that means. It's a translation. That's fantastic.

I think you need to copy that and send that to all of us.

Can I ask It's the same thing. Oh, my gosh. That's so great. So much exposure. The ones that were coming up for me is Davenport. My grandma always talks about going to sit on the Davenport, and that's the couch, going to sit on the couch. I was talking with my teammate Emily, and she's like, Yeah, my mom asked me to get something out of the crisper the other day. And I was like, What's the CRISPR? It's the drawer in the fridge that you put your vegetables to keep them crisp, I guess. We had a big debate at work last week. We had volunteers come in and get rid of all of our weeds around the posts. And some people call it weed Whacker, Weed Whipper, all these weird... I don't know what to call it, weed Eater. Yes, yes. Amazing. Thank you all for playing along. And I don't to share all of the complexities with communication to make you feel hopeless or that you need to throw in the towel because there's just so much going on and so many filters and so many experiences in generations that we feel like we'll never get it right.

Our hope is today, through this conversation, you'll leave with some tools and building blocks to help reduce the amount of miscommunication. Now you have all of those words that you can go Google and get up to speed on. What we like to say is communication is not a megaphone. You don't just blast the words out and expect that it's understood and received. It's more like a relay race where the information is the baton, and once you've successfully passed off the baton and your teammate continues running, have you been successful in communicating? How do we do it? How do we bridge the communication gap and become a high-performing team? First of all, we have to understand that clarity is co-owned. Communication is complete when the other person has understood you and the behaviors are in alignment with the desired result. So again, the baton has been passed off and your teammate continues running. And it's also a conversation. Maybe you get feedback or questions related to your message to show that it's been received. And then another quote that we love, The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. Our perk pro tip for you in bridging the communication gap is to use courage which is curiosity.

Curiosity is the catalyst for connection and collaboration. It allows you to co-create solutions that leverage the strengths of all generations and experiences. When you use curiosity capacity, you genuinely connect with the other person and you build trust, connection, and relationships. It allows you to open up to seek to understand those different perspectives versus casting judgment. It fosters understanding. And allows the other person to feel truly seen, heard, and valued. When we're curious, we ask questions, and not all questions are created equal. We want you to ask powerful questions. Powerful questions drive collaboration. Powerful questions start with the word what. You want to ask questions that start with the word what. What questions are open-ended, they're expansive and invite exploration, they encourage that deeper level of thinking. They create the space for dialog, which was missing in that peanut butter and jelly video. And they are more expansive. You get responses that are greater than just yes or no answers to questions. They're also non-judgmental. They don't have an agenda tied to them. You're not trying to lead people down a particular path. And they help you genuinely understand the person's perspectives and ideas, which is also another powerful builder of trust.

You're creating safety for those ideas. So let's look at some examples. What questions? So a less powerful question would be, Do you like this idea? Again, this could have a yes or a no answer. A different way we could phrase it is, is, what do you like about this idea? What ideas do you have to make it better? A less powerful question, why are you focusing on this? That could tend to put somebody on the defensive that they have to defend their answer. When you could ask a more powerful question, what's important to you about this? How can we fix this? What ideas do you have for how to improve this? Here are some additional powerful questions that you can add to your tool box. What are your thoughts on this? What excites you about this? What are we not taking into consideration? If we're going to talk about curiosity, we have to about listening. You can ask all the questions that we want, but the only way to really deepen our understanding is to truly listen. And so there's three levels of listening. We like to compare it to a flashlight. So in level one listening, awareness is on yourself.

You're taking that flashlight and you're shining it back on yourself. You're thinking about what you're going to say next. You're in your head and not really listening. Level two listening, you turn the Now you're focusing on the other person and you're just listening to their words. So for example, if I was like, I'm really excited to be at Culture Community today. You'd all be like, Wow, Cori, she's here. She loves Culture Community. Can't wait. Let's dive in. Versus level three listening, when you open the beam of the flashlight and shine it on the entire situation, this is your global awareness. You're listening to what's not being said. You're listening to energy, tone, and body language. After we get curious with our team or another person, we want to be listening to understand, not to respond. We want to be in that level three global awareness listening. We're going to do a little activity, and this is the first time I've done this. I have no idea how it's going to go, but we'll have Have fun along the way. So I need to get out a piece of paper, if you don't have one already.

You are going to be listening to a short story. Every time you hear me say the word right or left, you're going to write that down. You're going to write right or left on your paper. And the goal is to see how many right and left words you hear. Does everybody understand? Great. Project. Here's the story. It was a beautiful morning, and Sarah knew it was the right day to start her big restructuring project. She had gathered all the right materials, but felt like she needed help, so she decided to call her team. First, Sarah called Mike, who agreed to meet her at the office on Jones Street. Along the way, she realized she had forgotten the notes she'd left behind. After going to retrieve them, Sarah called her other colleague, Emily, and they agreed to meet at Maple Park. Emily asked with a tear running down her cheek, Are we headed in the right direction with this project? Sarah responded, I'm not sure, but I think we need to communicate better so we don't get left behind. When Mike arrived, they all worked together to figure out the right way forward. Feeling confident, they left the park knowing their teamwork would guide them to the right result.

How many right words did you get? Right. Five. Five? Amazing. Left. How many left? Three. Three? You win. How was Emily feeling? No clue. All I focused on was right or left. Me too. Unsure. Unsure. Emily had a tear running down her cheek. How do you think? Really? Yeah. The right cheek or the left cheek. Who cares about her feelings. We were right. What was the name of the park? Maple Park. Does anybody remember the names of the people in the story? I think there was a Samantha. Maybe.

Samantha, you're the winner.

Yes. Samantha peers. She listened to everything.

She wins. Sarah, Mike, Emily. Yeah, you got it. I need the confetti basket. Samantha is part of the 2% of the population that can multitask. So there it goes, Samantha.

I also really like puzzles, so I thought there'd be a trick there. So I did my best listening.

That's why I wasn't sure if it's going to work because people were going to be skeptical of me. Great. Thank you all for playing along. The moral of the story here is that we want you to listen to understand. Be the sponge, soak in all of the information. And the way you do that is to remove as many distractions as possible, to be fully present with the other person. It's one of the greatest gifts that you can give in a relationship. All right. So we went through our communication challenges. We're bridging the generational gap by being curious, asking powerful questions, and activating our Level 3 listening. Our next focus is to move to alignment. If you think back to those multi-generational challenges that we talked about at the beginning, if you're experiencing differing expectations, conflicting goals, or confusion over what success looks like, You probably have an alignment issue. Why this is important? When we have alignment, we are ensuring that the organization or the team is united in purpose and working towards shared goals and objectives. In order to do that, we need to understand what success looks like. Maybe it's for a project, maybe it's for a task, a goal, or even an expectation, understanding what is success.

Once we know that, to achieve alignment, we need to pull it back to the bigger picture of the vision and mission of the company. Ambiguity leads to misalignment. We achieve alignment when people are clear and consistent with their words in the Ambiguity and confusion in all forms leads to misalignment. If you're ambiguous or confusing in your expectations, your priorities, your goals, you're going to create misalignment. That is totally normal. It happens. If you remember back to our generational differences, we all have such varied experiences that we bring to the table. We all have experiences with different things. And so that misalignment is going to happen. But when we When we take the time to get clear on what success looks like in expectations, in those goals, those tasks, we can be on the same page. We can move the company forward together as opposed to move in opposite directions. How do we do it? How do we bridge the alignment gap and make sure people at all levels of the organization are working to create a strong, cohesive culture? Well, hopefully, you'll lean on your curiosity and listening and ask some powerful questions to understand what success looks like.

And then you're going to communicate the why. You're going to communicate what success is and why it's important. What's the purpose? How does this align to the bigger picture? How will this help us achieve our goals as individuals and as a team? And as humans, we love knowing the why behind something. When we know the why, we're more likely to be engaged and motivated. It also helps us better understand the bigger picture and stay focused on the common goals despite how many different perspectives or approaches on how to achieve those goals. So let's look at some examples of communicating the why. So maybe success for your organization is implementing a new software. That's what it is. If you were to communicate just the what statement, we are implementing new software at the end of the quarter, what feelings, what reactions might you get if that's all you said? If all of your- Yeah, dread, worry, concern. Yeah. If you expand a little bit further and put some context behind it, you have a why statement. The software will streamline our processes, helping us work more efficiently. By implementing it now, we can improve our team's productivity, freeing up more time for creative sales initiatives will also position us to meet future demands and stay ahead of competitors who are already using this technology.

I'm confident we can master this together and make our jobs easier in the long run. I was collaborating with my teammate Emily a lot in this presentation, and she shared an example with me from a previous organization that she worked for, and they did something similar. They were rolling out teams to the entire organization. And the younger people at the organization were super excited. They were super excited for the capabilities of teams and to be able to instant message their team members. And the people who had been at the organization for a long time were not as excited. They thought the instant messaging capability was going to interrupt their ability to have productive work time, and they weren't going to get anything done. So differing expectations. It's important to get clear on not only what we're doing, but why it's important. The expectation is not to ruin your focused work time, but to create these efficiencies within our organization. So again, as you're preparing to align on success, here are some questions you can ask to get there. What is the purpose of this? What is important about this? What do you want people to think?

What do you want them to feel? What action do you want them to take? Or what is your desired behavior change? You might be thinking, Duh, Cori. Obviously, I need to communicate the why. Obviously, that's important. Yes, we know, we hear you. And through having multiple conversations, we know that this is also the first thing to go out the window. When things get busy, time is short, this gets tossed out. You get into production mode. Leaders start directing what to do, getting things done, moving quickly, but not providing the why. And this leads to distrust, disconnection, disengagement, misalignment. So I'd love for you to take a couple of seconds and reflect, where do you have an opportunity to communicate the why more freely, fully, whatever. Both are true. Maybe jump down a note to come back to after. We'll keep moving along. Trust. Trust is our third element. When we look at those challenges, again, that we identified at the beginning, a lot of them can be tied back to trust. I know I had some in communication, I had some in alignment, but if you were to break them down, depending on the different experiences, a lot of them are Trust Issues.

Giving and receiving feedback, that could be a trust builder or a breaker. The experience around setting expectations or whether we meet them or not, could be a trust builder or breaker. How we live out the values in our organization can either build or break trust. This is important because people at high trust companies report all of these great things, higher productivity, more engagement, more satisfaction, less stress, less burnout. Trust is a big piece of the equation. Who doesn't want all of these things? The tricky thing with trust, though, is that it's intangible. It's not something you can physically touch. It's something you feel and you know. Again, it's those behaviors, those things that we experience, those actions that create trust for us or break trust for us. It lives within our thoughts and our feelings. What do we do? How How do we bridge the trust gap? How do we intentionally build and maintain trust across all generations? With the five core trust behaviors, of course. The PIRC has a framework, the five core behaviors that build trust. We are not going to go through each of the five behaviors today, although I would love to.

Instead, we have a guidebook, which is linked on this slide. If you want to scan it with your phone, you can download a copy of all of the trust behaviors. For the purposes of our conversation today, we're going to focus on create safety. We trust people we feel emotionally and psychologically safe with. When we feel safe, we speak up, we take ownership, we admit mistakes, we ask for help, we share ideas, and we get to be ourselves. This inclusiveness enhances team cohesion and overall performance. We give our all and our companies thrive as a result. When we're creating this safety, we're creating an environment where all team members, regardless of age or background, feel valued and empowered to contribute their ideas and contribute to the team's success. How do we do it? Here is your Perk Pro tip. Hold a non-judgmental space and use safety sentences. Safety sentences look like, I don't know, I'm sorry. I need help. What happened? What I like about that idea is. And what if we blank? The one we're going to focus on for today is use yes and. Has anybody been to an improv show before? Yes. Yes.

So yes and is a pillar of improv, and it is the basis for all collaborative teamwork and group activity when we translate it into the organization. And the reason why improv shows are so successful is because they take suggestions from the audience, and then they build upon them by using yes and. So they accept what has been said as truth and build upon that reality. The result is energy, momentum, collaboration, forward movement. If they don't build upon the idea, the scene ends, and it wouldn't be as entertaining for us to be a part of. It also encourages listening. In order to be able to build upon ideas, you need to truly listen to what the other person is saying. Another way we like to phrase this is looking for the 10%. 10% of what somebody shares is good and can be built upon. So another framework we have is, what I like about that idea is blank, and what if we blank? So again, you're building on others' ideas contributing the missing pieces, and you're adding value to what's already there to achieve progress and innovation. The opposite of yes and is innovation killers. These are statements like, yes, but, or just a straight up no.

And these responses unknowingly sabotage great ideas. They stifle creativity and they shut down potential breakthroughs. When you respond to an idea with yes, but, or no. It doesn't create an environment where ideas are welcomed. And that's not what we're trying to do. So let's practice this. Let's practice using yes, and. I would love for three people to volunteer. So take yourself off mute. The first person is going to give us an idea, any idea, no right or wrong answer. They're going to complete this statement. I have an idea for bridging the generational gap on my team. What if we blank? Person 2 is going to say, What I like about that idea is and build upon it. And person three is going to use, Yes, and. Who wants to be my brave volunteers?

I can volunteer.

Yay, Kari.

Do you want to be person one? Sure. Great. I need a person two.

I can be person two.

Yay, Leah. Thank you. One more. One more brave volunteer.

I can be person three.

Thank you, Michelle. Okay, Kari, kick us off.

Sure. I have an idea for bridging the generational gap on our team. What if we put together a project team? It doesn't have to be related to generational ideas, but what if we formulated a team and it had different generations within that team, and they work together towards a common goal. It could be improving engagement, it could be something for the business. But I think just developing a team with different generations might be able to help bridge that gap between them.

What I like about that idea is bringing people from different generations together to work together and being focused on a project at the company that's not necessarily a multi-generational project, project. And what if we set them up for success by giving them some training on curiosity versus judgment so that their communication is more effective during this project?

Absolutely.

Yes. And what if we brought pizza?

That sounds great. What I like about that idea is it's food. And what if we ask all the people on the team what their preferred pizza style is?

Oh, yes.

And maybe we should bring some drinks, too.

I love it. A round of applause for our amazing volunteers. What did you notice about that conversation?

Very constructive, very collaborative.

And super positive. I wish these ladies were around I had an idea.

We'll be there. That's awesome. Yes. Thank you very much. To bridge the generational gap, we want you to choose to be a yes and leader. And a lot of times when we talk about this with teams, they're like, That means I got to agree with everything. And that's not necessarily the case. You're saying yes to the person, not necessarily the idea. You're building upon it. And what it helps do is it helps send a message to your team that they can bring ideas to you and that you are going to treat it with respect, whether it be great or terrible. You are creating that safe space for idea generation and collaboration. You did it. You did it, team. You did it. We made it. All ready to bridge all of those generational gaps. Before I let you go, one more annotation. Again, these are the challenges that we saw at the beginning, and we have all hearts, so we're not going to know who did what. Okay, let's do, yes, and is a heart. Communicate the why is a star. Get curious and listen, question mark, shift your mindset, checkmark. I don't think I said that one yet, did Which tool did you learn today and how will you apply it to the challenge?

Dan, are you doing some recovery work? Where people are just- That was part of my quality control.

I love it.

Yeah, curiosity. Work-life balance. I love it. Great ideas. Lots of yes and happening. Lots of curiosity. I love it. Perfect. Perfect. Thank you all so, so much. Let's take a little tour of where we've been today. We talked about the generational representation in our workplaces and how the workplace is shifting on the topic of shifting. On the topic of shifting, we talked about shifting our mindset, being curious and not judgmental. We're going to bridge the communication gap with curiosity and listening. We're going to bridge the alignment gap with communicating the why, and we're going to bridge the trust gap with use, yes, and. What is one thing that you're going to commit to put into action from today's workshop? You can put it in the chat. You can take yourself off mute, but I would love to hear what's one thing you're going to commit to. All of these ideas are great and wonderful when we talk about them, but the true magic happens when you take to your organizations and commit to action. I can't even know why. I love that. Awesome. Shifting to curiosity. Yeah. Great. Awesome. Thank you. All right. A little plug here for our Culture Optimization Assessment Report.

There's a link for our website where you can access this free self-assessment, and it's designed to provide insights and guide initiatives for your culture on trust, belonging, and well-being, and create results for your team. You can access that on our our website. And that's a wrap, my friends. Thank you so much. You are all amazing. I have enjoyed this so much. Please, please connect with me on LinkedIn. Send me all of your funny social media posts about generational differences. It will make my day. Good job, Cori.

Amazing, Cori. We have about six minutes left. I'd love to open up the floor if people have questions or comments or anything they want share, something that came up for you during this presentation.

Sure. Yeah, great first experience. Really, really enjoyed it. Looking forward to getting back together in a month.

Yay.

Thanks so much for coming, Chris. Yeah.

One thing that is sticking out to me is just the curiosity, the yes and the listening. Regardless of what generation you're in, You want to be listened to, truly listened to to be understood. You want to have people being genuinely curious with you. You don't want your ideas shot down. You want to be met with yes and. I just think those are such powerful tools you shared for all generations.

Yes.

Even my six-year-old, she doesn't want me to shoot down all of her, what she calls brilliant ideas.

They are.

She's very proud. What else? Anything else coming up for folks or questions you have for Cori?

Thanks, Natalie.

Well, amazing.

Thanks, Zack.

Well, I hope everyone has a great day, and we'll see you next month to talk about how to get unstuck and achieve unstoffable progress.

Bye, guys. Bye, everybody.

Have a great day. Thanks so much. Nice meeting, everyone.

Bye.