[00:00:00] Speaker A: Unethical leadership and toxic culture can tear lives apart, whether it's at work or at home. But by building the right habits, you can build a culture that is safe, ethical and productive. Hi everyone, I'm your host Bill Coffin and this is the Ethicast.
[00:00:27] Speaker A: At Ethisphere. We talk an awful lot about the power of culture, namely how ethical culture is at the heart of business integrity. And that culture is something inherently measurable and can create a virtuous cycle of psychological safety, values based leadership and higher financial performance.
But we all know it doesn't always go that way. Every culture, no matter how well meaning, lives with certain pressures that if not handled the right way, can foster poor decision making and and foment unethical behavior. Once those patterns of misconduct take root, it becomes much more difficult to identify and address them than it would have been to prevent their occurrence proactively. It's at times like these when the courage to speak up and lead enterprise wide change becomes vital to the long term health of the organization. But that often requires outside help.
Our guest for this episode is organizational culture expert Tobias Sturison. After escaping a religious cult, Tobias Tobias spent years unlearning its toxic patterns. Now he helps organizations in high stakes industries build cultures that enable people to perform, thrive and act with integrity when under pressure. As founder of Heart Management and author of the international bestseller you can Culture, Tobias specializes in both crisis recovery after scandals or breakdowns and preventative culture development.
His team helps leaders identify root causes undermining cultural health and and build sustainable change through four core leadership habits. He's worked with multinational organizations across Europe, the US and Asia, speaks at industry conferences, and hosts the leading transformational change podcast. Tobias, welcome to the Ethicast. I'm delighted to speak with you today.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Thank you so much, Bill. And I'm super excited to be here with you.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: You have a very compelling personal story that explains your keen interest in the power of organizational culture.
[00:02:14] Speaker B: Where?
[00:02:14] Speaker A: You mind sharing it?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. So I grew up in a Christian community that over time really developed into this very toxic religious cult.
And it didn't happen at once. You know, it never, never does. It happened step by step. As we became increasingly or as the leader became increasingly erratic, more and more people started to leave that community. We thought we had this great amazing vision, but people started leaving and the people who were still there became increasingly isolated. And the leader, the founder, he started to point out people who he saw as problematic in some way and people that he started and the rest of us really to to Isolate and to demonize. And there were several people and, and at one point it became my, my own mother. And, and as part of that process I became involved in the psychological abuse of my own mom.
And as that continued, my mother started to.
[00:03:37] Speaker B: To, to go through several attempts to commit suicide and, and ultimately she ended up in a psychiatric ward. And it took two years for her to to make the decision to, to finally leave that environment. But I, however, still still stayed. And, and some, some years later there was this television program on national Swedish television where they told this story and uncovered the, the very toxic culture in this environment. And my mom was there in the program telling her story that really shone a light of things. But instead, even at that point of leaving the environment, I still stayed and I became a part of a cover up.
So we put out statements saying that in our desire to help people, some people were hurt in the process, which didn't come at all adequately address the harm caused or take really any accountability for what have happened.
But still some time after that, if you would say that, the internal dissonance just became too big for me and I made the decision that I should have made. Years later, I walked out the door and I decided to never ever come back.
And as a result of that experience, I've really, you know, grappled with the questions of how, how could an organization that seemed to be driven by this noble mission turn into something so toxic? And how could I, who saw myself as an ethical and values driven leader, like I think most of us do, become complicit in psychological abuse? And of course a part of the answer to that, and I take responsibility, responsibility for my complicity. But, but what I also understand is, and I've learned, have come to understand is the power of culture, the power of, of the context. And I think for so many people, you know, we think we have this strong internal compass. But what happens when a magnet, when a strong magnet comes from the outside? And I think that's, that's exactly how culture works and it drives behavior. And even though of course few organizations end up where we ended up, we still see the consequences of a lack of cultural health in our organizations. And I'm sure our listeners have examples in their organizations or in prior workplaces where they've seen the consequences, whether that's a lack of trust or unethical behavior or people not speaking up about issues and so on. So that's really what taught me the importance of, of culture and cultural health.
[00:06:28] Speaker A: Many organizations approach culture as a top down exercise and Indeed, tone at the top and values based leadership is important to a strong culture of ethics. But a lot of organizations are rather large and have within them many levels of hierarchy. So what recommendations do you have for ensuring that cultural leadership driven from the top, reaches down through every layer of an organization without losing any of its potency?
[00:06:52] Speaker B: That's such a great question. And as you point out, I think so many times we put so much focus on tone from the top, which is critical. But if we have a leadership team saying speak up, we're listening. But we have a plant manager 2000km away who say shut up, I'm tired of your complaining.
It's not.
People are not going to feel safe to share their challenges or dilemmas or risks that they are facing.
So what I found is that when we think about cultural health, it's not a project, it's not something we do in an initiative once or something that we can just train through. But it's really culture is so much shaped by the signals that leaders send at every level and where middle managers, line managers play incredibly important roles. So if we want to change those signals, that signal what is encouraged here, what is rewarded here, what is not accepted here, we need to think about the things that our leaders habitually do, repeatedly do. And that really goes down to their habits, that goes down to what are the things that they are celebrating, what are the things that they're not accepting, what is the example that they set. So I think if we want to see a change in culture, we need to focus on changing behavior. And then again.
[00:08:26] Speaker B: That'S not a project, it's not something we do by just have an annual event where we talk about our values. But if we can train our organization, if we can create rituals, for example, where we give opportunities for people to learn to have the difficult conversations around their dilemmas on a repeated basis, then we can start teach different ways of acting and thinking and develop different habits. And in my perception, it really starts with humility.
In my perception, when I've worked with organizations going through change, and sometimes it's been organizations that have gone through scandals and really difficult situations, it always needs to start with the willingness to look ourselves in the mirror and see that while we might have many things that are great, we also have these challenges that have led or these issues within our culture and organizational design that have led to these challenges and that have led to the response to, to these challenges that we need to address.
And I think that one of the biggest dangers for organizations is that we end up in what I call the health illusion. Just assuming we have a great culture because we have good values, but the reality might not be that. And I think the same is true of leaders. We just assume, oh, but I have a good inner compass.
So what we instead need to do is, is instead of, you know, stating on our website and saying, these are our values and they permeate all behavior and drive all decisions that this company, we need to realize that that's not true anywhere.
Instead, we need to be very intentional about striving to live out those values, but also inviting all the information that can help us see where we're revering. Of course. And that's where I think that that humility is so incredibly important to.
[00:10:27] Speaker A: You mentioned that cultures don't toxify overnight. It's often. It's a gradual process. And I think we can all imagine cases, whether we've been there ourselves or we know someone who has, where you have an organization where the culture is kind of in the middle. It's in the process of toxifying, but it's not too late to stop the process from completely toxifying. That strikes me as an especially difficult place to be if you're trying to keep the culture from going. From going rancid. So do you have any recommendations for ethics and compliance leaders who may find themselves within a culture that's going off the rails, but are going to try to, you know, get things right before it gets so bad that the entire place falls apart?
[00:11:10] Speaker B: Yeah, Great, great question.
And I think the first thing is to not just assume that the answer is more training.
I think it is taking a step back and really trying to dig down and understand what is happening to our culture, what is shaping our culture, and what is causing the issues that we're facing.
So we need to get better data, better insights.
I think one of the first things to look at, because I think one of the signs of an unhealthy, toxic culture is silence. And I think it's important to recognize that s silence is not that people aren't talking. It just means that there are certain really important things that are not being said. So what is not being said?
What are the pressures that people are experiencing that they feel that they can't talk about?
[00:12:07] Speaker B: I think something that I believe is true for many of our listeners right now is that they are facing pressure and they might experience exactly what you're saying they might experience.
That suddenly there's a drive towards something where topics like ethics, like integrity, are put a bit to the wayside and I think it's really important in those moments both to try to understand what is happening, but also to really give create the safe spaces for people to talk about the conflicts, the pressures that dilemmas that they are facing. They don't necessarily, it shouldn't necessarily happen in a top down way, but really be creating those safe spaces where they can have those conversations, especially at higher levels of the organization.
[00:12:57] Speaker A: To be as one of the things that we like to keep in mind with this show is that amongst our audience is always somebody's first year in the ethics of compliance space. There's always somebody who's just getting started on this magnificent journey of helping to advance business integrity within an organization.
For those professionals to whom this, this world of organizational culture might be a new concept, what is something you recommend for them to really focus on as they begin to understand just the power and the awesome responsibility of building, maintaining and advancing a true culture of ethics?
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Great, great question.
And I think that the first thing that you need to do is really get curious.
I think for so many people we don't really have a good understanding of what culture is, how it works, how it's shaped. So I think that's an important starting point to really wanting to understand culture and understand that culture is dynamic, understand that culture might look very different in different parts of your organization and it's shaped by the context, it's shaped by the history of shaped by the different lived experiences that people have. So I think getting curious is a really important starting point. And then thinking more sustainably instead of thinking of the typical, I think interventions that we typically do that are often quite short sighted to think about what is it that could instead of being something that we do once again a while becomes something that becomes a part of the rituals of our organization.
And I typically give the example of the difference between an organization where you talk about the values once a year or an organization with teams at every level ask themselves on a weekly or monthly basis how are we living out these values and where are we struggling?
So how can we get things into the daily conversations that people have?
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Tobias, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your story as well as your insights on how organizations can harness the power of culture really to become the best versions of themselves. So once again, thank you so much for joining us.
[00:15:12] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:15:14] Speaker A: To learn more about Tobias's work to help organizations uncover the root causes that undermine cultural health and to build leadership habits that strengthen trust, reduce risk and deliver lasting results visit heartmanagement.org and to read his book you can culture, visit youcanculture.com or your favorite online book retailer and be sure to check out his podcast Leading Transformational Change on Apple Podcasts. It's a terrific listen. You will not want to miss an episode.
For a host of free resources on how to establish, maintain and advance ethical culture, check out the Ethisphere resource
[email protected] resources also to learn how to measure and analyze your own organizational culture. And visit ethisphere.com solutions where you can request a free demo of our Ethical Culture Accelerator, which gives you expert insights into your existing culture and provides you with guidance and resources to make transformational improvements.
Thanks for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. For new episodes each week, subscribe to us on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. And if you don't mind, please follow ethisphere on LinkedIn as well. Every like comment and share helps helps us in our mission to make a better world by advancing business integrity. That's all for now, but until next time, remember, strong ethics is good business.
