The Cultural Balance Sheet: Manage & Measure Workplace Culture

Christy Pretzinger (left) and Andy Goram (right) discuss the Cultural Balance Sheet Framework

Can Culture Be Measured Like a Balance Sheet?

Most leaders understand the importance of workplace culture, but many struggle to quantify it in a meaningful way. Enter Christy Pretzinger, founder of WG Content and author of The Cultural Balance Sheet, who brings a fresh perspective: What if we measured culture like a financial balance sheet?

In this episode of Sticky From The Inside, Christy explains how her Cultural Balance Sheet framework applies financial principles—assets, liabilities, and equity—to organizational culture, helping leaders assess, manage, and optimize it with the same rigor they apply to finances.

Why Culture Matters More Than Ever

Employee engagement, retention, and productivity all tie directly to culture. Yet, culture often feels intangible—hard to measure, hard to change, and even harder to justify as a business priority.

Christy argues that culture isn't fluffy—it’s measurable, actionable, and critical for success. By treating workplace culture like a balance sheet, leaders can pinpoint what’s working, what’s holding them back, and how to create long-term cultural equity.

The Three Components of a Cultural Balance Sheet

🔹 Cultural Assets – These are the strengths of your organization: people, values, trust, and leadership. Your assets define what makes your company thrive.

🔹 Cultural Liabilities – These are the hidden costs that hold you back: rigidity, lack of trust, poor communication, or disengaged employees. The key? Liabilities can be transformed into assets with attention and intention.

🔹 Cultural Equity – The long-term value of your culture. This includes psychological safety, engagement, and retention—all of which directly impact business performance.

Key Takeaways from the Episode

✅ Culture is measurable—leaders should manage it like a financial asset.

✅ Kindness isn’t weakness—true leadership is about clarity, boundaries, and empowerment.

✅ Turnover is a hidden cost—investing in culture reduces attrition and boosts productivity.

✅ Leadership defines culture—every action, decision, and behavior shapes the workplace environment.

The Cost of Ignoring Culture

Many organizations focus on financial performance while neglecting cultural health. But here’s the reality:

💸 High turnover leads to lost institutional knowledge and increased hiring costs.

🚪 Employees disengage when they don’t feel valued, leading to lower productivity and innovation.

🚀 Businesses with strong cultures outperform competitors and retain top talent.

By implementing The Cultural Balance Sheet, leaders can identify liabilities, enhance cultural assets, and create an environment where employees thrive.

Listen and Read Along Now!

This conversation is packed with insights on leadership, engagement, and building an intentional workplace culture. If you’ve ever wondered how to measure and improve your company’s culture, this episode is for you!

Listen now on the player below, or read the full transcript pasted below:

The Full Transcript

Welcome to Sticky From The Inside

[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:36)

Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tonnes more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.

Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses, the sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on. Okay then, today I want to use the metaphor of the accepted and relied upon financial business tool, the balance sheet, to explore whether the same tried and tested instrument can be applied to the seemingly less tangible elements of your people and organisational culture.

In the world of business the balance sheet is a vital device. It lays out your financial assets, liabilities and ultimately reveals your equity, the value your organisation creates. It's a clear, measurable, reliable snapshot of financial health that if used properly helps you manage, balance and grow the value in your business.

But what about the people, the purpose and the behaviours that form the very heart of your organisation? Could the same disciplined approach to managing numbers and figures be applied to something like managing culture? Well, my guest today, Christy Pretzinger, believes the answer is a resounding yes.

Christy is the founder and leader of WG Content, a US-based nationally recognised healthcare content consultancy and the author of the newly released book, The Cultural Balance Sheet, keys to creating an environment where people can thrive. Now, her groundbreaking framework takes the language of finance and it applies it to the world of workplace culture, breaking it down into three actionable components, cultural assets, liabilities and equities. Now, under Christy's leadership, WG Content has become a shining example of how focusing on these elements creates a thriving, productive and balanced environment where people feel valued and inspired to do their best work.

Her philosophy is simple but profound. Culture isn't fluffy, it's measurable, actionable and a foundation for any organisation's success. So, in today's episode, we'll dive into Christy's journey and run the rule over her Cultural Balance Sheet framework.

Together, I hope we'll discuss how leaders can assess, manage and optimise their culture with the same rigour and intent as they do with their finances. This, listeners, could be the very first time I actually get excited by the idea of going over a Balance Sheet. Christy, welcome to the show.

[Christy Pretzinger] (3:37 - 3:38)

Thank you so much for having me, Andy.

[Andy Goram] (3:39 - 3:42)

Great to have you here, my lovely. Not the first time we've spoken.

[Christy Pretzinger] (3:42 - 3:43)

No.

Can Culture Be Measured Like a Balance Sheet?

[Andy Goram] (3:44 - 4:14)

But the first time we've spoken specifically about this book and your framework. We touched on it before when we had a chat on Engage for Success, but now I get you all to myself. I get to talk to you about this in real detail, which I'm really looking forward to.

But before we get into that, Christy, do me a favour. I gave such a very top-level, brief introduction to you and your career to date. Why don't you just fill in all the blanks?

Give us a bit of your background, a bit of your history and how we got to this place today.

[Christy Pretzinger] (4:16 - 6:33)

Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I would say, in terms of my background, I've been doing this a long time. I started being a freelance writer more than 30 years ago and then about 20 years ago, I started building what is now WG Content.

And I had no idea that it would grow into this. I really didn't have some sort of vision for it. The one thing I did have, and I said to my accountant at the time, is that if I can't build a business based on kindness, then I'll go back to being a freelance writer.

And so that really has been my driver throughout my career. And I think that that has served me well. And it was really only in hindsight that I could look back and understand what a pivotal building block that was in the building of the organization that I lead.

So through that, you know, like probably many of your listeners, many people that, you know, you build a business and you put every hat on, right? You're running around doing everything until you can afford to hire some people to help you do it better. So I didn't really, at the very beginning, pay as much attention to my intention, which is something that I say a lot, that you need to have both intention and attention.

Neither one works without the other. So I think it was a driver for me personally, as opposed to something that I kept close attention to until I had more employees. Then I started paying very close attention to the kindness aspect.

And as we built the organization and built the structure, that was always an underlying thought. And that was something that somebody asked me a long time ago, a podcast host said, why was kindness your driver? You work for unkind people, which I thought was a really insightful question, and I had never been asked it before.

So I had to think about it. And I realized that, no, I had not worked for unkind people, but the structures within which they worked didn't foster kindness. So, you know, for example, in a lot of large organizations, the whole evaluation process is not designed to foster kindness.

You know, you have to rank people and rate them and do all sorts of things that, generally speaking, make everybody who's doing the rating and the person being rated feel bad. It doesn't foster kindness, right? So we do things very differently here, from, like I said, the way that our organization is actually structured, to the processes that we employ, to the policies that we have.

Everything is designed to foster kindness.

Why Kindness Is a Business Superpower

[Andy Goram] (6:35 - 7:13)

I think the word kindness can be misinterpreted by many as well, because kindness, to me, isn't softness. You know, we're still here to get things done in businesses. And I think the word kindness is one of those words where lots of people misinterpret, because I think what we're talking about here is doing the things that we need to do, but doing them in a way that encourages the right sort of behavior rather than beats people over the head, or doesn't tell them, or doesn't reveal things, or doesn't be, or perhaps isn't being honest with people.

We're on the same page with that, Christy, right?

[Christy Pretzinger] (7:13 - 9:32)

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I say frequently that kindness is not weakness. You know, brevity is kindness.

Clarity is kindness. Boundaries, none of those things would imply softness or weakness in any way. It's, you know, really, so many things encompass kindness.

You know, respect, and to your point, encouragement. I often think back to the evaluation kind of situation. We were just talking with a group the other day about feedback.

And I had read someone, I loved this sentence, feedback is not a gift, it's a minefield, which I think is a really good one. And actually, what we talked about was how nobody really likes feedback, because it's perceived as unsolicited advice or criticism, neither of which are desired by the, you know, the receiver of that. So we were talking about a different approach to feedback, and the kind that I like to employ, which is coaching to improved performance.

So the thing about something like that, and the thing about this kind of leadership that is kind, that employs these soft skills, is it takes time. But I would say that it takes time in the beginning, as you build this kind of trust, mutual trust, this circle of safety, as Simon Sinek would say, takes time. But once you do it, then it can become a shorthand.

So for example, in an evaluation, we talked about saying, if you're evaluating someone, if you have to play by the rules till you can change them, do the ratings, but don't go over that with your employee. Instead, focus on something that the employee does well. And you can talk about, here's something you did really, really well.

Reflect on that with me and tell me what you did. What skills did you employ there that made that work? And then you can also say, tell me about a time something didn't go the way you would like it to have gone.

And let's talk about how you could take what you did here and apply it over here and make that work. That way, you actually have a possibility of getting improved performance, as opposed to saying, you did this bad, you need to work on this, I'm going to hold you accountable. That doesn't feel good.

It doesn't feel good. It's not kind. So that's the kind of thing I like to talk about, is that you as the leader of your team, of an organization, of a company you own, that you have agency over the kinds of energy and behaviors you put out there, which then determines what your culture is going to be.

[Andy Goram] (9:33 - 10:39)

Love that. I mean, often I think when I'm talking to people about the minefield of feedback, as you put it, I try and simplify it, and we get down to just two flavors of feedback, really. There's praise and correction.

But the consistent thing between those two things is how you deliver that message, which I think is exactly what you're saying. So lovely. So I think we're both on the kindness page, which is no surprise to me, but very, very nice and validating.

But I tell you what I'm really interested to talk to you about today is this cultural balance sheet. Because when you mentioned that to me when we met before, I was like, oh, that's interesting. I'm interested to sort of see how that kind of breaks down.

But before we even get into that, where on earth do you make the link between something as almost amorphous as culture and suddenly strike upon the idea to put it into something that is so tangible and practical as a balance sheet? Talk me through that epiphany or whatever it was that got you to that place.

The Epiphany Behind the Cultural Balance Sheet

[Christy Pretzinger] (10:39 - 13:32)

It actually was an epiphany. I was having dinner with some other business owner friends, and several of them had had successful exits. One had sold to a publicly traded company.

Another had sold to private equity. So they have a lot of experience around exiting a business. And so there's a lot of talk of things such as in the U.S. it's EBITDA earnings and income before taxes. There's multiples, like how much is your net income and what kind of multiple are you going to get when you sell? All that kind of talk. And so I find that interesting.

I love learning from other people about that. I don't have an exit strategy like that right now. But at the time, this was probably five years ago, and one of my friends had been pushing me to write a book.

And of course I had not done it because, you know, why would I do that? I'm a writer. Why would I write a book?

So we were sitting at dinner, and they were talking about all this stuff, and I was kind of musing, and I'm a person that I often don't know what I think until I say it. So I was kind of musing, and I said, you know, of course I look at my balance sheet, but it's almost like I look at my business through the lens of a cultural balance sheet. And I was like, oh, that's an epiphany.

And my friend looked at me and goes, well, there's your book. It's like, okay, well, now I'm going to have to do it. It took me a long time to actually, you know, put wings to my words and do it.

But so that was where I started. And then I went through something. I'm in a group called Entrepreneurs Organization.

It's a global organization across the world. And we had something called Global Speakers Academy that was held in the UK, in your lovely country, several years back. And so I went there, and the whole idea of the academy was to teach you how to craft your signature talk.

And so I thought, okay, I'll do it using your cultural balance sheet. So it was just a week, five weekdays. And on Monday, I'm like, I don't even know if this analogy works.

On Tuesday, I was convinced I was just going to have to hire the teachers to write it for me because I couldn't do it. And they had such, they were so good at coaching, both the people who own the business and the people they employed were so good, and coached me through it that by Thursday, I had the framework for my signature talk, which then was the framework for what has become the book. So I felt like it was a good title and a good way of grabbing people because everybody talks about culture, this touchy-feely from the inside out and compassion and self-awareness, all of which are vital, vital.

But grabbing people, especially in the US, by their balance sheet, because in the US, I believe this is aberrant thinking, but in our country, people tend to focus on the bottom line above all else, which is actually counterintuitive to the way we are hardwired neurologically. You know, we're hardwired for connection and compassion and community and all of those things. But for some reason, the thing we care about here is how much money you got.

So I figured, well, we'll approach it that way. Let's meet people where they are. We're going to talk about your cultural balance sheet.

And so that's why I stuck with that and thought that it would be something that would grab people's attention. But the inside of the book, while it does draw comparisons, is all about the softer side of being human.

[Andy Goram] (13:32 - 14:36)

And that's the clever thing I really want to talk about. Because as somebody who is desperately every day trying to help businesses get hold of this stuff, realize the value of it and help them find their way and their own path to sort of making some of this stuff work, sometimes that initial conversation can go in so many different directions and feel so flabby when we talk about things like culture. It's really hard sometimes to grab what it's really all about.

And that's why I think relating it to something as practical, useful, tangible as something like a balance sheet is genius. I love it. So do me a favor, Christy.

I've kind of, I guess, pulled out what I think the three categories are that we talk about here within the balance sheet. So assets, the liabilities, and then ultimately the equity. Can you give us your overview of how those play out in this sort of cultural playbook in the book that you've written?

Cultural Assets: The Foundation of a Thriving Business

[Christy Pretzinger] (14:37 - 18:56)

Yeah, it is definitely a little bit different because on a balance sheet, it's assets minus liabilities equals equity. Whereas on a cultural balance sheet, obviously, I talk about a section on assets. And there are many things.

Obviously, the one that I believe is most important and I think most people would agree is your people. Nothing gets done without your people. But there's a lot of nuance to that, right?

There's more than just the people. How do you treat the people? What do you say to the people?

How do you guide the people? How do you coach the people? You know, all of those things.

So I go through and I list various, there's a lot of different things, obviously, that are assets, but starting with your people. And the way that we structured the book is we did it in keys. I believe there are 43 of them.

So we have keys that are in the assets section, keys in the cultural equity section. And we did it that way so that people, because we all have very short attention spans now, thank you to our devices, right? So there's little bits of information that people can read.

And you don't have to just read the assets and then the liabilities. You can pick and choose what you want from the book. Because there are practiced strategies that we have used and that in my own experience are effective to that.

So in the difference, the biggest difference I see between a balance sheet, a cultural balance sheet and a financial balance sheet is in the area of liabilities. Because what I discovered through the process of working on this book is that, and also working on the signature talk, is that your liabilities in a culture, if you give them both intention and attention, and you need to do both, can actually move over into the asset column. So for example, one of the things I say is an asset is your values, the consistency of your values.

Like your values should not change over time, but the expression of those values may change as your business grows, as you go into different industries or whatever. Like for example, our values are we are empowered, curious, kind, and fun. Well, one of the things about empowered, then we have a little annotation for it, is we think like owners.

Now, when we were seven people, that was a reasonable expectation that people would think like owners. But now we have a little over 30 people, and most of these people have never been freelancers. They've always been employed, and they don't really even know what that means to think like an owner.

So we can change the expression of that empowered, but we would not lose the word empowered or kind. We are empowered, curious, kind, and fun. That's what I mean by the consistency of your values.

And what I say about your values is that they should be like a thread that flows all the way through your organization and upon which all decisions can hang, whether they're, you know, personal decisions, whether they're decisions about working with a client, whether it's a product, doesn't matter. If you can, you know, hang your decisions on that thread, that creates consistency. So that's an asset.

When you go into liabilities, one of the liabilities can be rigidity, which sounds like it could be contradictory when I just was talking about consistency and now saying almost that consistency is a liability. But we all know the difference between consistency and rigidity, right? I mean, rigidity is this is the way we've always done it.

We're not going to change it. It worked then. It's going to work now.

And I'm a bigger fan of what got you here won't get you there, right? So understanding that, and if you ever catch yourself or your leader saying, well, this is how we've always done it, that should like wake up your spidey senses to be like, oh, maybe I need to maybe I need to be a little more open to different ideas. I think about back when I had my last job quite a long time ago, I was a much younger woman, and I had made a suggestion that was structurally about the whole company.

I didn't know what I didn't know. There were a lot of things I really didn't know, but I thought it was a good idea, and it made sense to me. And so I wrote this little report, and they basically kind of ridiculed it, my leadership did.

And it was really what led ultimately to me leaving. And again, that was in hindsight that I could put that together. So now, you know, we have some younger people in our organization.

And when they come up with ideas that they don't have the whole picture, so they come up with an idea that really isn't workable. I'm quick to make sure I tell my leadership team and myself, pay attention, pay attention. That person is really leaning in.

They're engaged. They're excited. Maybe they're missing some pieces of the puzzle, but that's something to pay attention to so that you don't just dismiss it out of hand.

Cultural Liabilities: What’s Holding Your Business Back?

[Andy Goram] (18:57 - 20:31)

I think that's a really good example, because engagement doesn't necessarily always mean agreeing. Engagement is caring and giving a shit, basically. So I think exactly, what a great example.

Someone's asking questions about it. Someone's curious about it. That to me is engagement with this stuff.

I love that. I love that analogy. I want to just actually just pick up on some of the comments around values, because you're playing my tune, Christy, when it comes to values.

I think it's interesting when you say those values shouldn't really change, but how you express them might. I think that's, from my perspective, I think that's very true if you've got solid, well-thought-through values and your business remains consistent. I think the delivery of those things absolutely has to be sacrosanct.

I love the fact that you sort of say they're there to help make decisions and guide, because I think that's a really good set of values. They're not just a marketing tagline. They actually mean something to the business.

My other perspective is that I can see where values might change, where the business maybe changes direction, and maybe there's some behaviours or things it needs to start to believe that it didn't have before or needs to grow in that area. To me, that's maybe only the other time where you might start to adjust some of those values. Is that in your head as well?

Is that in your playbook, or maybe not so much?

[Christy Pretzinger] (20:32 - 23:00)

You know, I wouldn't say that it's so much in my playbook, because what you just said resonated with me. So many organisations have these really long values. We believe, and especially we work within the healthcare industry in the US, largely with large hospital systems and academic medical centres.

Some of them are faith-based, so they have really long values statements. A lot of them, people don't even know where to find their values, or there's something on their website, and it's not even updated. So that's the kind of thing where I'm like, that's not good.

That's not real values. If people can't spout them, I think it's important, obviously being a word person, I think it's important that the words matter, and again, succinct. So instead of making this long paragraph about what empowered means, we just said, we think like owners.

Now, do we need to revisit that tag? Yes, perhaps we do, but we still talk about empowered. And one of the things that we do here when we talk about our values, and I read this somewhere, and I thought it really clicked with me, again, being a word person, because thinking about your brain neurologically, how things work, if you ask someone, do you feel empowered?

Well, then all of the onus is on the person asking the question, am I empowering you? But if you say instead, how have you demonstrated empowerment lately? Then in their brain, they go to, oh, what have I done?

What have I done that would demonstrate empowerment? What did I do that moved the needle forward in that area? And so we do that monthly in our company newsletter, but we also do it in our team meeting.

So our HR coordinator will choose a value, and then she will solicit, what do you call them, nominations for someone who demonstrated that particular value, whatever it happens to be that month. And then in our team meeting, which is all virtual, we used to call it the WooHoo Cup, because we had a cup we used to give around, but that kind of got unwieldy. So anyway, we still call it that.

So she does a little presentation and says what the value is, and then draws a name out of a hat, and then that person gets a reward, a small reward. It might be a coloring book that has like kind sayings in it or something like that. And it's really more about the recognition, because I'm sure you've heard the thing that babies cry for it, grown men die for it.

It's like people want recognition more than they want money. So giving people recognition around the values is actually twofold. They get the recognition, but the person who nominates also gets to be kind.

So you've got that. And then the third thing is it reinforces the values so that they become lived out in the experiences of the employees.

[Andy Goram] (23:00 - 23:55)

And that's when they add real value to overplay the word value. And I also, I love the fact that the, we're going to talk about measurement and impact later, because I think that's a gnarly old topic anyway. But just those conversations and asking people to think about, well, where have you exhibited this?

What have you done? I mean, that is all about the transference of ownership, which from my perspective, I see as one of the biggest issues, which may end up being a liability within your framework, where people really do not take ownership for the value. There's something that somebody else does, or, you know, we don't, they're just something.

I can't recall them. I'm not really bothered whether you recall them. I want to know whether you live them or not.

And that conversation you talk about, that's what's missing in a lot of organizations, that sort of realization about, well, this is a two-way thing. This is not something that's just done to me. I did not just in receipt of the values, I've got to kind of live and espouse them too, you know?

[Christy Pretzinger] (23:55 - 25:41)

Well, when I talk about frequently, like in our team meetings, I cast the vision for the culture, but we co-create it every day. And if these people didn't live out these values and practice them, and, you know, follow the vision, if you will, by doing this and treating each other with kindness and, you know, being curious and seeking to have fun, even though work isn't always fun. And of course, demonstrating empowerment by knowing where you can make decisions and that you, you know, are free to have authority over your area of responsibility.

If they didn't do that, it would all fall apart. So that when I talk about that over time, that's the long game of trust, which is so easily blown. As you know, one sarcastic comment, and you've blown years of, you know, goodwill between somebody.

So you have to be very careful about that and guard that trust. But it takes time, you know, to build trust. In my experience of it, when I first hired people, they didn't know who I was.

They had no idea that I actually said what I meant, and I meant what I said. But then over time, they started knowing that. They brought their friends.

I mean, some of my first hires all used to work at the same organization 15 years ago. And so they brought each other because like, oh, this is good, this is good, this is good. And then as you get more and more people, other people are recruiting their co-workers, previous co-workers or people that they know, because they're like, no, this is really good.

You want to come here. So most of our people are somehow connected through some web to somebody else that works here, because the culture itself, and that's something that you could monetize, you know, in terms of, I mean, I don't know if I could actually quantify that, but our recruitment efforts are not terribly expensive. And our retention is off the charts because I can't even fill one hand with the number of people who have left.

[Andy Goram] (25:42 - 26:09)

It sounds like me, you're getting very close to quantifying it. And that is, again, another problem people have with getting on board the culture bus, which is why I think, again, it's very interesting, clever to link it back to a balance sheet, because they cannot reconcile this thing about doing the right thing by people and having and creating an environment where people can actually show up, be their best, somehow equates to financial gain, which it, I mean, it sounds ridiculous when you say that, that we're still questioning it in this day and age.

[Christy Pretzinger] (26:10 - 26:59)

Well, it's absurd because the only place people show up on an actual financial balance sheet is in liabilities, which that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. But also what doesn't show up, the hidden cost on a balance sheet is turnover. There's no line item for turnover.

And, you know, I heard the saying somewhere, I don't know who I can give credit to, but basically when someone leaves your organization, it's as if an entire library has just walked out the door or caught on fire. And nobody wants that. I mean, there's all sorts of institutional knowledge that people build up, especially if you do feed into their lives and you try and train them.

And, you know, we give people money for personal development that they can use however they want, whether it's for, you know, something that has to do with work, or if they want to go take an art class, it doesn't really matter because you're feeding into the lives of these people. You have the privilege to feed into the lives of these people. And that makes a difference.

And then those people want to stick around because they know that they matter. And that's a basic human need.

[Andy Goram] (27:00 - 27:27)

. And there it is right there. It is a basic human need.

We've touched on assets and liabilities and given some examples of those things. How does the equity stuff tile this together? How do you reference that in the book?

Are there some key things you could kind of like just expand on us there so we can get the link to the equity piece, the value making stuff?

What Is Cultural Equity and Why Does It Matter?

[Christy Pretzinger] (27:27 - 28:23)

Yeah, the equity piece in this, unlike a balance sheet, like the balance sheet is assets minus liabilities equals equity. Here, it's almost like it could be assets minus liabilities. But as I said, those liabilities in a culture with attention and intention can move into the asset side.

Because if you find yourself being rigid, and you have an intention to be more open, and you start practicing that, then that moves into your asset side. So it's a little squishy when you get into that. But when you get into what the cultural equity is, the cultural equity is the culture itself.

It's the circle of safety that you create. It's the psychological safety of the organization. I was just talking to one of my employees right before this, and she was talking about how apparently, you know, sometimes there are people that just, and I know I can do it too, who tend to talk a little too much.

People can take up all the air in the room, you know how that goes. And unintentionally, it just...

[Andy Goram] (28:23 - 28:26)

I've been accused of it occasionally, Christy, so I get it, I get it.

[Christy Pretzinger] (28:26 - 29:49)

Yeah, we're trying to connect and we talk too much. So this person is on my leadership team, and she was in a team meeting where some people who are known for doing that are. So rather than telling them, you need to stop talking so much because that's not helpful.

And half the time, what they're saying, it's not bad. It's just maybe taking up more space or time than it needs to, you know, it's certainly not intrusive. Anyway, she said to this group, as the head leader of the group, she said, you know, I'm going to be a little vulnerable here and tell you guys that I'm working on trying to be more succinct in my conversation and to avoid, you know, sometimes I know I can ramble.

And so I'm really trying to be conscious of that and make sure that I spend more time listening than talking. And another person spoke up and said, oh, I hear you, I hear you, I'm trying to do the same thing. And it was one of the people that we were aware that did that.

What I love about that is that the leader was open and said, I've got this thing that I'm working on, and I'll probably, you know, fall short, but I'm trying. And so that created a space for an employee to be able to say, oh my gosh, I've got the same issue and I'm trying to. And I think that is, that's what you want is for people to be able to, one of my employees says, open the kimono.

And I'm like, you don't have to open the kimono all the way, but you can give people a little peep and then people feel more comfortable with you. And then they, that demonstrates a safe place for them to be vulnerable back. So that's, those are the kinds of things that are the psychological safety that I'm speaking of when I talk about the culture.

[Andy Goram] (29:50 - 31:08)

Absolutely. Sometimes if I open my kimono open wide, I think I might scare people off where a subtle casual flash may well intrigue people to get them closer to it. I totally love that.

I don't like my analogy, but I love your analogy. That's great. I will come back to, I think this kind of the leadership role in curating this balance sheet.

But before I do, you've started to touch on it. So I think these things are sort of ready. We said before the tangibility sometimes of this, of the culture stuff, and even the assets and liabilities for some people is, is just too woolly to get a handle on.

But a balance sheet is made up of tangible measures, right? You must be able to measure these things to attribute a value to them on a balance sheet. So when we think about this cultural balance sheet, we're thinking about measuring and managing those pieces.

What tools, measures, approaches, thought processes, mindsets do you recommend for trying to really assess these assets and liabilities that go to making up your culture? Are there any particular metrics even that you like to use or you reference heavily in the book?

How to Measure and Manage Culture Effectively

[Christy Pretzinger] (31:10 - 34:00)

I should be more of a metrics person than I am. I'm more like, how does it feel, are people staying? Do they have joy in their work?

Are they building relationships with each other, outside of their teams even, or things like that? So I'm always looking at that. And of course, turnover.

That's a very big indicator of who you are in terms of engagement and of course, retention. I think that some of the things, we have practical things that we do, that we use to reinforce our values and our culture. We don't do traditional performance evaluations.

We like to address things in the moment. So if people have weekly face-to-faces with their manager, and if there's an issue, we want them to address it then. Don't keep it in a folder somewhere for someone's performance review.

We're not that kind of place. So address it then. And we're trying to inspect one of the things that I'm trying to do too in the organization because I'm further away from it now.

I work on it as opposed to into it. And I want to make sure that we take these culture keys that I've written about and reinforce them in our organization, because so many people haven't worked directly with me over the years. And so they aren't maybe aware of some of these things that are foundational to building the organization.

But one of the things that we do is something called Best of Me Worksheet. And it is, I can send you a link to that that you can put in the show notes. What that is, it's publicly available online.

We modified it somewhat because it just worked for us to do that. But it's basically four quadrants. I got it from a gentleman at the Global Speakers Academy, and he's actually British.

And he taught this to us. And it's a quadrant, right? On the upper left-hand corner, it says you get the best of me when.

And on the right-hand upper quadrant says you get the worst of me when. The lower left-hand quadrant says you can count on me too. And the bottom right-hand says what I need from you is.

This is an exercise where we ask the employee to reflect on it. It's not meant to be a review. It's meant for, it's really meant as an opportunity to invite vulnerability on the part of the employee and to give the manager an opportunity to listen, two ears, one mouth, and to listen and let that person speak.

Ask clarifying questions, but this is not a conversation. This is really more for the employee to share. And I always tell the leaders that the most important quadrant to the leader is that lower right-hand quadrant, what I need from you is.

You tell somebody or you ask someone what they need from you and they tell you and then you don't do it. I mean that you've just blown everything that you've tried to do. So I mean if they're asking for something that you can't do, you need to address it in that moment.

But if they're just asking for like, I need you to be more present with me or I need you to give me more feedback more frequently or whatever it is, you need to make sure that you do that. That's part of the trust building.

[Andy Goram] (34:01 - 35:07)

I so agree. It's just weird. I was speaking to a coaching friend of today over a coffee and a regular ketchup and we were talking about the sort of psychological contract that you make with people in your care at work and particularly with new starters and setting some really clear expectations in that conversation right from the get-go.

Look, this is what this organization is like. This is what it's like to work for me. I hope these are the things I expect, the standards I'm looking for.

But then literally playing out this grid and finishing with, look, this is what we're looking at. What do you need from me? What do I need to do to help you kind of deliver to those things?

And she was saying the surprising thing still today, and she's been doing this for years and years and years, is still today how many people don't even think of having that sort of conversation and particularly don't have the expectation piece and then the what do you need from me? So I am hook, line and sinker into that two by two because I think that bottom right quadrant is exactly where you've got to play your cards and spend a lot of time.

[Christy Pretzinger] (35:07 - 35:35)

Well, and you know, the thing about it is that people need to be free to express who they are. I mean, you're a whole person and acting like you're a work person and a home person is sort of like that book that I think the book title is there's no such thing as business ethics because it's just ethics. You're either ethical or you're not.

There really isn't. That's that's just it. That's pretty black and white.

So it doesn't matter whether you're at home or at work. And it's the same thing with with, you know, your whole self, bringing your whole self to to the workplace.

[Andy Goram] (35:36 - 36:34)

Yeah, I was having a conversation with some people in a workshop only yesterday and we were talking about being able to process your emotions rather than park them, because if you just try and park them, they're there in the back in the back of your mind and trying to help some people go through a very simple process, almost just take a breath and have a think. And then the question came back was, so what you're saying is emotions have no place at work. And I was like, well, no, that is not what I'm saying at all.

Why would you leave the very best part of you at home when you come to work? All I'm saying is emotions can be incredible for some things at work. Like if you want to inspire and motivate and encourage emotional language, beautiful that they'll help you get people come over the top.

If you're trying to make decisions, they can get it in the way sometimes they can they can cause some problems. All I'm saying is you can't just shut them off. You've got to understand them and process them to be able to sort of see some some objective clarity out of it.

[Christy Pretzinger] (36:35 - 38:53)

Well, and to your point about bringing your, you know, the best of you to work, by the way, it's your driver for everything you do, your emotions. We are not. We are feeling human beings.

And what what I've been talking about, given that, you know, there are some difficult times going on in the United States right now. And so talking about what do you actually have control over? And I've been thinking about this a lot myself.

And what I know to be true is that the only thing over which I have agency completely is my feelings and then the thoughts that arise from those feelings. So trying to hang on to that and to your point about, you know, emotional decision making. Sometimes it's OK to be to have those emotions be forward, depending on what the emotions are.

But rage is probably not a good one to make a decision from, right? Fear, that's never a good place to make a decision from. So, you know, being able to respond instead of react.

And what I like is a lot of people who, you know, work in the self-awareness space talk about, you know, your thoughts are not you. So if you can just kind of put your thoughts out there. We always talk about the story I'm telling myself, that we can go down all sorts of rabbit holes and just tell ourselves all sorts of stories and then do make behaviors, decisions, or behave in ways about that story you've told yourself, which might not even be true.

So good to kind of distance yourself, even from your thoughts. Sometimes you're the one observing the thoughts. And there's an author named Byron Katie here in the U.S. and she has made her whole living off of four questions. And it's like, you have a thought and it's, is it true? Do I know that it's true? Who would I be without that thought and turn it around?

So, for example, if you say, that person is angry at me. Is it true? Well, I think it's pretty true.

Do I know that it's true? Well, no, I can't verify, actually, that they're angry at me. They could be just having a bad day.

Who would I be without that thought? Well, I probably would be kinder and not defensive and, you know, behaving differently towards them and turn it around. Oh, am I actually the one who's angry?

Maybe I'm the one who's angry and I'm projecting it onto them. So it just gives you an opportunity to put those thoughts out here, as opposed to just having them all inside you.

[Andy Goram] (38:53 - 39:37)

That's nice. That's a really nice practical framework to use there, which I think sort of like leads us into the, I mean, there are so many things I'd like to ask you about this, but there's only so many minutes that we're allowed, really, to talk about these things. When it comes to the leadership piece in here, I mean, we talk about leadership a lot on the podcast and there's multi-facets to it, right?

There's so many things. It's a huge, huge topic. When we think about the leadership role in curating this balance sheet, what do you think the sort of key principles behind that are, Christy?

What's that role of leadership in, I guess, trying to manage and curate that active, useful balance sheet?

The Leadership Role in Shaping Workplace Culture

[Christy Pretzinger] (39:38 - 41:49)

I think that, in my own experience, I can really only speak for myself, that I had to learn to kind of step into my leadership, because I think there are always our own worst critics. And when I first was building the business, I used to think that because I could do it, anybody could do it. So I would almost diminish my own, you know, minimize my own skills and abilities because it felt self-aggrandizing or something like that.

So I think that when you are in a leadership position, it's important to recognize that you're in that role. Maybe someone put you there, you grew into it, you sought it out, whatever it is, but you're in that role and people are watching you. And, you know, that's true whether you're a leader of a family, right, of a team, of an organization, of a company, whatever.

So recognizing the effect that your behavior has on other people is primary to effective leadership. For example, I know that when I get frustrated or, I don't know, I can get real directive in meetings. I can be very kind of da-da-da-da-da-da, and I can interrupt people and just do that.

And that is incredibly off-putting, and it shuts down creativity and innovation, and it has a very, very negative effect on the people that I'm speaking to. So while I fall short frequently, I try very hard not to do that because it's not good. It's not good for anybody.

I also think that in terms of leadership, self-awareness cannot be overestimated in the importance of effective leadership. Now, I always have to say the caveat that there are a lot of people come to mind immediately that probably have the self-awareness of a fingernail that run huge organizations. So that can happen, let's be clear.

But for me, and the way that I want to live my life, my work in building this environment gives my life meaning and purpose. And in order to even be aware of what your meaning and purpose is, you have to have some level of self-awareness. What is important to you?

What's the kind of legacy you want to leave? What's the impact you want to have on the people that you have the privilege of leading? So I think it all starts with self-awareness.

And as you know, that's a very nuanced topic that, you know, could go on for days. So there's a lot to that.

[Andy Goram] (41:50 - 41:55)

Yeah, I just put a video out on LinkedIn about that. And the comments are interesting. So yeah, lots of varied opinions.

[Christy Pretzinger] (41:56 - 41:56)

I'll take a look at that.

[Andy Goram] (41:56 - 42:37)

Yeah. Christy, I mean, this time has just rattled by in terms of our conversation. I love talking to you.

It's always great fun. We have reached a part in my show I like to call Sticky Notes, Christy, which is our summary piece. And because I'm a man of little memory, we put the thoughts and the big takeaways for today on three little post-it notes.

Okay. So if you were going to leave some advice behind for the listeners, for people who particularly are looking to try and improve the health of their cultural balance sheet, what would you leave behind on your three Sticky Notes today?

Three Sticky Notes for Building a Stronger Culture

[Christy Pretzinger] (42:38 - 44:36)

Well, something that I say a lot, but I haven't said yet here today, something a coach shared with me many years ago, probably over a dozen years ago. And my business was much smaller at the time. And she said to me, your business is you, and it won't grow until you do.

So I think that can be true, whether you're a team leader, whether you own the organization, but your growth is paramount to the growth of the people that you lead. So what I did with that was I went and I started a daily meditation practice, and I started reading a lot of books about self-awareness. I really didn't dig into the business part of it.

And then that's when my business first hit a million in revenue after I started doing that. So I would put that one first. You are your business, and your business is you, and it won't grow until you do.

I would say that the other one is really being clear-eyed about the leadership role and the impact you have on the lives of the people you lead, and unpacking that for yourself and however that makes sense, but just really seeking to understand that. Because if done well, there is no more rewarding job on earth than leading people. I mean, that is such a privilege.

It almost makes me choke up that I get to do that, because it's so profoundly important in the lives of the people that you lead. So I would say be aware of that. And I think that the third thing for me, which haven't talked about here, but this is central to my life, is constantly seeking joy.

You know, work can be hard, and there are challenging things that come up all the time, and you have to deal with them as a leader, and you have to make decisions, and sometimes they are better for the organization than they are for some of the people within it. But if you can still seek to find that joy in the things that you do, I find that to be very life-affirming and helpful.

[Andy Goram] (44:37 - 45:05)

And that set of sticky notes just goes to show how deep and complex and rich and wonderful this whole topic is. You know, we touched on some, we didn't cover them all. We could do another 27 episodes of this, and we still would be in the same boat, Christy.

But I've loved every minute of sitting down and talking to you about this today. Before I let you go, where can people find out a bit more about you or get hold of the book? Where should people go?

[Christy Pretzinger] (45:05 - 45:36)

You can find me at our website, wgcontent.com, and that will take you to my LinkedIn page as well. I'm not terribly active on Instagram or things like that, so I'm not there. So really, LinkedIn and the website are the two places.

The book right now is in production, so we're hoping that within a month it will be available, and it will most likely be on Amazon to start. That's the intention. So it's called Your Cultural Balance Sheet, and we do own that URL.

We have not had the time to actually build out a website where people can order it from there, but we will do that as well.

[Andy Goram] (45:37 - 45:48)

Great. So it sounds like we're ahead of the game, so we can get prepared and we can be ready when it comes out, and that's fabulous. Christy, thanks so much for coming on.

It's always a pleasure when we get to have a chat, so I really appreciate you being here.

[Christy Pretzinger] (45:49 - 45:54)

Well, I appreciate you having me on and your patience with my mix-up schedule, so thank you for that.

[Andy Goram] (45:55 - 46:37)

Not at all. Always a joy. You take care.

You too. Okay, everyone. That was Christy Pretzinger, and if you'd like to find out a little bit more about her or any of the things we've talked about today, please check out the show notes.

So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like, comment, and subscribe.

It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.

Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.