The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:13 - 00:00:34:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders like you grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger, positive difference for their teams, organizations and the world. I've said that many times, but never at the start of what is a very special episode. Well, actually the start of a very special five part series Smash adventure.

00:00:35:01 - 00:00:59:02
Kevin Eikenberry
More about that in a second. But the person who's going on this adventure with me doing this series with me is Jennifer Moss. She's a writer, author, speaker specializing in transforming workplace culture. But while there are lots of people that talk about that, she does it using data. She's written two books and twice she's been my guest on the Remarkable Leadership podcast.

00:00:59:07 - 00:01:26:12
Kevin Eikenberry
She joined me for episode number 299 in December of 19. Excuse me in December of 2021, talking about her book, The Burnout Epidemic. And then again last August, August of 2025 for episode 501, when we talked about her latest book, Why Are We Here Creating a Woke Work. We do that again. Why are we here? Creating a work culture everybody wants.

00:01:26:14 - 00:01:56:11
Kevin Eikenberry
And it was during that conversation that she said something. She said, we can change culture in 20 minutes or less. And when we finished that recording, I hit the stop recording button. I said to her that is a really great idea because while culture is a big thing, we don't need to think about it as a, something that lives in the world of pronouncements and policy, but rather that changes in the day to day way we do work.

00:01:56:11 - 00:02:22:06
Kevin Eikenberry
That changes at the micro level. So what, Jennifer and I have put together is an idea that became this episode. Excuse me, this series, which is how to change culture in 20 minutes or less. That doesn't mean we've. That's all we have to do. It's like we only have to spend 20 minutes. It means that there are things that we can do in 20 minutes or less, that can move the needle, and it's a lot of 20 minutes, of course.

00:02:22:08 - 00:02:31:17
Kevin Eikenberry
But what we want to do here is talk about specific things that we can do. So so first of all, after all that, Jennifer, welcome.

00:02:31:19 - 00:03:10:18
Jennifer Moss
I'm so happy to be here. And I'm so glad this, you know, this conversation that we had on your 501st episode, which is remarkable in itself, that that this this is happening, you know, that our, this little idea has come to life. And I think what I love about you and I and the way that we think is that we understand that is, you know, it is in everyone's ability to to have an impact on culture, that it isn't just some big policy, like you said, or it's not, you know, putting, a new value up and then laminating it and throwing it in every part of the organization so that everyone can see

00:03:10:18 - 00:03:22:06
Jennifer Moss
it and feel attached to it. But it doesn't feel authentic. It's usually in these kind of 20 minutes or less micro shifts where we actually feel the difference. In a good culture or a bad culture.

00:03:22:08 - 00:03:42:12
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, you know, I, I have long described culture as the way we do things around here. And so if, if we apply this 20 minute thing that you're going to talk about today in and we're going to by the way, we're going to try to give you a 20 minute or less idea in 20 minutes or less. So that's the that's the big idea of this, of this series.

00:03:42:14 - 00:04:08:13
Kevin Eikenberry
But if, if we're going to do that, if we're going to do something different in 20 minutes, then that moment is changing the culture. Right? So it's it's finding lots of those ways to make that change. This is now how we do it. In this case, we're to talk about rituals. So, but there's another word in, in this title of this episode, this first episode in this five part series, improving community through rituals.

00:04:08:13 - 00:04:18:04
Kevin Eikenberry
So let's start with this idea of community. What why does that matter to us in the context of culture.

00:04:18:06 - 00:04:48:07
Jennifer Moss
What we've really been feeling is this loss of connection, not just, you know, in our workforces, but globally. You know, we've seen this real shift towards focus on connecting through technology, but then not actually having in real life relationships in the same way. And and that's had a massive impact on our communities in the workplace, of course. And I think there's a huge value in having, you know, fun at work.

00:04:48:07 - 00:05:05:06
Jennifer Moss
And we've lost that in a big part of having fun at work is having a best friend or having someone you laugh with, or, you know, you can kind of be frustrated and there's someone there that understands you and gets you and validates that. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why we need friends at work. Gallup has the Q12.

00:05:05:06 - 00:05:21:19
Jennifer Moss
They measure, whether you have a best friend at work and have added that to their Q10 because it was so impactful when they did the research, they found that, you know, if you have a best friend at work, you're 50% more likely to stay. There's all these, you know, really great results that they found from the data.

00:05:21:19 - 00:05:44:10
Jennifer Moss
When people had friendships, they found that pre-pandemic, it was 1 in 3 people globally had a best friend or someone that they call the ally at work. And in recent days, they've found or the the recent data they found that it's now, 1 in 4. So it just feels really unfortunate we've lost our way when it comes to building relationships.

00:05:44:10 - 00:06:05:02
Jennifer Moss
And I think for me, you know, when we think about work right now, it's like going to school without our gym or recess. You know, it's just all work. We're constantly time starved. We have no time for each other and we need to rebuild that back. We need to massage that, friendship muscle, that community muscle so that we can make work fun again.

00:06:05:02 - 00:06:17:05
Jennifer Moss
So there's a reason why we want to show up. And there's a reason for feeling engaged. It makes us feel like we matter. And that should be a strategic priority right now. I think, above all.

00:06:17:07 - 00:06:48:20
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, when we were sort of prepping in and talking about we've been sort of noodling on the idea of this series since, since last August when we first had the conversation, the post podcast conversation. And, you know, you just mentioned something about us being time starved and that's one of the reasons why we want these episodes to be 20 minutes or less, something that you can do quickly, but also something that we can explain to you quickly.

00:06:48:20 - 00:07:11:02
Kevin Eikenberry
So I want to get to that, but I want to make one other point, and that is that all of you listening are our leaders, presumably. But all of you assuredly are humans, right. And so, there's no doubt that you may be wanting these things for yourself. We're talking about this through the lens of what do you do for your organization as a leader?

00:07:11:06 - 00:07:20:03
Kevin Eikenberry
But as it relates to this idea of rituals, you're going to get the benefit, too, because as a leader, you're also a member of the team. Would you agree with that?

00:07:20:05 - 00:07:45:22
Jennifer Moss
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we we talk a lot about leaders in this context of that. They're just making all the policy decisions. They run the whole show. There's an us in them. And in a lot of cases, unless you even if you're a CEO, you're still responding to shareholders and to the board. So everyone is still trying to live their life and be healthy and happy and have connections and, and have support and allyship.

00:07:45:22 - 00:08:11:23
Jennifer Moss
But, but also there's a lot of you that are leading people too, and it is a contagion effect, you know, when your team is feeling really good, so are you, and so is your boss typically, because that means your higher performing. So all of this kind of is interconnected. And so it's about how do we lead and develop, better community through rituals, but also how do we get the benefit out of them as a human being?

00:08:12:01 - 00:08:27:22
Kevin Eikenberry
All right. So I'm a leader. I got 20 minutes and I want to apply. I want to work on something that you're that you're going to tell us. And I got 20 minutes to do something. And so what do you mean by rituals and what's something I can do in 20 minutes to make them different or better?

00:08:28:00 - 00:08:46:07
Jennifer Moss
Well, one of the things that I loved in the research when I was researching for Why Are We here is like really looking at tactical ways to approach building friendships because, you know, even just, you know, as kids, we would go knock on doors and we'd say, excuse me to have a kid here to play. And, you know, so it was so different.

00:08:46:07 - 00:09:07:05
Jennifer Moss
You know, you met kids on playgrounds and and what we found you in the research is that men and women have different types of ways that they build their community. And for men, it's been a real impact from the pandemic, actually. They've lost their network because a lot of the ways that, you know, males in their leadership roles, they make those connections is through activities.

00:09:07:05 - 00:09:27:10
Jennifer Moss
And a lot of the networking activities have stalled out. So we need to kind of massage that muscle. But we also have to understand this is a totally new paradigm of work. And how do we make sure that there's people not feeling left out, you know, making sure that we're creating opportunity to still have those activities and to rebuild these networks?

00:09:27:15 - 00:09:59:11
Jennifer Moss
One of the ways that we do that is just having lunch with someone outside of your space, you know, we there's a huge amount of us that are just sitting at our desk all day eating at our desks. This is great term called dining al disco that I thought was hilarious. And instead we need to step away because the research, this Cornell research found that even just 20 minutes of eating lunch with someone else outside of your desk, like just, you know, talking together, hanging out, sharing a meal can improve morale.

00:09:59:11 - 00:10:25:13
Jennifer Moss
It increase retention. There was better psychological safety and physical safety. They tested this with firefighters and found that it actually was more likely that they'd, they did receive these very scary situations just by having lunch together as a team. So really foundational is just finding ways to build in this lunch. 20 minutes of lunch once per week and really change the impact of morale.

00:10:25:15 - 00:10:47:16
Jennifer Moss
We also want to ritualized, gratitude or ritualized. Thank you. So we should have this regular meeting where we're calling people out, put it on the calendar, and it's a it's a thank you meeting. And we all come together and we highlight someone that's done a really cool job this week or done something innovative. And we just call them out, explain what they did.

00:10:47:18 - 00:11:24:20
Jennifer Moss
We have other people that will put in, you know, good words for people making sure that we are just celebrating each other. It's also about celebrating smaller milestones. So one of the things that we're feeling right now is a sense of hopelessness. If you look across, you know, us, it's global data, but US, Canada, Australia, UK, what we've been looking at in the world's happiest countries is that we might still be in the top 20 in some of these OECD countries, but when you actually index for youth, we're in the US, we're 68 happiest country if you look at those 30 and under.

00:11:25:01 - 00:11:46:15
Jennifer Moss
So we want to, you know, rebuild this way of creating hope. And we do that by not making the big celebrations and the milestones and the big pizza parties. When we hit the end of a project that could be a year long or six months long, even three months long, instead, we want to come up with these ways of celebrating good ideas and each other more regularly.

00:11:46:15 - 00:12:17:06
Jennifer Moss
So maybe it's once a week, maybe it's once a month. These are our very specific rituals. This is just three examples of rituals that we can bring back that will then create this sense of connecting, sense of, morale building. We are then working together to have a shared objective, have a shared goal that makes us feel really good because it's showing that we're productive, showing that our work is meaningful, but we're doing it together.

00:12:17:08 - 00:12:29:19
Jennifer Moss
And that in the end, those rituals end up leading to higher community and just a better sense of friendship amongst each other. And then we feel it, you know, show up in those business outcomes in our organizations.

00:12:29:21 - 00:12:48:22
Kevin Eikenberry
Let me that's all excellent stuff. And any one of those things you or you can do, and and clearly many of them in way less than 20 minutes. Let me share another one with you all that is maybe worth considering. And so, my team is, is virtual. And there's actually one other person down the hall here today.

00:12:49:00 - 00:13:11:08
Kevin Eikenberry
She's here 1 or 2 days a week. But other than that, my team is spread out across the country, and, we're rarely in the same place. And when we have our monthly team meeting, sort of the all hands meeting, if you would, we start I start that meeting with a ritual that if I didn't do it, I'm confident they'd say, like, what's going on?

00:13:11:10 - 00:13:35:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And that ritual is we do something that's fun. Well, at least Kevin thinks it's fun. Not everyone may think it's fun, but it's meant to have us talk about something, not work, and to get to learn something about each other. A little bit more, whatever it is. So, like last month, for us, knowing all of our particular backgrounds, it was a perfectly fair thing to ask everybody.

00:13:35:12 - 00:13:55:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Say, like, what's one of your favorite Christmas traditions? And so everyone shared a Christmas tradition, and we all learned something about that person, and they could choose to share something pretty superficial or pretty in-depth and pretty far back in their past. Like it doesn't matter. Like I'm doing another one in a couple of days where we're going to ask.

00:13:56:01 - 00:14:16:16
Kevin Eikenberry
It was recently National Word Nerd Day, so I gave him three things you can say. What's your favorite word? What's your favorite word game like? It's the thing itself is not the point. The thing is, it creates, a chance for everyone to share for about 30s. And we can go around the group virtually and do that.

00:14:16:21 - 00:14:26:21
Kevin Eikenberry
We have a little laugh, we learn a little something. Sometimes a new connection gets made. And so it's just another example of something that you can do.

00:14:26:23 - 00:14:49:05
Jennifer Moss
I love that you said that, Kevin, because what you're saying, too, is validating that the reason that we're not, you know, that we don't have community isn't because we're working remotely or it's hybrid. You know, a lot of this push for return to office has been about improving morale. But we've seen in the data shows, and I talked about it explicitly in the book of around.

00:14:49:07 - 00:15:12:20
Jennifer Moss
It isn't it isn't about this way where work in the mode of working isn't where we're working. It's being intentional. It's giving, the time for rituals. It's focusing on that as being a strategic priority and the reason why people are not social. And we mentioned this being time serve is because they're just overworked and their workloads are unmanageable.

00:15:12:20 - 00:15:35:18
Jennifer Moss
And so all of those other things like building community feels like fluff or is deprioritized, but it is actually a big factor in the business outcomes that we want. So we have to invest in that if we want to be competitive, if we want to, you know, show growth or sales improvement, all of it ties to these like fundamental things.

00:15:35:20 - 00:15:55:22
Jennifer Moss
And you can do that remote. You can do that in person. But it is more about the intention versus that, you know, it has to be about where it's about how and when and with whom. And that's, I think, what we're missing, in our structures of how we're working right now when it comes to, to building community.

00:15:56:00 - 00:16:08:07
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm just going to say one more thing. I'm going to close because we're going to meet our objective of less than 20 minutes. Jennifer. So I just want to make this observation to you. You all might be saying, well, wait a minute. If we're time starved, we have all this stuff. How do we make the time for these things?

00:16:08:07 - 00:16:41:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, first of all, these aren't very long. The things we just have to not take very long. And second of all, they're an investment. We make that. We make we make the time for the kinds of rituals that Jennifer and I have talked about as a way to start to make the shift. And when we build community, in this case, through ritual, what we start to do is elevate everyone's mental fitness and psychological fitness to a level where they're even actually better able to manage the time pressures.

00:16:41:13 - 00:16:49:09
Kevin Eikenberry
So like we we just have to think about this in the big picture. And when we do that, the chances of our success go way up.

00:16:49:11 - 00:17:02:01
Jennifer Moss
I love that that's so true. That's a perfect way to end our 20 minutes, is invest in each other and spending time with each other and and then seal, you know, us reaping the rewards.

00:17:02:03 - 00:17:19:12
Kevin Eikenberry
And if you've been with me before anybody, you know that there's a question I ask you every time. And just because this is a special series doesn't mean I'm not going to ask you this question. And it is now what? What is the thing that you just heard that you're going to act on? Because if you don't act, it wasn't really worth much like maybe we're entertaining.

00:17:19:14 - 00:17:36:22
Kevin Eikenberry
But you, you could get something else more entertaining. But if you take action on one of the ritual ideas that we talked about today, you can start to make a difference in your culture, and you can start to change your culture, just a little bit in 20 minutes or less. And so hopefully you found this valuable.

00:17:36:22 - 00:17:59:09
Kevin Eikenberry
And if you did, you want to come back, which means you got to make sure you subscribe. Right. And so if you're hearing this or watching this for the first time because you're a fan of Jennifer, and why wouldn't you be, then you want to make sure you subscribe so you don't miss the rest of the series, but also all the other good stuff that I share here, the other interviews that I do in our normal process, as well as the weekly, remarkable TV episodes.

00:17:59:09 - 00:18:13:13
Kevin Eikenberry
I do as well. So hopefully you'll subscribe and hopefully you'll tell someone else to come join us, because I'll be back next week, and we'll be back next week with the second episode of Changing Your Culture in 20 Minutes or Less, right here on the Remarkable Leadership Podcast.