Why We Need To Make Time For Culture Audits w/ Aleha Ingles

In this episode of Relationships at Work, Russel chats with instructor, consultant and academic Aleha Ingles on the value of culture audits and where to start in our organizations.

Aleha shares her experience and insights in...

• Importance of leadership awareness.
• Consistent cultural audits to keep up with change.
• Setting clear communication expectations.
• The need for psychological safety in audits.
• Customer experience as a reflection of employee experience.
• Frequent and diverse feedback collection.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Aleha Ingle and here is why she is awesome. She's an instructor, speaker, US Air Force veteran with six associate degrees! Overachiever. Two bachelors and three masters, all focusing on the concepts of leadership management and culture. She's literally hoarding degrees. She's the driving force of Work Culture Works, a consultancy helping organizations to understand their current culture and in taking the steps needed to change and improve them. And she's here to help us understand where we need to start auditing and looking to improve. Hello, Aliyah.

Aleha Ingle: What's going on, Russel?

Russel Lolacher: Thanks so much for being here. Yeah. Culture audits. That's interesting. But before we get into that, I have to ask you the question I asked all of my guests, Aleha, which is what is your best or worst employee experience?

Aleha Ingle: That's a very interesting question because this, that's exactly why I do what I do as a, as a culture expert. So while I was active duty, I was deployed in 2015 and I experienced a sexual assault while I was deployed. I did not report it. I didn't deal with it in the best way. So I came back and naturally I was erratic, emotional.

I was not behaving the way that I normally would. And my leadership, instead of asking, why is our top performer all of a sudden a piece of crap? Why is our number one troop all of a sudden not performing, not where she's supposed to be? Instead of asking those questions, they started punishing me for not meeting standards.

And so when I, I started digging deeper, deeper and deeper into depression, to the point where I became suicidal because of the way they were treating me. And thankfully I had somebody on my team that recognized the signs and he was able to come pull me out of that and help me find that, that, you know, the sources that I need, the resources that I need to, to overcome it.

But that person that led the, the, the pack that pushed me into that place, never apologized, never acknowledged what they did wrong. And so that's why I do what I do today, because I don't want anyone else to ever feel what I felt to that point where I wanted to die because of how I was being treated in a workplace environment. So yeah.

Russel Lolacher: I, it breaks my heart. Well, first off that story, I'm so sorry. The other part very much though, as well is the people don't understand that horrible experiences... that is trauma, not a bad day at work. It is something you carry for decades with you. But, and I mean, that's, that's on the extreme side of things, but some leaders just think, you know, well, they won't, it's just, don't worry about it. It's a thing. But then that. As we know, as you know, as we all know, 20, 30 years later, there's still scars based on those, that one day, that one moment, it doesn't matter. Looking back as a expert in audits now, what were some of the possible red flags that you would be looking for now that you may not have been educated enough to look for then

Aleha Ingle: Oh, man. The first thing I would have looked at is what is our leadership doing to be aware of, of their own team? You know, the people on the team. I was the, I was the one that they would call when something was wrong. You could always call Aleha. You could, Oh, if you ever needed anything, you know, Aleha is going to, going to have the answer, or at least she'll know somebody that has the answer.

And not one person stopped and thought, wait a minute, something's different. And so I would've said, first of all, where are my leaders and why are they not aware of what's happening? Why is not one of you even questioning the, the significant shift in our, our most reliable employee? Not one person. So I, I feel immediately that's on leadership.

What are my leaders doing? They're not doing what they're supposed to be doing.

And I also would have looked at conflict management because obviously no one's even considering the fact that there might be some conflict going on that may have, may have led to something like that too.

Russel Lolacher: What shocks me in that example is that you don't even have to be a good leader. Like you don't even have to be the most human centric leader. You could just be the leader that needs to deliver a thing, create a service, you know, the lowest for a manager, a supervisor, basically a checkbox exercise. And if you notice there's a person not getting you the thing or fixing the problem, and you still don't ask questions... ah...

Aleha Ingle: Yeah. Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Shocking. So let's, let's help organizations figure out where to look for these canary in a coal mines, these red pink flags are not even red flags yet. So let's start with definitions though, because I want to understand what a cultural audit even is. So can you explain what auditing is in relation to a workplace culture?

Aleha Ingle: Yeah. So the technical definition, Dictionary. com, it's a comprehensive evaluation of an organization's values, beliefs, behaviors and practices to understand the current workplace culture and identify areas for improvement. That's the fancy way of saying, are we doing the basic necessities to keep our people engaged?

Are we setting the stage so that the people have what they need to be as successful as possible? Are we giving our people the tools that they need or are we just throwing them out there into the wind and saying, figure it out?

Russel Lolacher: Can this be confused with other workplace organizational assessments? Because I've seen a lot done where they're looking at, you know, your personality or how the organization's functioning. Is this a different piece or does it work hand in hand?

Aleha Ingle: I think, I think it's definitely a work hand in hand. You know, either the personality test tells you how to arrange your, your people, where, where their strengths are going to be most effective, but it doesn't dig into the little things like, what's your customer experience look like? Because your customer experience is a reflection of your employee experience.

Your CX equals your EX. So, are you even looking at what it looks like at the bottom? Are you considering, do people even know what your company values are? Do your employees, if you asked your employees right now, Can you recite your mission, vision, and company values? If they can't do it, then sorry to say it, but leadership is failing.

Russel Lolacher: Do you find that a lot of leaders will be more interested in what the culture could be rather than what the culture is? And I asked this question because a lot of organizations will go, what is our culture? And they're looking at it as a North Star, as a vision statement of the culture they want when they don't even recognize if they even have the culture to attain that future state.

Aleha Ingle: Right, right. And, and the thing about culture is it, it, it's constantly evolving. There's always room for improvement, and you can't just set it and then forget it. You can't. Because people are constantly learning, growing, and changing, and so your culture is going to consistent, consistently learn and change and grow with it. So you have to consistently do that audit to look for those room, those places for improvement.

Russel Lolacher: So I guess that leads me to the question is what should we be focusing on in a workplace audit? Are we talking culture and leadership and like, where is the buckets for this audit?

Aleha Ingle: So I, I, a long time ago when I first started my, my organization, I created the seven pillars of, of work culture. And these seven pillars are in my experience, in my research for my doctorate program are the seven most impactful elements that impact your work culture. And that's your company values, your customer experience, employee development, pay equity... and equity, not equality, leadership, communication, and conflict management.

Those seven things are the most impactful things on your work culture and your work center.

Russel Lolacher: Is any of those more important than the other or is it an equality thing?

Aleha Ingle: It's definitely, it definitely shifts. One's not more important than the other, and one doesn't impact more than the other. But, depending on where your organization is in, you know, development it could, one could be more impactful now, and then as you grow, a different one will start impacting.

Russel Lolacher: So Aleha, you've gone into these organizations, you've done these audits. How have you seen them impact a workplace culture?

Aleha Ingle: I would say that one of the, the ones that, no matter where the organization is, in growth, leadership, and pay equity are going to be the top two. No matter where you are, those two are going to be somewhere in the mix. And it could be anything from, I should clarify when I say leadership, because leadership, it doesn't necessarily mean your leaders are bad.

It could potentially mean that your leaders just aren't aware of some things that they need to be aware of. But again, that also means that they're not as involved as they should be. So and when it comes to pay equity, the reason I say equity, not equality is because everyone... equality means that everyone starts with the same pay, but equity means that everyone gets the right pay based on their experience and education and what they bring to the table.

And so if you've got someone with 10 years experience and a brand new person on the job, and both of them are getting the exact same pay, you're going to have some disgruntled employees. It's just the way it goes.

Russel Lolacher: So as much as I would love the time to go through every seven, I want to focus on one specifically, and I'm going to nerd out a bit because as I've mentioned on the show, I'm a communications nerd. So I really want to dig a little deeper into that one specifically. What, what are the red flags when it comes to communication?

What are the things that an audit would specifically be looking for?

Aleha Ingle: People that don't reply to emails, that's a very big one. That's a real big one. Because if you think about it, if someone emails you, it's because they need something. And if you choose not to reply, you're leaving that person without the tools that they need to succeed. And you're also showing them a certain level of disrespect because they're trying to get a job done and you have sent the message to them by not replying, that their job is not as important as yours.

Russel Lolacher: Could it also be, and this is where it's not as black and white and obviously there are grays. So for instance, you're on one side going, I emailed you, you didn't respond. The other person's like, I am so busy that you are not the top of my list of to do's. I would get back to you. I'm just not responding as quickly as you want me to respond.

Aleha Ingle: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: What does that say about a culture?

Aleha Ingle: It means that that person is has too much on their plate. Period. Period. If someone can't reply just a simple 'Hey, I, I don't have time to gather that data for you right this second, but I'll get back to you within three days or whatever even that is still better than just not replying. So if you can't even give a simple 'Hey, I'll get back to you in a few days,' then that person is overworked, overworked.

That person needs help.

Russel Lolacher: Do you find though that definitions matter? And I loop back to that. So for that same example, someone's definition of timely is different than somebody else's definition of timely. Neither are wrong, but it is a problem when you're trying to define what the bar of success is. How does that...

Aleha Ingle: Yep. So that's when you put it in your expectations, right? Expectation management is something that I harp on a lot. A great example is, one of my doctors she's always late. Always late to, to our appointments. And so I already know she's going to be 15 to 30 minutes late. That's the expectation, and so I don't get upset because I know that she's going to be late.

People get mad when there's an expectation that doesn't get met. So if you, if I expect to hear back from you in 48 hours, and I never do, I'm going to feel disrespected. But if I know the standard is 72 hours, then I'm not going to get mad. It's all about expectation management.

Russel Lolacher: It's almost a different, different way of looking at trust too, because if I know you and I expect you're going to be late, I can trust that you're going to be late. I trust that you're not going to show up in the way I need you to, but that's it. It's a context and confidence in understanding that who you're working with might work differently than you. Which of course, Aleha makes me think of diversity because definitions are different by different cultures, by different generations I'm thinking that timeliness, what a Boomer might think is timely is not what a Gen Z or Gen Zed thinks is timely.

Aleha Ingle: Bingo.

Russel Lolacher: I'm assuming that that are we speaking from the same song sheet before we do the survey...

Aleha Ingle: Absolutely.

Russel Lolacher: is important?

Aleha Ingle: Absolutely. Yeah. And putting that expectation in your company values or maybe your, your SLP or employee handbook, you know, putting that expectation in there sets the standard so that everyone is going off of the same expectation.

Russel Lolacher: Who's responsible for all this, Aleha? Is it executive pushing the audits? It's HR with their limited budgets coming in and going, you know, we really should do this? Like who should be implementing them and how often should they be implementing them?

Aleha Ingle: I would, I would do a culture audit every six months. And I don't think HR should be involved. HR should, and the reason is because HR's hands are tied a lot. There's a lot of things that HR cannot do. And some things, if they're aware of them, legal actions have to be taken. Whereas if you're aware of it, if someone else outside of HR is aware of it, maybe you can get it addressed and fixed and corrected before it has to become that, you know, that involved.

Russel Lolacher: Does it influence the audit based on who's delivering it? Cause you're saying about HR not doing it. And I know there's some conflict with HR because the perception is, are they serving me or are they serving the executive? Who do they actually report to? Are they looking out for me or their best interests?

So I can see the the delivery. We're back to communication. It's not just what you say, but who says it can influence this.

Aleha Ingle: Yeah, I, I, in the, the thing with the culture audits is you can pay a third party to do it, but it's really not necessary. You can do it from the top, but the, you, it has to be supported and, and reinforced by the top. The, the, the C suite has to champion the culture audit, because if they don't believe it, no one else is going to.

Russel Lolacher: Where do organizations get it wrong? We're doing an audit. We're doing, we're doing this thing, but there's, as with anything, it's sometimes not smooth or sometimes not as successful as it could be. So what are some common challenges?

Aleha Ingle: So the one thing that I see most common is it's, it's a concept called management by announcement. And this was come up by, come up with by a S Chris Edmonds, S Chris Edmonds in a book called the Culture Engine. And he talks about management by announcement, meaning leaders, they, they spend all this money to determine where the holes are in the culture. And they say, all right, this is what we need to do to fix it. They go out and they say, now do all these things to fix it. And then they walk away. No one sticks around to make sure that these things are actually being implemented at all the correct levels.

And so you just throw it out there and expect everyone to just know what to do. But they don't, because if they did, they wouldn't have needed you to begin with. And you know as Chris Edmonds, he talks about, you know, when you implement a, a culture change, it's kind of like when you're talking to your teenagers. If you want your teenager to take the trash out, you don't just say, go take the trash out and expect them to do it.

It's not going to work that way. You have to walk them over to the trash can, show them how to pull it out, show them how to tie it, show them how to put a new bag in, walk them to the dumpster. because that's how teenagers operate and employees are not that different. You cannot tell them to go do something and then just expect it to just happen.

You've got to walk them through it and make sure things are being implemented the way your vision wants it to be done.

Russel Lolacher: That brings me flashes back to my own childhood where my dad didn't understand the difference between telling me what to do and asking me what to do. Asking me to do a thing. Because if you told me to do a thing, little six year old Russel, his back would get up. He immediately put up a wall. You don't tell me to do anything.

You asked me to do a thing and I'm moving mountains. I will do whatever you need me to do. And that's just, like this isn't special. People think this is a special thing in the workplace when it's just humans being humans, the same stuff you act and respond to in life are the same things that happen with the humans at work.

So to treat it special, like executive going, not my problem anymore. I delegated. Not, not how this works. That's not leadership.

Aleha Ingle: Right, right. You know, delegate does not mean get, dump it on someone else and walk away. Delegate means that you're still responsible for it to get done. You're just asking someone else to support you and help you make it come to fruition.

Russel Lolacher: And I'll take that one step more is that it's not just about responsibility, it's accountability. It's not just you're responsible for that survey happening. You're accountable for the results. If they're bad, that's the reflection on you as a leader. What are we going to do about you as a leader? Yeah, I always, we talk about responsibility, but that accountability piece, Oh, we need to talk about that a lot more.

Aleha Ingle: Yes. One of my favorite catchphrases is accountability is uncomfortable. It absolutely is because it requires things that we don't do on a daily basis. It requires self reflection and introspective thought. It requires us to acknowledge when we have made mistakes and that is a very uncomfortable place to be.

Russel Lolacher: I would love that not only to be accountable to acknowledge the mistakes, but fix them so they don't ever do them again.

Aleha Ingle: Right, right.

Russel Lolacher: So how do you get an executive who spends all this money that does all these things and then you're like, and now you have to do something with the data. The data is useless until you actually do something with it. Cause I've had a lot of people, guests on my podcast, who have done audits or surveys of employees, the minute executives saw them, didn't like the results, and were like, thanks for letting us know.

And then it's crickets until the retention rate is zero. Right. How do you, how do you move the needle on that?

Aleha Ingle: I like to show them the cost of turnover because a lot of them forget how much it costs. They say, well, if they want to quit, let them quit. Okay. You, if you want them to walk away, that's fine. But you're looking at a 15,000 cost. And when you're talking about recruiting and retraining someone new, because you didn't want to acknowledge that this human being was, has needs just like you.

Russel Lolacher: How do you ensure you're getting open and honest employee feedback? Because you can have a healthy culture. and still have a business area that's not doing great. Or you can have a toxic environment and people are either going to be over sharing or they're going to ham up because it's going to be career suicide.

Less of a lack of a better word. So how do you ensure to get that good, good information?

Aleha Ingle: Yeah. You know the, the, the foundation of having a healthy culture is all about, creating that psychological safety. Okay. You're never going to get someone to be honest with you if they don't feel it's safe. If someone feels like being honest with you is going to result in them getting fired or their boss treating them like crap the next day, they're not going to be honest with you.

You have to create an environment that creates psychological safety, where people feel it's okay to be honest. And it's okay to make mistakes because someone is not going to be accountable if they don't feel safe to acknowledge that mistake that they made. I

Russel Lolacher: So what does success look like? You've done the audit. You're looking at the results. When does Aleha go, Oh, this was a good audit. Like what is the, what is the bar?

Aleha Ingle: I look at retention rates, but I also include, I like to include, feedback participation rates. Because if people, if, if you're not getting a good show, On the number of people that are willing to conduct these surveys. That's an automatic fail. If people aren't willing to do the surveys automatically, that means they're afraid to be honest with you.

Automatically, that means there's something going on that they don't want you to know about, and they're afraid to be honest. If you're getting that high retention rate, that high participation rate, then you're, you're, you know you're on the way up. You know you're looking the, on the way up. Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Do you have any story... obviously, we don't name names here, but do you have any stories where you're like you went and did an audit and it was that lightbulb moment for they were like, oh, I didn't realize and they actually shifted the culture?

Aleha Ingle: Yeah, so this one actually happened pretty recently. I had a, I had a business owner that, he had a lot of, you know, Lack of accountability in, in his company. And he really wanted someone, he wanted to hire a CEO that would come in and kind of clean house. He didn't mean it in a disrespectful way. He just wanted people to, to remember that accountability is, is important.

And that you know, if, if I ask you to do something and you promise you're going to do it. I'm going to expect you to do it. You know, simple things like that. So he hired this new CEO and kind of said, now clean up shop, but he didn't stay and make sure that the CEO was actually doing what he wanted him to do.

So he, he dropped him into the office and then left. And then what this guy did was he ended up firing all the good people. And the only people left were the ones that were desperate to keep their job. And when someone is in that place, they're not going to perform well. They're not, they're going to, they feel like they're under fire.

They're afraid the whole time. Nobody's going to ever perform at their maximum capacity when they're afraid for their job. And that was the only kind of people that were left after the CEO came in. And so I had to come in and say, 'Look what just happened. This is a perfect example of you saw the holes, you knew what the problem was, but you didn't, you didn't try to implement anything that created that psychological safety. You just told this guy to come in and clean house and all he did was get rid of all your good people. Now you've got to start from the bottom up. What are you doing?' And he said, 'Oh my God, I didn't even realize that was happening.'

Russel Lolacher: Ah, I feel as much as I am critical of leadership. I feel sorry for a lot of leaders because they don't have the training. They don't have the awareness to even know that these are red flags, to know that a culture is broken because they're thrown into a position far before they're ready. No training. And then, Hey, now you're an executive. If you move up the ladder 10 years later.

Aleha Ingle: right. Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: So, so what's, what's the tipping point for leaders to know they need a cultural audit? So it's the, you said it's the retention, but there's a lot of people that will stay and a lot of people that will slowly leave. It's not a big change right away. I mean, obviously the pandemic was a big shift, but generally retention is not a big spike.

It's a gradual thing over time and not something sometimes as obvious unless you're looking for it. So what would be just, you know what, this is the sign you need to look at because if you're not, then you might have a bad culture.

Aleha Ingle: Those exit interviews are gold. Gold! Because that's when people are no longer afraid to tell you the truth. If you ask someone, 'Honest to God, tell me the truth. Why are you leaving?' If someone really did have a poor experience at your company, you're gonna find out in that exit interview.

Russel Lolacher: So exit interviews are funny. And I, I agree. I like, I smiled as soon as I'm like, yes, exit interviews.

Aleha Ingle: Oh, I love them.

Russel Lolacher: Oh, but I, and I, I wrote this recently in one of my newsletters is that, sometimes you'll notice employees won't want to do an exit interview. And I don't think some leaders are curious enough to ask because that person's like, Oh, I know what you do with the data from exit interviews. Nothing. I know that I'm trying to get the hell out of here. And you want me to spend this time doing a thing that is going to be a waste of time for me and you, you're just doing a check box. That needs to be a sign that you have a cultural audit. If people don't want to be honest with you.

Aleha Ingle: Absolutely. And also, also, your exit interview should be conducted by your C suite, not your HR.

Russel Lolacher: Interesting.

Aleha Ingle: Your C suite. Because they're the ones that can actually make the changes. HR is going to give it to whoever is, is that they report to, but again, it's going through so many people that by the time it gets to somebody important, do you, do you really trust it? I also love, love, love customer experience feedback. So your, your customer reviews... you know, I said previously CX equals EX. It's a perfect example of. If your customers are pissed off, I promise you, your bottom line employees are pissed off. They're not going to give your customers the best experience if they're not getting the best experience themselves. It just is what it is. So whenever I get a poor customer service experience from another company, I automatically know their culture is crap. I already know.

Russel Lolacher: And that, and sadly, that will probably be the final straw for a bad leader. The customer side of things, because customer equals money. They're ignoring employees, but customer equals money, then finally they listen, and that's a sign of a broken culture too. Is that you have to wait for customers to complain before you start recognizing.

Aleha Ingle: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I call the customer experience the CEO's litmus test. If you really want to know what's going down, going on at the bottom, at the bottom ranks, check your customer feedback.

Russel Lolacher: What are the tools to audit? Are we surveying? Are we doing one-on-one interviews? What's what's best practice or better practices? I hate the term best 'cause they can always be better. What is the better practices...

Aleha Ingle: Sure.

Russel Lolacher: for this process?

Aleha Ingle: Honestly, the best way that the, the most effective way to get the most accurate information is to pull in a third party. It just, people, even in the most safe, psychologically safe environments, you're still going to have some people that are afraid to be honest. It is what it is. But I would say if you want to do it yourself, if you want to conduct a self audit, that's perfectly okay.

But I would take a, a comp, a hybrid approach. I would do surveys. I would do interviews. I would do you know, the customer feedbacks. I would take all of that and put it into one aggregated data. You're never going to get 100 percent honest feedback on those surveys, even if they're anonymous. Let's be honest.

They're not, they're not really anonymous. They're really not. And, and some of us are, don't care. You know, I, when I do my, my surveys, I'll, I'll tell you everything. I don't care if you know, I'll put my name on it for you. I don't care. This is what I, Aleha said this. Yup. On this date. Yup. But not everybody is like that. So I would definitely take an aggregate approach.

Russel Lolacher: I love that you brought up anonymous 'cause I am of two minds with anonymous surveys. One on one side, if people can only be honest if they're anonymous, that's a sign that the culture might be broken. But the other flip side is there's a lot of introverts and a lot of people that do not want to put their name to things.

And that's where the diversity, inclusivity thing comes in where they, they don't feel open. They don't want, they feel shy from being honest. And that's a them thing, not necessarily a culture thing either.

Aleha Ingle: Right. Right.

Russel Lolacher: Is there an audit between the audits? Because so you're talking about audits every six months, which a lot can happen in six months. And you know, there's some people listening, going, we do it every year. We do it every three years.

Aleha Ingle: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Which, again, breaks my heart. Is there something organizations could or should be doing in between those six, six months to at least lay the groundwork before that audit happens?

Aleha Ingle: Absolutely. So that, that kind of goes back to, you know. You're, you're constantly pulling this data with your customer feedbacks, your exit interviews, when your supervisors should be sitting down with, with their direct reports, regularly. I, I say at a bare minimum monthly, but realistically more often than that. And those, those, that's the time when you can give them that psychologically safe environment to say, 'How are you?

Do you have all the tools that you need? Is there anything that is prohibiting you from, from succeeding? Is there anything that you're missing? Is there any one that is making things difficult for you?' And if you're creating that psychologically safe environment, then people are going to be open and honest with you about that.

And that then once you get to that, that survey, every six months, people you're not going to have any surprises because people have already been telling you.

Russel Lolacher: What are your feelings on pulse surveys as a way to sort of continually, sort of check in from a week to week basis?

Aleha Ingle: I, they're not bad, but they can become monotonous. They can become something that when people say, 'Oh, let me just click through this and get rid of it.' You know, when it's too often, people just look at it as a chore.

Russel Lolacher: And they need to see that you're regularly doing something with that information that the information is not just going into a void. Every week going, yeah. I feel a seven at a 10 today and tomorrow I might feel a 10, but what do you do? What are you tracking this? Does anybody even look at this?

Aleha Ingle: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, one thing that I love to suggest is post the results on, you know, a community board or something that people can see, not the actual words, but you know, the percentages of, you know, if someone that the rating and the scales and everything like that. So if someone is feeling a little, not involved or not included or disgruntled or whatever, and they look at the board and they say, wait a minute, I'm not alone. 72 percent of us are feeling this way right now. Okay. Maybe we're on to something.

Russel Lolacher: Trends, Aleha. Trends. We should be paying attention to trends. And you circled back to the communication thing. If you're not communicating results, that's part of a communication problem you have within your own organization.

Aleha Ingle: Right, right.

Russel Lolacher: Have you ever done an audit and had to do another audit? Has it ever gotten to the point where you're like, you have to do a do over?

Aleha Ingle: Oh yeah. I had one that was so bad that the results were so low that I said, there's no way this is accurate. Even for me. And I've seen it hundreds of times. I saw this. I said, there's no way this is accurate. I'm going to come back in a month and redo this. And it was, it turned out to be pretty accurate, unfortunately.

And it was, and it was because the leadership at the top was completely unaware of the problems at the bottom, completely unaware. It's not that they wouldn't do anything if they would have known about it. They just didn't know. And that is one of the largest problems that I encounter is 85 percent of work centers in America report some level of toxicity within the ranks, but senior leadership is only aware of 5 percent of that.

So there's a massive gap. There's a massive gap of why is the C suite never aware of what's going on down here?

Russel Lolacher: You see so many studies that show what executive thinks and what employees know. And that gap seems to be getting larger and I did a presentation to a bunch of C suites and I brought up that example and you could feel it in the room where they were like, no, that can't be true. I'm like, you're literally part of the problem by thinking that.

Aleha Ingle: Right, right, right. The, the moment someone tells you something, you, you need to go look into it immediately. The, the, the, the lack of understanding or awareness, just scratch it right now. Just go look into it because I promise you, there's some level of truth to it.

Russel Lolacher: I think that's, I think you've nailed it there too, is that curiosity needs to be the biggest reason why you do something like a cultural audit, because you can't assume you know everything. You can't assume by being at the top of an organization in an office that you only see three people every day is the culture of the organization.

And, and yet it's not so obvious to a lot of people that it's, this is their world so they don't look beyond their world. So curiosity feels like the biggest motivation to do a cultural audit.

Aleha Ingle: Yep. It's that fishbowl mentality. We get so caught up in what we do every day that we only see what's inside our fishbowl, that we forget that there's a whole world outside of that fishbowl.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you for this, Aleha. I really appreciate it. I'm like, no, really, we're, we're rays of sunshine. Honest. It's about doing better. I promise. So, I'll, before I get to the last, last question, I have one more question about surveys, which is say an organization's even considering doing a cultural audit, what would be the tipping point or the thing to convince them to go, you know what, this is the thing you need to do?

Aleha Ingle: I would say, if you have employees that aren't willing to stay for at least a year, you need to be doing your culture assessment at least every quarter until that retention rate goes up because 63 percent of U. S. companies find it harder to retain than to hire right now.

Russel Lolacher: Ouch.

Aleha Ingle: Yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Cause there will be a lot of leaders that will look at these numbers and still think, ah, do I want to spend the money? Do I want to, do I want to invest? And look at, maybe it's a check box exercise. Maybe we'll do that. So yeah, I was just kind of curious. What is that one nail in the coffin that will just finally, I, I use a horrible metaphor because it's a good thing.

Not a bad thing as a nail in the coffin, but what is that? What do you need to hear to be able to understand how important this is?

Aleha Ingle: You can spend 2, 000 to send somebody to leadership training or 10, 000 to replace them. You decide.

Russel Lolacher: Oh man, I'm not going to touch that. Let's go on to the last question. Cause that is a beautiful way to end this. So Aleha, last question, which is in, in your experience, in your leadership journey, what's one simple action people can do right now to improve their relationships at work? I

Aleha Ingle: Listen to understand not to respond.

Russel Lolacher: Love that one. It's a classic, but it needs to be mentioned like every other week to so many people. Me included sometimes.

Aleha Ingle: Tattoo it, maybe.

Russel Lolacher: Now that I don't want to touch. That is Aleha Ingles. She's a director, speaker and she is the driving force of Work Culture Works consultancy. Thank you so much for being here, Aleha.

Aleha Ingle: Yeah, it's been fun. Thank you.