How Principles Drive Culture Change

Forget the posters and buzzwords—real culture change starts with behavior, not branding. 

In this Relationships at Work episode, Kyle McDowell shares how principle-based leadership can reshape toxic or misaligned cultures by setting consistent expectations for how people work and lead. We explore how to create change at the team level (even without CEO buy-in) and why principles can ripple through an entire organization—and even into our personal lives.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: That really, I mean, I was gonna ask because I was curious about it, how the principles can actually help relationship building with your teams. And that's a perfect illustration of it is, is it gives you a baseline from which to, and please correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like it gives you a shared foundation to build from regardless of the timeline as you've timelines might be different in how that relationship's formed, but at least it gives you a basis to build from.

Kyle McDowell: It is almost like a cultural currency and that value and, and the currency has the same value if it's an intern or the CEO you, but you said something just now and then you, you, you said this is, is is important for the principles can be a foundation or important for relationships, and then you said with your team.

What I've learned the most beautiful, unintended byproduct of this whole mission that I'm on, is the impact that I'm hearing it's having on personal lives, and you, man, based on your work and, and what I've witnessed with you, you, you are probably at the front of the pack trying to get folks to understand you can be the same person inside and outside of work.

Now, of course, there are things we don't discuss and there's, you know, there's areas we don't get it, maybe certain words we don't say. I'm not naive to that, but what I found personally is when you lead a particular way inside of an organization, a team gets to know you a certain way. And for me, this transition from the bang my fist on the desk to this principal based guy, I started to feel like a hypocrite 'cause I wasn't living these same principles outside of the workplace. And I thought, man, if these guys ever saw me behave this way, if I'm the guy focused on doing the right thing. This is, I'm a hypocrite. So the, the short answer to your question is yes, they absolutely set a framework or a foundation for relationships, but it's not just inside the workplace.

If you find yourself, if, if you can apply these same principles, how you treat people, how you want to be treated, the, the value you placed on their, you place, on their humanity. If you, if you, if you, there should be no line between the work and outside of work approach. I had a guy at, at a talk once, man, I gave a talk at Audi, all senior executives.

At the end of the talk, this fellow raised his hand and stands up. We were in an auditorium style setting. This guy stands up Russel, he's like a big former Division One football player. Big dude, bald head, really intimidating guy. He said, I'm paraphrasing, but he said essentially, if you read the book.

Or more importantly, you understand it and digest these principles that will change your relationships with your family. As a matter of fact, it's changing how I'm raising my children. I teared up. At that moment in front of this group of executives, I teared up standing behind this podium and I sat back in the stool. I said, I got nothing else. I. I, I, I have no further value to add, and I found that to be the case in my relationships as well. So that's, I'm glad you tipped the cap there, but I just wanna take it a moment or a, a step deeper because that is where real excellence is found in our existence, not just inside the workplace.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you. Yeah, no, completely agree. I mean, I, I, I find it more and more interesting that we talk about leadership development, and I'm like, no, that's just personal development. That's it. just you being a better person or, and I tell this story a free a few times where I remember going through a values exercise, 'cause we've been through about a million of those at one point or another.

And the woman, I, I was at a table doing it with a group of, a cohort and there was another table behind me and this woman had values set up differently at work than she did at home. They were

Kyle McDowell: She shared this with you.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah. She shared it with the entire room and she's like, is that wrong? I'm like, yes. Because if your values are family, do they suddenly become not important when you turn on a computer or walk through the door?

No, but so why? Why are we suddenly dismissing that because you're in a work setting? Your boundaries are obviously not strong enough. Your principles are not strong enough, or you're not communicating them strong enough to the people around you, so you are becoming a different person. It's like, was it that TV show, severance? You completely are severing. You are they talk about bring your whole self to work, and that's a whole other conversation I have challenges with. But at least you need to be true to yourself and honest with yourself or you're gonna be miserable. And she was not a happy, a happy colleague and this was such a window into that.

Kyle McDowell: But, but man, if, if we agree that nobody or very few people, and I think we agree. Very few people come to work to be a saboteur. They're not there to sabotage or they exist. Those people do exist. There are bad people inside of the corporate landscape. No doubt about that. But if we agree that for the most part, no, nobody comes to work to, to be a saboteur.

The question we should ask ourselves, and you probably did ask her, is why do you feel the need? Why do you feel the need to have a different set of values or even principles in and outside of work? She, she didn't lie in bed one evening or wake up a morning and said, you know what? I wanna be two different people.

She was, she was programmed that way. And I, and most of us can relate to that. I was, which is why it was important to put the word sustain in the title of my book because I, you know, by most accounts, Russel, before I found principle-based leadership, my career was, by most standards, successful. I had a really, really good run.

Made more money than I ever expected to. These fancy titles, these, you know, cool corner offices with conference tables and the... all the things, right? I behaved in a way where the impact I was having was not sustainable. It's not, it's not sustainable. It didn't create the legacy I was, I wanted to look back at and be proud of and at, and at some point I actually realized those that I thought had a tremendous amount of respect for me, they didn't actually feared me. And that's not a good feeling. So it's not sustainable. You can have great results being a jerk. You can, but at what cost is, I think the question to ask.

Russel Lolacher: And I see people in that situation, I'm like, it's either one of two things. One, it's either you are seeing that modeled somewhere else and think that's the path to success.

Kyle McDowell: That's the program.

Russel Lolacher: Or you're doing it outta survival and that you need to be a different person to survive within an environment that is obviously not healthy for you because you can't be the person that's at home.

You have to be put up this, this mask, this, this facade in order to make it through the day. And that is not a way to live either.

Kyle McDowell: It, it is the worst way. It is, I call it soul sucking. It, it, it, it. And then the unfortunate thing, and I heard a stat on a, on one of your episodes, and I'm, I don't remember the exact number now, but it was about engagement and people actually wanting to be there. We've accepted it. So many of us have accepted it.

I was on a plane recently and I was flip, I had my, my laptop open. I was heading to towards the keynote and I was going through my slides, just kind of trying to get prepared and this, I could see this guy, we've all been there, right? I could see this guy starting to lean over, lean over to look at my screen, and I didn't, I didn't fret. Finish what I was doing, closed the laptop.

He said, Hey man, what do you do? We just had a brief conversation and within this first three or four minutes, I, you know, I share with them what I do and. His response was, well, I just thought that was how it's supposed to go. You go to college or not, but you get out into the workforce, you ultimately start to hate your job.

He said that. I think that is the sentiment for so many people in the workforce, and I think the data supports that and unpacking that is a much longer conversation and, and probably a much tougher topic. But the point here is nobody wakes up to hate their job. They've been conditioned to hate their job.

And that's not by leadership, management. That's not by the label or logo on the wall. It's by people. It's by people. That's how we got there.

Russel Lolacher: And thank goodness that seems to be shifting a bit generationally because we hear a lot from your Gen Z, Gen Z for us Canadians that they're not putting up with things that, that don't provide value, that, and they're vocal about it. They'll go on social media about it and then there's us whose older generations going, we hated meetings too. We just didn't say know you could say something about it. Like we, no, that was how we were supposed to be successful. We just were drones thinking that. We didn't kick back at the status quo because that was all we knew. So there's this inspiration coming from younger generations that are saying all the things that we've wanted to say since day one, which I find really funny when we talk about the future of work.

Ooh, the future of work. Oh my goodness. We need to be prepared for the future of work. I'm like 90% of those things we've wanted for two decades. This is not the future of work. This is stuff we've been too scared to ask for. So, and I, I feel principles is so embedded in that because we haven't been living with principles, we've been living with productivity and monetary success. As opposed to are we the right people to like money is, and Simon Sinek has said this a few times, is money is the outcome. It is not the, it's not the goal.

Kyle McDowell: Right.

Russel Lolacher: And I think principles to your point, is getting that foundational stuff to get us ready to whatever we need to do.

Kyle McDowell: Well said. Agreed. Well said.

Russel Lolacher: I wanna wrap it up with one last question 'cause there's a few people probably are going, okay, this sounds great.

I'll buy the book, I'll check out guidelines. But where do I start? Where do I, do I start self-reflection? Do I write down these 10 principles and just repeat them as a mantra over and over again? Like what is, what do I need to do to take that first dip in the pool?

Kyle McDowell: Well, don't spend money on a book until you've gone through the self-reflection that we've talked about. You, you, we, I think people underestimate just how difficult and the additional exponential level of effort required to, to, to transition from boss to leader. Anybody can manage, I, I really, anybody can manage, but nobody wants to be managed.

We wanna be led. So that self-reflection must include, do I have it in me? Is this something that I'm, you know, is this a fight I want to have? Because sometimes it will feel like a fight, it will feel thankless. You will spend more calories and time. You must, because just managing the, the ends and outs and the output of the team is half, maybe half the battle.

You know, forging strong relationships and bonds and setting a vision and, and holding people account, and so many other things that go into it. That, that self-reflection at first is incredibly important. Now, if you've made the decision or you feel as if you're ready to take on a different approach, yeah, pick up the book.

Learn the values or the principles, or establish your own, you know, use mine as a guide, as a, as a series, like a blueprint if, if you will. And, and, and conspicuously share them with those that need to see and hear them. Usually it's your own team. If you're leading a group of people, if you're not leading a group of people, share 'em with anyone who will listen because again, there's this magnetism that starts to be created when we realize, oh my gosh, this person actually seems to care about me.

They actually seem to care about the, the contribution that I make. They see me adding value. I feel valued because of them. I'm contributing to this team. Momentum is a hell of a thing in this, in this domain. So take the time, have the quiet conversations with someone you trust, or do it alone in that mirror of truth, environment or setting. Pick something up. Establish your principles. You don't have to buy a book to do that, but it's really helpful to have the framework and I've actually lived it. So that's the one thing I would really try to leave your audience with is these principles are not hypothetical, they're not academic. They're quite simple.

They're incredibly simple. But simple is not easy. It's not, we all know how to lose weight. We all know we gotta lower our calorie intake and, and, and reduce and burn more calories. We know that. We know, we know what's, we know what to do to get from one side of a thing to another. We know what it takes to learn a second language, how to play guitar.

We know how to get there. It's all the how is all simple, but actually doing it, it's very difficult. So it's, you know, just be careful how much you bite off. The worst thing you can do is start off, start outta the gate with some huge aspirational transformation. And the first time adversity strikes the team is like, what happened to all this principal stuff you were talking about? You're better off having done nothing at all.

Russel Lolacher: I think that's a beautiful way to end this conversation. Thank you so much, Kyle, for being here. I really appreciate your time, sir.

Kyle McDowell: Well, the pleasure's mine, man, and as I mentioned, I, I really and truly feel you're, you're doing really important work and if I get a chance to share the message on a platform like this, I can't say no. So thank you.

Russel Lolacher: That's Kyle McDowell. He's a bestselling author, international speaker, and leadership coach, and if you haven't picked it up yet, please do. It's his book. Begin with We 10 Principles for Building and Sustaining A Culture of Excellence. Take care, Kyle. Thank you so much, man.

Kyle McDowell: Thank you.