You Can’t Rely on Culture to Save You (But You Can Still Lead Change)

This is part 4 of a 4-part series on leading through high pressure at work, with licensed psychologist Dr. Janna Koretz. Each episode explores a different theme—clarity, self-awareness, team dynamics, and workplace culture.

Tired of waiting for HR or leadership to fix your toxic work culture? Dr. Janna Koretz gets real about what organizations won’t do for your mental health—and how you can still thrive. We dig into the power of micro-shifts, how to lead by example, and why “playing the game” sometimes isn’t avoidable. For leaders trying to be human in high-demand workplaces, this episode is a guide to navigating culture without losing yourself.

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Transcript

Russel Lolacher: The only extra lens I want to put on that though, and I'm curious your thoughts, is we're not allowed to make mistakes. We can't make mistakes. It is a high pressure situation. People's lives or money is on the line. It is so to the, like such a pressure cooker for a lot of people that it sounds great to be able to take those pauses and those minutes and try to, but they're also not giving themselves permission either self or the organization culture is not giving them enough permission to be able to even navigate this in an organic.

Healthy

Janna Koretz: I think there are some cases that's true. And one example that comes to mind, I have a friend who works in a hedge fund on a trading floor, right? So if you don't make a good choice, somebody loses like a billion dollars. And that's true, right? And so that is a situation in which you don't have the time to be like, well, like someone's on the phone, they wanna trade the stock, it is what it is. I think, again, to make the point, urgent versus important, I think that those situations are not actually that common. And so again, it depends where you are in the org chart, right? But like I think if you just start doing things differently and it is working, no one's gonna say anything to you about it.

If you have people who seem, who are showing up to work more or seem to be more efficient or more willing to do things for you, go extra the extra mile, or like you're making more money, your company seems to like you landed the client, whatever it is. I mean, in the end, like the upper echelon of leadership, they don't care how you get there.

They want it done. And so it's a tricky way to, so to your point, yes, that's true, and I think a lot of times there's more wiggle room than you think because of the reasons that I just stated.

Russel Lolacher: Do you communicate your journey to executive, to colleagues that you're going through this going, I know where we work, and you know what, I've got a different way of looking at things. I don't know how well that would be received depending on the culture you work in or the executive you have.

Janna Koretz: Yes. And I think then you have to and, right? And so all of this is also in the context of if you wanna keep your job, you also have to play the game. So we talk a lot about how do you implement these things within the context of the culture that you work, because that is, you have to do that. So what I'm saying, all sounds nice and good.

Is it a hundred percent applicable all the time? No. Is it a hundred percent applicable to every work situation? Situation? No. But most of the time you can do some of it and it's helpful. And so that's all we're trying to do. And in terms of sharing, I mean, it's interesting you say that because I was just working on an article, someone about co-founder therapy or we do a lot of like executive, worker couples therapy basically is what it is because it's the same thing. You're in like an intimate relationship with somebody. And like when you do that, do you go back to your organization and tell people you're doing that and show them and tell them what you've been learning? And again, I think that really depends on the culture.

I think there have been times when that's excellent and there are times where no, you shouldn't do that. You should just do what you've learned together and do that and not really share about it. So it just depends on what's allowed. I think it also depends on part of the culture, right? Is how, well, I guess this is just part of the culture in general, but what is the economic state of your business at this time also matters a lot. So.

Russel Lolacher: Yeah it feels like there's a piece of this where this is how it should be and could be. If you're a sinking ship, you kind of gotta forget yourself. You kind of gotta forget your needs and jump on the sinking ship 'cause that, or help your financial situation. I just it's hard to be about self, but also trying to be about supporting the organization when it needs what it needs to operate. And I feel that might be a really hard friction for some people.

Janna Koretz: But I don't think they operate in silos. I think that they are very connected and I think the way in which you connect them depends on where you work and what's happening to, to the organization or you at the time. But I don't think it's like I can either work on myself or get on board with what's happening at work. I think it can be both. And I think oftentimes what's happening at work needs you to be different. And so most of the time, I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say all the time, definitely not all the time, but most of the time, the work that people do in our office, like we don't hear a lot of well, I did this and it was a disaster.

We don't hear a lot of that. I think people need to be judicious in how they apply all of it, right? But I don't think, they're definitely not, in my opinion they're so interconnected. And you just have to figure out how to apply what you're doing for yourself in a way that functions at work.

And very rarely are they separate.

Russel Lolacher: I am a huge proponent of self-leadership, which I'm hearing all this work that we need to do to sort of define our boundaries, to manage ourselves, to show up for our teams. Does organizations have any responsibility here at all? HR perhaps, or executive? I saw you smirk when I said HR.

Janna Koretz: I laughed a little. Yes. I think that's a really big ask though, because there are so many people involved. Like for example, my husband has worked in big tech his whole life. Well, not his whole life, his most recent life. And like moving, like getting a new trash can in the office is like impossible, right?

It's just there's too many cooks, there's too many things. There's and he once showed me what had to happen for someone, for them to hire a contract worker. And it was like this 15 step process. There were like eight people involved. And that's just so inefficient, right? And so would it be helpful if organizations and or leadership, could promote a culture that was authentic and helpful, even if it's very specific to who they are, right? Because then people know what they're signing up for. This is a place where no one cares about your mental health, so work here or don't like, fine, whatever. Like you made that choice. But everyone sort of has these platitudes about culture or it's not very well thought out, or it's not very well implemented because there's too many people and it isn't a priority.

And so cultural shifts at work are really hard to make. I think they're really important. I think relying on a big organization to do that is mostly unrealistic, but if you work in a smaller place, then there can be room for conversations about that, especially if the cult current culture is like getting in the way somehow.

So I think it is a responsibility of those people, but I don't think that in actuality we can rely on them to do, fulfill that responsibility.

Russel Lolacher: And there's a lot of organizations where, and especially the larger ones where it's not one culture, it is 7,000 subcultures.

Janna Koretz: Right.

Russel Lolacher: And there could be three business areas where people's hair are getting pulled out because of the high pressure, and they're sitting right beside the another department that's like I. Yeah, I'm good. I'm chill. Like what? There was a problem today? I didn't even know.

That must be difficult for a lot of people seeing that even in their face in the what's being allowed and what's not being allowed based on, the pressure that people are under. Like why do you care about their mental health and not my mental health?

Even though the jobs are completely different, it doesn't matter sometimes 'cause they're still seeing other people's quality of life seems to be a hell of a lot better than ours.

Janna Koretz: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have no answer to that except for yes, and I see that play out all the time. But then that just comes back to, what's important to you? What are you gonna, what do you have control over? How are you gonna make changes for yourself? How are you gonna gain insight so that if you wanna make external changes, you can you can only control what you can control.

Russel Lolacher: So Janna, to wrap up the conversation. If anybody's listening to this, who's pulling out their hair and basically going, I just, tomorrow, I just wanna do one thing that will get me at least understanding how I can handle high pressure better for myself, my family, my coworkers. What would be that first little toe dip in the water?

Janna Koretz: I think I always tell people like a good place to start, even just or, so a different way to think about things is you find yourself having a reaction to something. Think about why that could be and think about three other ways that could be different. So for example, like I'm very frustrated, I can't get my job done because this idiot is in my life or whatever, and he's being really difficult and he doesn't see the purpose of this project and blah, blah, blah.

Okay? So that is why. Why is that frustrating to me? Okay. Because now only can I not complete my job, but actually achievement's really important to me. Why is it important to me? Family origins and all these things? There are a lot of reasons why that could be true. So this guy's being difficult. Let me think about a couple other ways in which things could be different. The scenario could be different. Maybe his boss told him no, so now he's stuck there, right? Maybe he doesn't have the budget. Maybe he, I didn't communicate effectively to this person that, how important this is for my team. There's a lot of ways why that person made that choice or information they're lacking that made them make that choice. And so if you just start to think about things that way, it helps people think a little more flexibly. It helps you kind of think more of theory of mind, helps you understand yourself a little bit better, and then you're not as entrenched anyway, even if the outcome is not any different.

Now you're training your brain to think differently. And that's sort of the point of all of this in general.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you so much, Janna. That's Janna Koretz. She's a founder and licensed psychologist. As She has written tons of articles for how Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, tons of publications, find her online. And that book, that children's book on anxiety might be something you wanna pick up as well.

Janna Koretz: It's on Amazon. I made that, God, that was like 15 years ago. I could tell you how that happened. We had this, someone left, we used to see way back when we started, we had a woman who worked for us who also saw children. She had a ton of toys in her office and she had this hippo unicorn, whatever, rainbow unicorn named Henrietta.

So Henrietta just ended up being like some, you'd come in the office, she'd be like making coffee in the morning. Someone had put her in like making coffee or whatever, just like around the office and I don't know, one day I was just, I literally was in the shower and the whole book came to me.

And so I got out, wrote it all down. I was on my way to a dinner party and a friend of mine actually is an illustrator, like in her spare time, and I told her about it. She was like, I'm gonna draw this person. I was, okay. And so we made the book. It was just really fun. But that was sort of, it was sort of siloed into like its own little special.

There's no other story about it. It just, it got made and then we moved on.

Russel Lolacher: That's awesome.

Janna Koretz: So, yeah.

Russel Lolacher: Spark of creativity and wanting to put it out into the world is never a bad thing. That's kind of cool.

Janna Koretz: Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's about anxiety. Everybody has anxiety, right? So it could be helpful.

Russel Lolacher: That's what I'm like, people listen to this. I'm like, I don't care if you're an adult. You may need a children's book about anxiety. It gets foundational.

Janna Koretz: Yeah, it is foundational. It really applies to everybody. Just says it in a way that children can hear. So.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Janna Koretz. I really appreciate your time.

Janna Koretz: Yeah. Thanks for having me. This was fun.