Defining Leadership’s Role in Cultural Transformation

In this episode of Relationships at Work, host Russel Lolacher speaks with leadership strategist and executive coach Andrea Wanerstrand about the role leaders play in making cultural transformation real.

They explore how autonomy, accountability, trust, emotional regulation, and everyday leadership behaviours shape workplace culture—and why transformation succeeds or fails in the micro moments.

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Transcript

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Russel Lolacher: And on the show today, we have Andrea Wanerstrand, and here is why she is awesome. She's a leadership strategist, executive coach, and the founder of A3 Culture Lab, where she worked with senior leaders across 100-plus countries to drive cultural transformation from the inside out, creating a human-centric workplace, what we should all be trying to aim for.

She's also an official member and contributor of Forbes Council, and she brings a lot of experience with her, 25 years of it inside some of the world's most complex organizations: Microsoft, Meta, T-Mobile, and so on, and so on. And thank you for being here today, Andrea.

Andrea Wanerstrand: Thank you for having me, Russel. I'm looking forward to our conversation

Russel Lolacher: Me too. Um, cultural transformation. It is talked about a lot. Wow, transformation's even more of a buzzword it seems like more and more every day. But there's some meat to it that I'd love to dive into a bit about. You make it less buzzy. Uh, before we get into any of that, of course, I have the question I ask all of my guests, Andrea, which is, what is your best or worst employee experience?

Andrea Wanerstrand: So, um, as I told you before the call, this is really hard for me to choose. I don't know if you remember my resume, but I ran the performance review process for both T-Mobile and Microsoft. So when it comes to the good, the bad, the ugly of leadership and management, um, I've pretty much seen it all, and you really can't surprise me.

People have tried. You can't. I would say my best leadership, um, experience was the leader that I had at T-Mobile, who, when I was an IT program manager putting in HR ERP systems, saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. She saw my passion for people, and she took a chance on me, and she brought me over to lead the, and be the director of org effectiveness for T-Mobile.

Never been in HR, never been to that dark side. In fact, that's when I went out and got something touchy-feely and got my coaching certification. But she really took a look at where I had a passion and where I lit up. And even though I was a strong performer, excuse me, she really just, um, saw something in me.

And here I am sitting here over 20 years later, and it's still my passion. So that was my leadership moment.

Russel Lolacher: I adore that. Uh, reason is, is it's so rare, unfortunately, to hear that from leaders who recognize something beyond a delivery, something beyond, "Did you get what I needed done today? Let's move on to the next thing." The human side of it. Um, I, I've said on the show a few times where it's like when bosses or managers will come to you and go, "What's your five-year plan?"

And I'm like, "What's your five-year plan for me? You have a much bigger lens. You know much more about where I would fit," and yet that seems to not generally be the case. So to follow up with that, what have you taken from that experience and implemented it in your own path forward?

Andrea Wanerstrand: Um, beyond the words. I, I think the first thing that we say in, you know, especially in North American culture, we're like, "How's it going?" And you're like, "Oh, doing great." And you're not, right? So, uh, looking beyond the words, she saw a shift in me. She's, she said something to the effect of, "Your eyes glaze over a bit when you're talking about r- bug reports and next release cycles, but you light up when you talk about what the application's doing for the people in the organization."

Now, I take a ownership of sovereignty and, um, autonomy for my own career. She gave me an option, but she reflected something. She was a mirror for me. And I think, uh, when we are observers for those around us, especially as leaders, that's when we can give some observation in a... You know, it's always gonna be somewhat subjective 'cause it's from your vantage point.

But if we come at it with curiosity and say, "Here's a pattern I'm noticing about you," and you behave either, like, really confident, really excited about it, or you kinda shrivel up. What's going on here, right? Let's get curious about this together and have a conversation. And if we can align more to what lights people up or where their energy actually seems to increase in volume, um, just by simply shifting the topic, when that applies in, it can be done in the work environment, you get a lot happier employees

Russel Lolacher: Oh, you're hitting all the big ones. Curiosity, situational awareness, uh, empathy, uh, all,

Andrea Wanerstrand: Out of reach or in terms, yes. Yes, yes, yes

Russel Lolacher: All the things, all the huge things. Uh, thank you so much for sharing that story. I really appreciate that. Uh, moving into our topic today, uh, I think would require a lot of those skill sets as well when it comes to leadership.

So when we're talking about leadership's role in cultural transformation, which is what we're gonna dig in today, I wanna pull back a bit, which I always like to do on the show, and define what the hell we're even talking about, Andrea. So the first I wanna start with is what do you mean when you're talking about cultural transformation?

Andrea Wanerstrand: Okay. Let's start with just culture

Russel Lolacher: Yes, please. Please

Andrea Wanerstrand: Culture to me is how people feel, how work gets done, and what is accepted in the workplace. Right? And so it's in the how, and if the how is done in a way that is baked in the old rule books, like, uh, procedures, or the how is baked in a way based on reacting to how a leader might react if you told them bad news, that is all culture.

It, it's the atmosphere in the environment of which you work, and it really doesn't have four walls to it. It's not in a building or a place. And in large organizations, 'cause I've worked in multinationals, you have micro cultures. You have the aspirational state of a big Microsoft or a Meta, and then you actually have the reality of down to the, the core teams.

You know, um, what is it at Amazon? The team size, um, Bezos used to say was that those that could share a pizza, right? So the culture of those eating the pizza is formed by those in it. Yes, there's influence from the larger organization, but it really comes down to the individuals and how they work together, how they interact with each other, how they make each other feel, and what they accept as normal

Russel Lolacher: So when it comes to transformation, what are-- we're looking at this, understanding this, and trying to make it something else. Is that right?

Andrea Wanerstrand: So if you look at the transformation that Satya Nadella did for Microsoft, he set a North Star, and it was, "We want to go from a know-it-all to a learn-it-all culture." Times were a-changin', right? The, it, called it the cloud back then, right? Internet was just becoming the thing. And prior to that, there was a, a perceived or actual monopoly of Microsoft of being the main player.

Well, that was changing. And in order to do that, how people thought and bought the products of Microsoft was changing as well. So that meant how we sold those products, how we developed those products needed to change. So the salespeople, for an example, had to go from order takers, "How many licenses are you gonna buy this year?"

To being business advisors, "How do you wanna shape your tech stack? What's that gonna look like in the future?" So you went from a very tactical order to a strategic sale. What's the mindset that needs to actually change behind that, right? If it's business as usual, that's a very fixed mindset. But the mindset that was necessary was a growth mindset, and that's when they brought in Carol Dweck.

They brought an outside in, and we centered and hunkered around the growth mindset. So when you're looking for a cultural transformation, and if it's culture is based in the how you do things, then you really need to look at what's gonna make you do things differently, right? And it's not what you're doing differently, it's how you're doing it differently. And so that is the transformation or change, right? I think transformation just sounds more elegant, right?

Russel Lolacher: it just?

Andrea Wanerstrand: But, um, let's be really clear. We don't like change as humans. It is all around us. It's happening every moment of the day, and the only aspect of true confidence, 'cause confidence is a journey, is that when we're confident enough that whatever change that comes, we're gonna be able to navigate through it and be at least okay.

But we don't like change, so we call it something fancier called transformation. It sounds more elegant, like a great destination we wanna go to. But it's really hiding the fact that we're gonna get uncomfortable for a bit, and that's what it's all about

Russel Lolacher: What is a-- You've talked about the larger organizations like a Microsoft. What is the leadership's role when it comes to transformation, and does it change positionally? Because to your point, those microcultures will have a leader that is very different than the one that is running the entire organization

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yeah. It, I mean, I think there's always the North Star of an aspiration, and y- you can see it on every website out there, and then people go and go to Glassdoor, Glass Ceiling or whatever the Glassdoor is. There's that website where people can, like, put in their real thoughts. But i- the how do you wanna make people feel and how do you wanna achieve the objectives comes down to every individual in the organization.

And I say individual, not just manager, 'cause how you work as a team member affects those around you just as much as a manager affects those around you in the day-to-day. Now, a manager has more power. That power is subjective based on the employee's viewpoint, but they can determine your employ- employment.

They can determine whether you get raises. They can put you up for bonuses. So there is a power dynamic, and we'd be remiss if we didn't actually address that. But how your team feels when they interact with you comes down to you. And so I believe cultures start with every individual in the organization, and then the agreements by which they work together and how they address the changes that they're making to those agreements as their team evolves.

Ooh, that's the same word as transformation, isn't it?

Russel Lolacher: It's a thesaurus exercise, Andrea, really is

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yes. Yes

Russel Lolacher: So what are we getting wrong? Because cultural transformation is not easy. It doesn't happen overnight, and yet so many leaders talk like it is. They're like, "We're this, now we're this." I'm like, "Okay, where's our follow-up meeting in eight years?" Because we just, we don't seem to be able to connect those dots easily anyway.

What are we getting wrong?

Andrea Wanerstrand: Just 'cause we say it so does not mean it is so. So I see the similar thing in creating autonomous teams. I empowered my team. I told them they're empowered, yet every time you're gonna have a big presentation, you make the team send you every reiteration so that you can look through the nuances of the grammatical details in the notes, right?

Or you, you set up an environment where they have to come fr- to you for a go, no-go at every juncture. Um, that micromanagement, that fear of letting go, the fear of letting people actually, um, have autonomy and, and do their work. We say they're empowered, but they're not, and that also goes hand in hand with we haven't taught people to be autonomous.

So if many people have grown up in a work, um, place of command and control, and all of a sudden they do enter that autonomous environment, they're still in a behavioral pattern of, oh, I've gotta check in with Russel to see if I can do this, right? Or am I in- headed in the right, right direction? Sometimes it's confidence, and that is part of the role, but how we respond to that and how we react to it.

So what we're getting wrong is the micro moments aside from the big announcements. How are we handling it when somebody comes to you with a problem? Are you giving them the answer, or are you getting curious and having them come up with the answer for themselves with your guidance? Um, how are you actually delegating work?

And then what happens when you delegate it? Um, do you prescribe every step that needs to occur? Some work environments do require that, but they're less than the average. So if you did an 80/20 rule here, 80% of the organizations, even if you told me you had to prescribe, I bet you really didn't have to. So we're getting it wrong in the micro moments, Russel

Russel Lolacher: Do you feel, and I've, I've seen this, but I'm curious about how widespread it is based on your experience, that some leaders who are trying to do cultural transformation are looking at this North Star, this aspirational North Star, and to, to dig into the metaphor, they don't know where they're leaving from to go to the North Star.

It's like they haven't done enough of a gap analysis to-- They just are thinking about the dream, not thinking about waking up, wow, I'm digging into metaphors here, um, where they don't really get the reality of their situation in those micro moments or the macro. It's, it's that disconnect that I feel like, oh, that sounds great, but you have no concept of what you're even trying to fix

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yeah. It, it's what is your current exact state? And i- if you don't know what your culture is today really, right? Um, m- larger organizations hold employee pulse surveys and have health scores, um, and sometimes they're paid attention to, sometimes they say, "Oh, well, the team changed, so that's why the scores were lower."

But if you don't have a true sense of your starting point of any type of change, especially on the human behavior front, then you are n- y- y- you're not starting from a starting gate, you're starting from some place that may be on the right path, but you haven't found the right path yet anyways. You don't have the right map to get there.

So, uh, often from a change management perspective, if you can like do an assessment, a, a current state assessment, and which should be done anyways, right? Good business says if you're gonna create a future state, what's the big why behind it? And Do you understand what your blockers are? Do you have a really good heat map of areas that are gonna hold the highest resistance for you?

And this isn't an overnight... I love the Microsoft example and the fact that it was a multi-pronged, multi-year evolution. It wasn't we're going from a know-it-all to learn-it-all culture. It-- they realized they needed to bring outside in. W- you know, they brought in Carol Dweck and her book way before Satya wrote his book.

He could have wrote it. He, but he was inside. So they knew they needed outside. So what's your current state? What are your blockers? Where are your resistors going to be? What are you gonna do about those resistors? Are you going to basically work them out of the organization? Are you going to help them see where this can be a benefit and create awareness, desire, knowledge, and ability to move there?

That's the ADKAR model from the Prosci Change Management. It's not anything that I've come up with. It's just good change management. So that's what needs to occur in order for us to really land something. Would I say Microsoft's landed it? I would say they're way closer now, but it's been a 10-year journey,

Russel Lolacher: Mm-hmm

Andrea Wanerstrand: Right?

For a company that was multi-decades old. And so how big is the beast that you're changing? If you are a small, nimble organization and you're an entrepreneur, you can change it faster, but it's sometimes harder in the smaller organizations because it's so what you're used to, versus a larger organization, you can start it and it starts growing organically and, and you get more takers and more takers, and those resistance points become smaller.

But it's applying good change management and the behavioral things that we need as humans to actually get us over the hump to say, "Okay, yeah, this new place isn't so bad

Russel Lolacher: What do we need from our leaders? Because if those organizations get that North Star, they do their assessments, they're doing, they're doing their Prosci properly, there also seems to be a disconnect from this is how I want the organization to run to those micro teams seeing it relatably into their own day-to-day operations.

So I'm trying to dig more into the, the how is what you're talking about. What is that demand of leaders in that micro level?

Andrea Wanerstrand: There is this aspect of flex, not a one-size-fits-all. Um, I like to use the Bear, um, current-- the- their decentralized, the DSO model that they're doing. They went and they made news for, like, getting rid of their middle managers. But they really made it from an ownership, and they do these 90-day lookbacks. Well, in sales, that's pretty easy.

And in marketing operations, when you've got a big engine that you're not gonna see the results till later, what does that 90-day look back or then the 90-day look forward look like? Well, that's a different adjustment, right? So the nuance to be able to have the autonomy to shift it. So you need from leadership the understanding that a one-size model does not fit everyone to get to the same destination.

People need to some take- times take different vehicles to get there based on where they are. Um, if you put every organization, um, you know, functionally across the globe, maybe they need a boat to get there, maybe they need the plane. Um, but you need to be able to have that flexibility. You also have to have vulnerability in leadership, and I'm a big Brene Bran- Brown fan in the aspect that I don't believe in, like, faux alligator tears and over-vulnerability.

But the-- We are learning as we move forward, and we're gonna get some things wrong, and we apologize in advance, but we're gonna adjust as we go. So this is where my A3 methodology of having authentic leaders that create autonomous environments and hold accountability, and that accountability is what starts with themselves.

Why that we need the change, where we are today, where we're needing to go to, and here's what the journey's gonna look like for all of us. And you start that conversation at, at the leadership level, and then you educate through the layers in the organization so that they can then educate. Telling an, um, a manager and employee at the same time seal- seems like it's really a democratized state.

But that employee is then gonna turn to the manager who's going through the same change at the same time that they are, and they're not gonna have the thought process and processing time to be able to support their employees. So the other thing is, how do you communicate this? How do you bring people into the folds to understand the change that's upon them, how it's going to come, and why it's needed?

And what, what's the storyline? What is the end state, and what's the impact? What does it really mean for people at each level in the organization? So that storytelling and communication's also very important for us.

Russel Lolacher: I hear you touching on your A3 throughout them, so I want to, I want to touch on that right now. S- first off, with accountability. Now I've, I've heard it and seen it confused too much with responsibility, where people are thinking, "Oh, I'm, I'm responsible." I'm like, "That's not accountable. They're not the same thing."

But that seems to be, again, it's not a thesaurus exercise. They have different meanings. So what does accountability mean in cultural transformation for a leader when it comes to things like clarity and fairness and just trying to move things forward?

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yeah. So have you set expectations, whether that's in the job description, especially if you're doing a reorg, your expectations of how organizations work together in the organization, who has what responsibility, and what happens when people don't meet those responsibilities or when they do? So accountability gets a bad rap.

It's often like, "Ooh, that performance review time, they're gonna hold me accountable for it," right? You're held accountable every day that you show up for a, a job, no matter what your job is in the world, right? And it's whether you actually do what you've been hired to do, you're accountable for that.

You're accountable for when you go above and beyond and achieve fantastic results, and you're also accou- accountable for when you miss the mark. So what are you gonna do about it? What are the consequences? What are the consequences for when you exceed it, right? Sometimes you get that bonus, sometimes you get that promotion.

So accountability and being accountable for ourselves as humans first is needed. And so when we take the dreaded, "Oh, we're gonna have a conversation about your accountability here," a- and just make it part of the nomenclature of we're accountable for how we show up with others. We're accountable for what happens.

When you do an action, no one else forced you to that action. So who's re- responsible for that? Who's accountable for that? Again, we're going to a thesaurus here, but the accountability is ownership. It's really ownership in our own actions and the impact of those actions. Now, it's hard to be accountable as an employee, though, when your manager has given you a responsibility but not empowered you with the autonomy to actually get that done.

They put constraints there. So this is where the rub comes for many employees and managers in their conversation about accountability. "Yeah, but you took away all my funding, and you did this, this, and this," and, or, "You didn't tell me it was gonna have that outcome." So we tell people what their responsibilities are, but then we don't validate if they actually heard what we said in the first place.

Russel Lolacher: Thank you for that. I, I think there, that difference, I think you illustrated it really well. With responsibility, I look at that as that's the job description. When you show up on day one, these are the list of things you're responsible for. It's when things go good or bad and how the organization approaches you or how you approach it from autonomy standpoint, that's the accountability piece.

A lot of people think accountable immediately think about the negative, and I love that you illustrated that things can go right, too, and you can also be accountable to that. There are benefits to that, but you have to, at the end of the day, own it. And I think that's slightly separate from responsibility, 'cause that's, again, here's your list of things you're responsible for.

It's accountability is the meat of it on the other end of the side of it. So thank you for illustrating it like that. But you touched on autonomy, and that seems to be, like, a bit of the secret sauce to accountability, is that you can't be accountable unless you have some level of autonomy. But there's a lot of organizations where leaders are afraid of that autonomy for legal reasons, for, um, what if something goes wrong?

I don't know how to handle it if I'm on my own. Again, we're-- I'm trying to not, I'm trying to stay away from accountability a little bit. What does autonomy... How does autonomy show up day to day for a leader trying to do cultural transformation? Um, yeah, I'm gonna leave it there.

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yeah. I'm gonna start with how does autonomy show up, period, whether they're trying to change or not. So autonomy is based on the role, the experience, and what you're trying to achieve. Um, some people have asked me s- saying, "Andrea, you said the, you know..." I chose the A3 of authenticity in the, in, in how you show up, autonomy in, in how you lead, and accountability in how the, the how actually, um, is measured.

But the aspect of even if you are a factory worker and you have a repetitive task that goes over and over and over, if you do not have the autonomy that when you see something that is going wrong, something is off, that you can actually, like, hit the stop button, leave the s- the post, and escalate it, if you don't have the autonomy to think for yourself in that moment, there are consequences for it.

And I don't know any operations manager that would say to me, "No, I don't want them thinking for themselves. I want them to wait until somebody else finds that for them." Right? So if you scale that from the most prescribed position that I can describe, there's maybe a better one, but it is 7:30 in the morning as we're having this conversation, that if you can Hold them a, a, a description of the expectations. Validate that they understand that i- through a conversation of, "Okay, Russell, um, I need you to get that project briefing pulled together, um, by Friday. Um, and I need to ensure, uh, make sure that we have all of the stakeholders' viewpoints. How are you gonna go about that?" And then you get the thought, and I hear what you're gonna do, and I'm like, "Okay.

Well, have you thought about this?" Or, "What about that?" Or, "What else would you think of?" And it's a dialogue, so you understand what's happening. What's happening for the manager is their fear, let's call it what it is, that the employee that works for them is gonna mess things up, let's call it what it is, starts getting dissipated.

They're able to get their own fear down so that they can be there and support the other person. "Okay, great. When can we touch base on this so that we're aligned when we get together on Friday?" The employee tells them, versus you saying, "Okay, by 3:00 tomorrow I need to know." If you just flip the script a little bit and they say, "Oh, can we do it Friday morning, 8:00 AM?"

You go, "No, I'd, I, I'd rather need it sooner. Can we do it, you know, tomorrow or the next day?" And y- you do that in a way they now have come up with the answer, which makes it highly likely that they're gonna be more accountable. They're gonna own that because they came up with it, versus you prescribing it.

So order for you to really have autonomy and really hold people accountable, you have to set expectations. You have to let go of your fears and appease your fears and take that risk, 'cause that's the job that you've been put into. And you need to scale it for the appropriateness of the position and what they've been hired to do in the first place.

Disgruntled employees generally are smothered employees. They are not given the job that they thought they got hired for in the first place, more often than not. There are exceptions to that. But that is kind of the package that a manager needs to go through, and that's where the authentic part of my A3 comes in.

You need to be vulnerable with yourself in saying, "Uh, I'm just don't really know if they can do this. What am I gonna do to support them to get them there?" And the reality is you might have somebody that's, you know, s- swimming too deep. So w- what support are you gonna put in place? Do you need to teach them?

Do you need to mentor them? Do you need to pull in other resources? That's on you, right? So you need to decide that first.

Russel Lolacher: You're just-- You're giving me flashbacks as well, especially the, um, autonomy piece. I've managed teams where the teams were that much more passionate, that much more motivated when they owned it, when they felt like they were responsible and they felt like they were the ones that whether it was successful or a failure, it relied on them.

I gave them the psychological safety. I gave them the, the, the, the runway and the support, but at the end of the day, if it, it was theirs and they owned that failure, they felt much more skin in the game, to your point, um, much more motivated to do a better job because it was theirs, not the company's.

Though it benefited the company's, it was theirs. It felt personal to them

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yeah, and you've hit on a key thing. When I say authentic, that means people trust how you're gonna show up in a consistent manner, and it's that trust. You used that fancy word psychological safety, but I try to, like, the street talk is do I trust my team and does my team trust me? And trusting me as a leader is really about how do I consistently show up?

Um, in the '90s there used to be a lot of movies where, like, they'd show the, like, uh, the, The Devil Wears Prada, where, you know, M- Miranda Priestly's coming up the elevator, and all of a sudden everybody's putting on the fancy shoes and putting things away. was consistent, but not consistent in a way that you would want to foster a, a really positive, especially in 2025, 2026, um, world.

But consistent in a way that people know what to expect, that the bottom's not gonna fa- fall out. Um, it doesn't mean that you're not courageous with your conversation. I also talk about being kind, not nice. It's not about being liked. It's about being respected for being courageous and telling people things that they need to hear in a way that's constructive, supportive, and healthy, that helps both the individual and the team, and making it about them, not about you, in a way that is of service, not in blame.

Russel Lolacher: Well, first I want to give you kudos for naming Meryl Streep's character in Devil Wears Prada, not Meryl Streep. You actually used the character's name. Love that. So thank you as a movie nerd. Um, the second piece though is I think you're also touching on what I like to talk about, which is the dark side of trust, because trust isn't automatically a positive thing.

Because f- to, to your point, they trusted she would make their lives miserable. She trusted that they... she would talk behind their back. They trusted, like, consistency can build trust, but also in a completely wrong, eroded kind of way as well. And I think leaders see trust as this blanket thing that they should work for, but they don't understand that it's about that consistency, good or bad, that builds trust, good or bad as well.

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yes, and especially the higher you go in an organization, we are storytellers. We started this conversation and people don't like change, and your having one bad day that is very public can do more harm and undo months, years of trust, and you are in a rebuild mode again. It's not, you know, on/off switch again, because people are filling in the blanks.

So I work with a lot of ener- um, leaders regarding their energy. What energy are you pulling from meeting to meeting, especially when you live in a back-to-back meeting world, and you've come out of a really hard strategic financial discussion that you know is gonna have impact on your team, and two hours later you're in an all-hands, right, where you're s- doing rah-rah and you can't share anything that you've just had in the meeting beforehand.

How are you, like, bringing the energy for what is needed in that moment and letting go? Or a simpler one is you've just had a really exciting conversation and you're going into a one-on-one where you actually have to give some kind of tough feedback. Coming in all jovial and then switching gears to, like, bring a hammer down can feel more intense.

So what energy are you doing? So can you take a pause right before a meeting and take a breath, how do I wanna make them feel, and walk into that next meeting? Because your, how, your energy, how your facial expressions, um, and y- how your nervous system is moving actually shows up before you do, even in a virtual world.

So as a leader, people need to be able to trust you, trust your consistency, and when, not if, you have a bad day, know that you're starting to rebuild some things, that it's not gonna be back to normal the next day.

Russel Lolacher: And I like that from understanding ourself. Self-awareness, situational awareness are key to any good leader. So I want to flip it on the situational awareness. From an energy standpoint, how do you feel a leader needs to pay attention to that to assist with cultural transformation, cultural change?

Because showing up and understanding their own energy, how they show up day to day, vulnerability, authenticity, absolutely, that's the internal work. What are they paying attention to externally?

Andrea Wanerstrand: How people are interacting with them, right? How they are responding. Um, who's not responding? I talked about that, like, heat map of resistance to change. E- especially during a time of transformation, you need your sensors out there. What's not being said that you would expect to be said, right? It's not just about what's seen in a, like, physically observed or heard, but what's not happening that should be happening in a situation like this.

So really observing for patterns. Are people moving through the change curve of emotions that, in a way that you expect? And they don't all move at the same time, but you've done your foundational work of where you are today and where your resistors are, and those resistors could be people, projects, things.

But if you've done all of that, how are you observing the evolution of them and the transformation? And then what's your mitigation plan? Don't wait until it's happening. If you don't have people coming on board, what are you gonna do about it? That's part of your planning

Russel Lolacher: We're talking a bit of, and I'll use a real scientific word, woo-woo, ha-ha when it comes to energy. It gets, it gets a little more less tactile for a lot of leaders who are much more Excel spreadsheet focused, results focused. I could-- We could have a whole other conversation whether I would consider those leaders or not.

But, uh, having said that, what is the aha moments for those you work with to, for them to connect those dots from this is where you are, this is where you wanna go, well, this is the stuff you need to understand the how to get to there? What sort of finally clicks for them a lot of the time?

Andrea Wanerstrand: Yeah, it, um, the woo-woo aspect. We have a nervous system, um, and that nervous system, um, goes throughout our, our three brains. We actually have neurons in our head brain, our heart brain, and our gut. I like science, right? So I might, like, use an, a woo-woo word like energy, but we have electrical current through us.

So let's get, like, tactical energy that we have. Um, our nervous system does not care and never got a memo that there is a personal you and a professional you, right? So if you're having a argument with your partner or your kid did not wanna get on the bus and it really got you, like, amped up and your blood pressure's up and you can feel it, that's what I mean by energy.

And when you walk into a room, y- you've got your mad face on, but it has nothing to do with anybody in that room. So how are you managing, emotional regulating the energy of the feelings? Feelings have energy. Um, and a lot of folks go, "Well, I don't explode. I don't yell." Have you ever had a good belly laugh?

That is energy, right? It just wants to get out. So managing your energy, your emotional regulation, emotional awareness, knowing when you get nervous. Maybe it starts with a pit in your stomach, or maybe it starts with a tightness in your shoulders or your jaw, or you can feel your heartbeat getting higher. When you have that emotional intelligence regarding your physicality as a mind-body connection, um, our thoughts are not just living up in our head, they actually, you can feel it. That's why we have burnout. That's why we have stress. So when you can manage that and you have an awareness of what it looks like for you, you can start getting curious and see it in those around you.

Are people, like, really sh- crunched up? Are they leaning into the monitor? Are they leaning back? Are they... You know, I, I... For those who are just listening on audio, I just crunched up my, my shoulders and I became silent. But are, are they doing things that are different? That's what a leader i- who's going through transformation, or I would argue a leader in every day as you're having normal conversations.

Are people coming along with you on the journey on a day-to-day moment? observation, but if you have no awareness of, of how you show up for others, it's really hard for you to look at how others are showing up around you

Russel Lolacher: I can't help but notice this has a lot more to do with life as much as it has to do with work. Because you can't just go, "Okay, now I understand electricity," the minute you walk through the door, but once you get home, you have to forget it, it means nothing. It is so interchangeable, so connected with one another of how you show up at home and how you show up at work have to be the same to some degree.

Would you agree, or is there some sort of switch you have to make?

Andrea Wanerstrand: There's only you, right? The, uh, folks talk about work-life balance. Most of the executives and, and people that I've worked with, teams that I've worked with, you know when work-life balance gets most out of whack? It's a Sunday afternoon when you're thinking about everything that's happening tomorrow.

You're not at work. Work hasn't called you up and said anything. It's our emotions and our thought process that actually determine how we show up, how we hold ourselves accountable for how we show up, and how we manage our emotions to every situation that we have. And so there is no work you and personal you.

There might be nuances. You might not show all of you in the same way, but your nervous system just knows you. Your brain just knows you. So if you think you're doing a fake it to make it mask, that mask is gonna fall. Those around you aren't gonna trust you because they're used to the mask. So this is where getting to a place of authenticity, and, and I don't mean that in the, like kumbaya, like woo-woo sense.

I mean it in the who are you today? How do you wanna be seen in the world? And what are you doing from a mindset perspective? 'Cause we talked about what's the transformation from here to there. You can say it is going from transactional to advisory, but how do you get the people that actually do the actions in there to think differently?

And so you as a leader have to think differently, and then you have to help others think differently, and then you have to notice when they're not thinking differently and help them on the journey

Russel Lolacher: So I wanna wrap it up with the question I think I, I like to wrap, I like to s- end it with because we get into actions a bit. If someone's listening to this and going, "Yes, I agree with that, that, that, and that," but where does it begin tomorrow? I haven't done any of this, or I've just dipped my toe into this area.

Andrea, where would you suggest people at least take that first steps in understanding their role when it comes to cultural transformation or even cultural transformation itself?

Andrea Wanerstrand: How does things get done in the group that you're in today? Regardless of your role. If you are a leader, how does your team get things done? What are things that you accept? Look at your current state. How do you show up? How do you make people feel around you? How do you feel with others around you, and what are their actions that you accept?

"Oh, that's just how Mark does things. That's just how Mary does things." And is that gonna serve you all collectively in a kind way in the future? Or is everybody just trying to be nice and avoiding the elephant in the room? So understand where you are and where those around you are today as you design your North Star aspiration state of the to where you wanna go to

Russel Lolacher: That is Andrea Wanerstrand. She is a leadership strategist, executive coach, and the founder of A3 Culture Labs, and I highly suggest you learn a little bit more about her and her A3 culture principles. Thank you so much for being here today, Andrea

Andrea Wanerstrand: Thanks for having me.