Company Culture Statement Needed | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SUMMARY: In this episode, Ricardo Gonzalez and Matt Zaun talk about why EVERY company needs a Culture Statement and what that entails.

RICARDO GONZALEZ BIO: Ricardo is an expert in multi-cultural leadership and cultural communications.  He has consulted for many multi-national and Fortune 500 companies, and his goal is to help organizations and individuals develop healthy cultural mindsets and skillsets since this drives human connection, creativity, and collaboration.

For more info, check out Ricardo here:
https://ricardogonzalez.com/books

MATT ZAUN BIO: Matt is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who empowers organizations to attract more clients through the art of strategic storytelling. Matt’s past engagements have catalyzed radical sales increases for over 300 organizations that range from financial institutions to the health and wellness industry.

Matt shares his expertise in persuasion with executives, sales professionals, and entrepreneurs, who he coaches on the art of influence and how to leverage this for profits and impact.

For more info, check out Matt Zaun here:
https://youtu.be/pflQtzgP7X0
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzaun/

*Below is an AI-generated transcript, which may contain errors

doesn't matter what state I'm in what city I'm in, what industry on that? Every time. I'm talking about challenges, there's one challenge in particular that is scaring leaders. Right now. And that is how to
I'm joined by Ricardo Gonzalez. Who is the founder and CEO of bilingual America and he's the author of numerous books. Some of which
I don't
we're talking about challenges. There's one challenge in particular, that is scaring leaders right now. And that is how to win the talent war. Now everyone listening knows that a lot of that has to do with company culture. So is there something wrong within your company culture? Is there something that you can do to create a better sense of belonging? And that's what we're gonna focus on today because today I am joined by Ricardo Gonzalez, who is the founder and CEO of bilingual America, and he's the author of numerous books, some of which include the six stages of cultural mastery, the six stages of cultural sales, and one that we will focus on today which is to belong or not to belong, which truly is the question. Welcome to the show, Ricardo. Thank you, man.
It's a pleasure. It's an honor. Love your work. I love what you're doing.
So thank you and I likewise I love what you're doing as well, because I feel like people are tired, they're weary. They're more flustered and stressed than they've ever been. And I feel like there is a there's been a there's been a major shift. Maybe you can say COVID did this because people had to face thinking about priorities more. But I feel like there's been a shift where there's a lot of people that have stepped back from their workplace and asked, Do I truly belong? So I want to dive in. I want to I want to talk about that. Now. When we dive in, I want to focus on a quote, to kind of kick us off that you had mentioned that really spoke to me and I want you to unpack it a little bit for us. You said the goal of our cultural relations should be endearment not tolerance. What did you mean by that?
So for yours in the whole diversity, equity inclusion movement, we've heard a couple of things that we need to be culturally tolerant that we need to be culturally sensitive. And it used to bother me because I'm like tolerance, okay? That means we just kind of look at each other, grit our teeth at each other and just somehow find a way to get along or at least not fight with each other. That's to me that's what tolerance is. We're just tolerating one at that there has to be a better way and, and obviously the greatest of these is love, right? And the ultimate expression of human engagement is love. And so, what I chose as the word endearment, and I think that rather than cultural tolerance, we have to see cultural endearment, which means we go through a process and our cultural relationships so that we can get to where we actually love one another, which doesn't mean we always agree with one another. You know, I always use the example of people who are, you know, they're married or they have spouses, you know, you don't always agree with your spouse. Right? But because you love one another, you find common ground to make it work. And I think that we have to move beyond this idea that we're just putting up with each other. And our differences, too. We love each other. And we are endear to one another, even if we have differences, and one of the things I like to say is that we don't we're not divided because we disagree. We're divided because we're disagreeable. And we need to start coming at this from a different area even in regards to cultural sensitivity. You always tell I always tell our clients put away this idea of cultural sensitivity and start thinking in terms of cultural skill. Because it is a skill that can be developed in life and business and the more skillful I become, the more effective I become in the management of my cultural relationships. And so if I'm a business person, a business leader, a CEO, CEO, CHRO, and my role in my business is really people. Then I want people to be endearing to my company. I want our company to be a dear to that community. I want them to be dear to me. I wanted to be a dear to them. So I like the word endearment. And it's a it's a word that just means we care, right and Spanish for example. It's the word you know, it's like gardenia, which means we have affection for one another. And I think we have to move past this idea that we have to agree with one another to love each other. And it takes a deal of maturity to do that. And there's obviously a process and that's what's in the six stages of cultural mastery is how do we get to endearment? Because endearment estates six, how do we get to that point of mutual love and endearment together. I think it's important and words matter. Right? Sure.
So let me throw this out to you and I want to see if you've experienced the same thing. So I feel like you can you're free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like there are a lot of companies out there that they utilize Diversity, Equity and Inclusion like checking a box. It's just it's just another box to check off. And they're really they really don't understand why they're doing it. They don't really understand the importance of it. And they don't really understand how it's going to add and enhance their company culture. Has that been what you've experienced as well or is that really not what's happening out especially in corporate America?
Yeah, so it's a very complex matter. First of all, America is diverse. We don't need a diversity movement in America. We are a diverse country. We're a very multi ethnic, multiracial country. Whether or not a particular company or industry reflects that or not. That's another matter. And that's also a matter of culture and what works for that organization. So I'll start off saying this. Most high level leaders that I work with, are fearful. They're fearful of making are committing a cultural mistake. That could in fact, get them canceled. Or, you know, we hear a lot about the canceled culture. And the canceled culture is actually not a culture by definition. It's not a culture. It is a movement. And I think it's important to understand that it's a movement and it's a movement driven by a certain type of activism. But a lot of leaders are walking on eggshells. In other words, what do I say or what can I say to whom, when, where or how, and so that makes leaders fearful, it makes them reticent, it makes them unsure of themselves. And you know, we could just go on, we could take an hour just to give examples of leaders who have missteps or misspoken, and who frankly, have lost their businesses or they've gone through a great deal of public shaming. Sure, and so everyone wants to avoid this the way to avoid that is not to develop cultural sensitivity. The way to avoid that is to develop cultural skill. And so, I think that what's happening with leaders is, is is is real. It's also a bit unfortunate, but it's something that can be just like we learn how to type, right are we learned computer skills, we can learn cultural skills. And what's kind of driving resistance is is, is some people feel forced into it. When what we should be looking at is how do I have the greatest influence on the greatest amount of people for the greater good? Right? And all of us as business leaders, that's what we want. How do we have greater influence on a greater number of people to create the greater good, right and if we do that, and we look at it that way, then we start kind of shedding off some of the negative things that we're feeling. But yeah, a lot of companies are kind of checking the box, and that's a start. The reason I wrote six stages of cultural mastery is because we would have companies coming to us really specifically on strategies and tactics of of working with the Hispanic workforce on recruiting, hiring, safety matters, retention matters, social media things working with Hispanics, which you know, whether people realize it or not, but in America, the Hispanic population is the driver of the economy right now. And Latino entrepreneurship. So it's a huge matter for every company to understand deeply. Sure. And so what we would do is we would have companies that their leadership would come to us for training on, on, you know, how to properly work with a Hispanic workforce, and we would give them a deep understanding of strategies and tactics and cultural nuances and so on and so forth. And no matter how well intentioned or well meaning they were, they would still get out and they would kind of mess it up. And what I realized was, they were just looking at it as tactical and strategic, but it wasn't coming from the heart. And so what really drove the actual writing of six days of cultural mastery was this. How do we get leaders to see it not just from the head, but also from the heart. And once we started doing that, leaders started to have much higher levels of success, because when we apply strategies and tactics out of the proper mindset, out of the right emotion, then we're going to be much more successful than if we're just doing stuff because we have to do it. Going back to your comment of checking the boxes, right?
Sure. Sure. So let's let's take a step back for a moment because I still I know there are people listening to this where they still haven't grasped the head portion yet. So before we dive into the heart piece, let's let's briefly touch on that head piece and then dive into the heart. Just talking about it from a professional perspective, because you did paint quite a horrifying picture when he said leaders are concerned that something that they say they could be canceled lose their business lose their profession. I mean, that's a church, a lot of fear and a lot of people so let's talk about the upside of what belonging means. So you actually quote, a an article in your book, the value of belonging at work. I just want to read this briefly just to paint the picture for people of how unbelievable important this is. An article published published by the Harvard Business Review says if workers feel like they belong, companies reap substantial bottom line benefits. High belonging was linked to a whopping 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop and turnover risk and a 75% reduction in sick days. That is astounding so just to speak to creating a company culture of belonging, it can have an unbelievable impact on one's business. So aside from that article, what are some of the things that you've seen when a company shifts from going from more of a stale culture to a culture that actually creates a foundation of belonging?
So the upside is phenomenal. Right? I'll sign in Oh, this just came out from Gallup. As relates to associate engagement, the average percentage of associate engagement in the United States right now according to Gallup is 33%.
At a low with a mind boggling I just
came out I just saw it today. But in companies where the cultures are aligned and people are aligned to the cultures, where people have this deep sense of belonging, and this is in the Gallup survey, 70% of the employees are engaged. So that's additional data on this. Here's my contention with belonging corporate is really great at creating policies. Right. And yet belonging is something that is deeply personal. So in other words, what may make you feel like you belong in a place may actually repel another person and so companies have to really think this through and how they're going to structure the organization in a way and in the to belong or not to belong book. It's divided into three sections or it's actually, of course, it's playing off the hamlet To be or not to believe. Right and so the whole book is structured like a play. So there's Act One, act two and act three act three is corporate belonging. Act One is personal belonging, Act Two is social belonging and act three is corporate belonging, and act three under corporate belonging. I go into great detail as it relates to the huge gap between low context leaders who are results driven, who are gaining sense of achievement through individual accomplishment who value change over tradition, and high context. Typically minority associates who value relationships over results, who value traditional word change, and who get their sense of personal identity through the group, not individual accomplishment. So we have this huge gap between high context associates and low context leaders and leaders are going to have to learn to bridge that gap.
Wow, wow. That's if
they're going to be effective in the day we're living in. And by the way, the younger the Gen Z and the and the Gen X, Gen X and the millennials, right? They're much more high context than the boomers for example. And that's why like the baby boomers, which typically other people are in high level leadership, right right now, you know that they talk about the millennials as being like, you know, they'll use words like and these are not my words, Matt. Right. Okay. But they'll use words like snowflake and whiners and all of that stuff. What they don't realize is they're really working with more high context people who need a higher level of relationship and purpose to be attracted to an organization. Right? But if you're trying to lead high context, people through low context strategies, you're going to fail.
100% So let's, I appreciate you really painting the picture from a professional perspective for us. I think it's really important for leaders to understand just the magnitude of what can happen for them professionally, but I want to go a little bit deeper with you. Just aside from the professional benefits, which there are many and I think we had spoke to that. But the idea of belonging is a deeply personal one. And you mentioned this in your book, and you bring up a conversation that you had with a gentleman by the name of Robert Keane. Yes, that really hit you. Right. It really spoke to you and basically this individual mentioned to you about not truly fully belonging in different places. So I want you to unpack that for people listening just just to paint the picture for them of what it what it feels like to not truly feel like you fully belong. And so I've
never felt personally like I belong anywhere. And there's a there's a great quote from Maya Angelou, who I'm belonging and she says this He says you are only free when you realize you belong, no place. You belong every place. No place at all. The price is high. The reward is great. It's a deep thought. But personally, I've never really felt like I belonged anywhere and because of my bicultural heritage. My father was one of 27 children from the same father from the mountains of Puerto Rico. My mother was an orphan from the state of Kentucky. And with no disrespect whatsoever, because I don't see it this way. I am literally a Puerto Rican hillbilly, right. And so what I'm important to Rico, which is really my preferred culture. My Spanish was my first language. It's the culture. It's what I love, right? I still am half American, right? So I don't fully belong there. But when I'm in the US, my last name is Gonzalez and I'm, I don't fully I don't fully fit the mainstream. Right. And when I'm in Latin America, even though my Spanish is impeccable, and I own a school that actually teaches Spanish as part of our you know, with bilingual America, we have a language division. I'm still not the I'm seen more as an American than I am. And I'm white, right? So that's on top of that. So I've never felt personally that I belong anywhere. I live most of the time in the Dominican Republic, and I'm very acutely aware of that. So anyways, Bob and I mentioned Robert Kane, who's a good friend. He wrote the shopping cart code for European banking system years ago before you and I could get on the internet and purchase things. Wow. And he sold this code for millions of dollars and he was still relatively young and he retired and he built this. He bought this house in Escazu, Costa Rica, but a 20,000 square foot house, a couple of guest rooms, you know, whole thing, swimming pool, sauna, the whole things and we had met at a conference and we hit it off and he says once you come down to Costa Rica, bring your family we will. I'll show you some things. This guy says he's genius. He's brilliant. One night I walked in his office at 2am The guy sitting there programming. I said, Bob, you're a multimillionaire. Why are you doing this? He's and he does that people get to see this but he takes his finger and puts it as are like a like an addict would put an injection in their arm, right a drug. He said, This is my drug. Wow. And he said to me just to get a dis to take that further. He says to me, he says, After I retired and I stopped working, he said I was going crazy. So I would get on Upwork which at the time, I think was Elance. And he said I would bid on the hardest programming jobs in the world for $5 an hour just to challenge myself. It said and they had no idea that they had this world class program. And that's a he's a geek, right? And he looks at me we're out in his pool. And I'm a social person. I love nightlife. I love being out. I love being with people. I love talking with people. That's kind of my laboratory, right?
And I'm thinking we have nothing in common. Right? And I said, How sell Bob? And he says, I'm American. I was raised in Spain. My mother was an ambassador in Spain. I lived in Germany, he said, and neither one of us will ever belong in any place. Fully. An A, and he was so right. I had struggled with this my whole life. And so a lot of bicultural people. Okay, so bicultural can be someone who was born in the US but their parents are from another country. It can be someone who was born in another country, but now they're now they're living in another country. They now are forced to be bicultural. Right. So us has a lot of bicultural people, but so to other countries, right bicultural people around the world. bicultural people struggle with two things they struggle with both identity and identification. Identity is who do I believe I am and identification is who other people believe I am. Okay, now what is so important about that as it relates to belonging I will never feel like I belong somewhere. Allah unless I have a true sense of identity there. And unless other people at that place are i They identify me in a way that resonates with me. And so part of our job as leaders is to know people well enough so that we can help them align identity and identification. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but I hope it's helpful for leaders to start thinking in these terms. Rather than thinking in terms of policy, start thinking in terms of the person each individual person has a different sense of identity has a different sense of identification. And that's what they're going to align to or not aligned to. And we have Miss named this, you know, the great resignation, right? That's what we're calling this. We have Miss named it we should have called it the great realignment.
For sure, for sure. So I this is very helpful. What I'm hearing you say is more than likely there's a lot more people out there than a lot of people in leadership positions. Think that feel the same way that you feel not truly feeling like you belong fully in a particular place. Would you agree with that statement?
100% 100%.
So what what what can the leader do when they're when they're managing people, they're leading people that don't feel like their identity actually aligns with the culture that they're in what what would you recommend that they do or where would they even start?
So there so first of all, let me take it a little bit deeper in the section on social belonging, just to take it further beyond by culturals and these types of things. What about people? Which, in the United States, over 2 million people here do this? What about people who have actually run away from home and the place where they should have most felt like they belong? Their home? They didn't want to be there. What about people, only one in 10 People who attempt to commit suicide actually commit suicide? What about people who have attempted to take their life and they didn't want to even belong on Earth, and now they're in our employ, whether we know it or not. Okay, so how do you work with people who have never felt like they belong, even in their family? What about people who went through divorce? Right, so there are so many different things that play into this beyond just being bicultural. But to answer your question, there are two things that I think every company needs to consider doing. Number one, they have to develop a much greater and deeper understanding of macro and micro cultures. Okay, if a company does not have a very clear, very compelling macro culture, it will develop a great especially a large company, it will develop a lot of micro cultures within the macro culture, the macro culture will be weak and the macro the micro cultures will be strong. And for example, in many large companies, you have BRGs and er G's which business resource groups and the employee resource groups right. And these BRGs and er G's are developed around the idea of bringing together people of affinity. So you have you may have a BRG or an erg. for Hispanics you may have one for blacks, you may have one for LGBTQ you may have one for veterans you may have these are all micro cultures within the macro. Does this make sense?
Absolutely. So you
can have affinity in the micro cultures, but all of those people may not have affinity to the macro culture and if the macro culture is weak, the overall organization is weak. I contend in a perfect world we would have no need for the micro cultures because our DNA would be that we would all be aligned under the macro culture. Now that's a very difficult thing to do in today's world, especially given the track that we've been on OCAs Sure. And so number wise they organizational leaders have to understand how do they create a compelling and clear macro culture to which all people will align which takes us to point number two, and that is what I call a culture statement. Companies have vision statements they have vision statements, but they don't have culture statements. A culture statement is something that everyone in the organization should align to. That creates the macro okay. So what is a culture statement? When it's all redacted and edited and properly developed? It's a one pager that goes on the company's walls on the company website. It goes everywhere, right? But to get to what a culture statement is, we have to understand what culture is okay, because the culture statement is going to help us understand what our culture is. So what is culture? Culture is the aggregate of five elements of any group of people. So if a group of people do not have these five things in place, this is why I said the canceled culture is not a culture. Okay? Because it's not technically a culture. It's a movement. Okay? A culture consists of five elements number one beliefs. Beliefs are the linchpin of every culture, they are the foundation of every culture. Okay, number two values. Okay, so beliefs are what we think values are the things that are important to us. That's the second thing in every culture. And the third thing are norms and that's the things that we expect of one another, how we behave together, how we conduct ourselves. The fourth thing is language. How do we speak with one another now? That may be English, Spanish friends, but it may be the types of ways that we speak with one another. It may be we don't raise our voice at one another. That could be part of our culture statement. Right? It may be if we disagree we speak with respectfully with one another. We don't call each other names. Right? So that can be part of the cultures language. And then the fifth thing of every culture has our symbols. Okay, now in a business, you have your logo and you have all of those things. Just think about a religious culture. You may have the cross you may have the menorah, you know, all of these different cultures have symbols, okay? Clothing is a symbol within a culture. Food is a symbol within a culture so if you go to a cultural festival, right, so you go to your local Hispanic festival on Hispanic Heritage Month, for example, right? What you're going to mostly see are symbols. But you're not going to learn the deeper things about beliefs values. And norms and where do people have conflict? cultural conflict, sometimes happens over symbols, right? We can think of multiple examples of that. But most cultural conflict is over beliefs, values and norms. Okay, so one of the things that I do with companies just help them to structure their culture statement, and then every new associate in their onboarding process aligns with that culture statement in the macro. And if they don't,
they don't get hired. Wow. Okay. So let's dive into this a little bit deeper because I think this is invaluable for people to hear. So you, you challenge companies to create a culture statement based around these five things that you just mentioned. So beliefs, you mentioned foundations, what is it what the leaders think? Or is it what the entire body of the organization thinks?
It's what the body of people thinks it's how people believe now leadership can obviously create that movement and especially if you have, you know, I believe that I take this back you we've all heard the term inclusiveness, right. Sure. And and so in our world of six stages of cultural mastery, only stage four leaders will be naturally inclusive, which is excitement, because only when I'm excited about our relationships will I want to really include you. Right? Because so how do I get to excitement? Well, stages 123. Right. Okay. But inclusiveness should be a natural thing, not a policy thing. But the only way to get to true inclusiveness is I'm excited about you. I'm excited about your contribution, and I'm excited about you being here, which is the only time I'm actually going to provide a meaningful seat at the table to use that type of conversation piece. But I think that yes, it's a culture is the expression of people. It's not just the expression of leadership. You know, we look at leadership, you know, you can look at leadership and a couple of different models. You can look at leadership as a hierarchal appears the boss then the next level, you know, here's the here's the board, here's the CEO. And then the next level, you have the CEO CHR Oh, you have a CSO, you have a C, you know all those things, and then underneath that you may have a vice president level and underneath that you have another level then eventually you get down to the workforce, right? Sure. That's very hierarchical. But there's another model of leadership that we teach and that is that the leader is the central hub on the wheel. And especially when you're dealing with people who are very high context or relational that model actually works better and is more attractive to people than the hierarchical model. And it actually creates more movement, the wheel thus the wheel, right? So the leaders can view themselves as being at the top of the food chain or leaders can view themselves as being the hub on the wheel that drives the wheel right? But they are literally in the middle of the people. Right? And so I think that we have to look at the way we structure leadership, if we're going to get our cultures correct, and we have to think in terms of, okay if I create this culture statement, if I create this macro culture that everyone is aligning to, now we have strength, okay. But this has to come from the people. It just can't come from a couple of people who are just hierarchically just pushing it down to everyone and saying, This is how we all believe. You know, and we can do this through we can do this through committees, we can do this through through the saw rain, there are multiple ways to accomplish getting that
data. This is simplistic. I always push back on organizations and this is what I personally say is I always recommend that companies do not focus on company core values. At least the words of those values, I always recommend they focus on company core stories that exemplify those behavioral values. This is really important because we think in pictures, so if you tell me one of your values Ricardo was putting the customer first. Your picture, putting the customer first and my picture putting the customer first could be two completely different pictures. We're going to paint the picture through story, or we're going to paint the picture through a story that someone the organization had an experience to prove to me what it means to put the customer first. So I think it's really important as companies create a company culture of storytelling, that they're able to really pull these different experiences and how they attribute to those values. Then he had talked about norms. That so this is what people in the organization expect. So from a norm perspective, this really speaks to the heart of the culture. Correct. So if the culture is we're casual and we wear jeans, then that's what people expect. Right? They don't expect to be in Armani suits. They expect to be in jeans. Is that what you mean by cultural norms?
I think it's probably a little deeper than that. Those are more symbolic gestures,
or to the culture.
Nor maybe punctuality
Okay, okay. So this is more behavioral than it's
more behavioral in nature, in norm may be that, you know, when we communicate with one another, we say thank you and an email and we don't just leave the email. So I mean, just different cultures function in different ways. So, you know, it can touch on everything that we do, the way we communicate with each other. So, you know, there may be someone who, you know, I know there are business leaders who when they are in an email thread, they just answer back they don't say thank you. They don't put their name, anything of that nature. And there are other people who every time they send an email, thank you, appreciate you. And there's there's just an expectation of behavior. The way people speak with each other, you know, so I think you can't really separate any of these five elements from the other. They are all working off of each other. And around each other. They go together, you can't have one without the other because the beliefs will create the values and the values will create the norms and the norms will create the way we speak with one another. The symbols are going to be the outgrowth of all of those things. So they they work together in any given culture, whatever that culture happens to be. And so I would be careful about making any type of separation of them and seeing them more as one kind of spiritual movement where they're playing off of each other.
Sure on that's really good point. Let's dive into one more just because I want people to truly understand what you mean by language. So you had mentioned how do we speak so not necessarily a different language, but the language of our culture? And I want to I want to talk about this because you had mentioned this earlier you said sometimes there's environments where some people belong, but there's an or they feel that they belong, but their sense of belonging actually boxes out another person's belonging. I'm paraphrasing what you said. I think when I heard you say that my immediate thought went to humor so when I do a lot of workshops, one of the things that we really focus on is emotional perspectives. So different elements rooted in emotion. And one of the questions I always get when I'm talking about emotions is people ask, why isn't humor on here? So when I get my handout, they say well, why isn't humor on here? And my response is, humor is not an emotion, right? Because people have humor that on multiple emotions, you can have a situation where you're really angry, but while you're presenting that storage, driving out humor, or you can have a situation where you're really excited and it's driving our humor, and everyone views humor differently. So I think it's really important when people are thinking about language is Do you allow different elements of humor in your organization? Are you building a culture where crude humor is acceptable? Because that could box out a lot of people a lot of people might not feel like they belong or they're being bullied because of insensitive humor and actually downright despicable humor and in some instances, right, it depends on how, how out of out of alignment a culture gets, but it's amazing to me what's funny to some can be deeply offensive to others. So I want you to talk a little bit about that. Is that is that around the lines of what you meant when you talked about language? Well,
yes, I mean, it's part of it because you know, the culture we're living in today. There's a great deal of ethnic sensitivity. And, you know, you can think back and just kind of think back to you know, we used to have blonde jokes. You know, there were whole books on Polish Polish jokes, right. I'm Puerto Rican background. And, you know, I, I watched Seinfeld and there's jokes about Puerto Ricans, you know. And so, what may be really funny to one group of people may actually wound another person. Sure. And so, humor is something that even in public speaking, Matt, we have to be very, very careful with. Because it not only it may not not be funny to some people, it may actually be downright a turn off and offensive to other people, where we just lose them. And I think that, you know, there's this balance between this desire to have free speech, but as leaders, our goal has to be to reach the maximum number of people. So if that means me moderating how I speak to a certain group of people, that that's just being wise, that's not acquiescing. Or, you know, you know, we throw a lot of terms around today, but to me, it's being wise. You know, I may speak if you and I were in a private conversation you and I may speak with one another in one way, that we maybe wouldn't speak with other people in that way, depending on our depth of relationship and what we know about each other and, and, and so leaders, not needed leaders need to be skilled, right. I typically advise people to avoid humor unless they really are sure that what they're saying would be universally accepted. I mean, we're not stand up comics. Right. And and even stand up comics today are really taking it on the chin as well. You know, I mean, there's multiple examples of this right now. Have different episodes and comedies that are not being accepted. And you know, Dave Chappelle might be a great example of this right now. I mean, and he may or may not care. That's not the point. The point is, is that a large group of people is taking offense to something that someone's saying and there's no there's no real room for that in corporate leadership at this point. Sure.
Sure. You bring up a really good point. And so I do a lot of coaching for for different politicians, primarily debate prep, press, conference preparation, and one of the things I always mentioned is stay away. From trying to be funny, because a lot of politicians, they're not comedians and they get themselves in deep trouble, because they think I'm going to build trust with my audience by throwing up this joke. And in reality, they actually put up walls and they're creating barriers because what's funny to some is not necessarily funny to other people. And the same goes for CEOs and executives. Sometimes they may say a joke that they think is funny, and it might be funny to 60% of that organization, but 40% of that organization is going to be repulsed by it. I will also mention, but just to kind of give this a little bit of credibility. I have five years of training in improv comedy. So I've done major extensive work in comedy. The reason for that is there's a psychological element to humor and I did it regarding stage dynamics. So if you're really good at improv comedy, you can really dominate and master a stage so I did it for numerous reasons. But I say that because for everyone listening, that you've listened to my podcast, you would never peg me as the funniest person you've heard because I'm very reserved in my humor and I do everything I can from I need to make sure that it's going to fit the mold with who I'm talking with. So I just mentioned that right out of the gate because it's really important that even if you have extensive training when it comes to what's funny, what's not funny, sometimes the best thing to do is still be reserved, so you're not alienating or offending people. So I think that's important for me to say,
No, I think it's great. And I think beyond that, if people are going to use humor, then they should address it more towards themselves. You know, for example, when I say I'm a Puerto Rican hillbilly, right that's towards myself to raise a laugh. Never fails to bring a laugh because it's it's different. It's funny, right? But I even that I buffer, because like in Puerto Rico, the the hillbilly or the hero, which is what we say in Spanish, is probably the most revered figure in Puerto Rican folklore right? And so it's a very, it's a positive term. Even in the United States, sometimes people use hillbilly as a negative, but for me, it's a positive. So I'll typically buffer that. So if you're going to use that type of humor, make sure it's more on yourself. Not about other people and then also, you know, if you need to buffer I think buffering is an incredibly important skill for speakers and for corporate leaders, that if we're going to say something that we know, is perhaps going to be difficult to, to take or to simulate or is going to be difficult to understand or potentially controversial. Learn to buffer those statements before making them and pre prepare people that I know that what I'm going to say could be taken, but this is what I mean. So please hear me out. Right and there. are multiple ways to buffer but I think the skill of buffering for leaders is very, very important, especially in the storytelling process. If you're going to go into the to the realm of humor, absolutely.
Well said well said. So we unpacked a lot. We dove into a lot of different elements and I very much appreciate this conversation. So before we wrap up and close I just want to go through different things that I personally learned that spoke to me the most, because I think that there's a lot to be said here but I got a lot out of this conversation. You talked about going from sensitivity to skill. He had mentioned difference between going from Head to Heart. We had talked about macro and micro cultures. You had mentioned the challenge of companies having a culture statement. That's an awesome challenge. Everyone listening to this, I think that's a really good action step to take is to sit down and start thinking about having a culture statement. Everyone should align to that culture statement. I think that that's really important that you had said that then you mentioned beliefs, values, norms, language and symbols. So really appreciate just all the different things that you brought to the table with this conversation. Ricardo, I think was absolutely invaluable for anyone listening that wants to get more information on you or what you do, or is the best way that they can connect with you and get more information. For
my books Ricardo gonzalez.com forward slash books for me just Ricardo gonzalez.com Okay,
perfect.
That'd be the easiest
way. Yeah. So and to make it even easier for people. I will include that in the show notes. They can just click and go from there. And I really appreciate what you do. I've had the opportunity to read a lot of the things that you put out there. I've learned a ton. It's going to help me be a better leader and better communicator. So I personally appreciate that. I know that you offered a ton of value to people listening. So thank you
very much. Thank you so much.
Thank you for listening to the stories with traction podcast. If you have a story. That you would like to share. Feel free to drop an email to Matt at Matt zaun.com with the subject line stories with traction. Also, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn where I share tons of resources on how you can be a better storyteller. Remember, if you want to persuade with power, and inspire those around you to action you must share more scores.