Culture is Not Fluff: How to Architect a High-Performing Team | Stories With Traction Podcast

 

SHOW NOTES:

In this episode, Matt Zaun sits down with Sel Watts, founder of Wattsnext PX, to discuss the essential role of culture in business growth. Sel challenges the common perception that culture is just a "fluffy" HR concept, arguing instead that it is a strategic business driver that directly impacts productivity, retention, and company valuation.

In addition, they talk about:

✅ The Dreamcatcher strategy: Understanding what truly matters to employees beyond salary.

✅ Why businesses should consider past employees as "alumni" and how positive exits impact long-term reputation.

✅ Sel’s "No Plan B" mantra (literally tattooed on her arm) and why she believes having a backup plan prevents full commitment.
…and much more!

BIOS:

Sel Watts is the founder of wattsnext Group, the founder and CEO of wattsnext PX, and the NYC Chapter President of EO.

Matt Zaun is an award-winning speaker and storyteller who shows business leaders how to inspire action and drive results through the power of strategic storytelling. With a track record of catalyzing significant sales growth for over 300 organizations across industries—from financial services to health and wellness—Matt’s approach has been proven to deliver measurable impact.

 

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

 

 

Matt Zaun

Today I'm joined by Sel Watts. Cell is the founder of What's Next group and the founder and CEO of What's Next PX and in her spare time, she is the New York City chapter president of EO.

We'll welcome the stories with traction, so.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Thank you so much for having me, I've been excited to catch up with you today.

 

Matt Zaun 

Well, I'm excited to do, I know you're incredibly busy, so I really appreciate you spending time with us today.

I wanna dive right in, because a couple weeks ago, we had a call and you said a lot of different things that I've never quite heard in those terms before.

One in particular, you said a lot of cease-wood executives, you the people experience as fluffy, if you were as an afterthought, but you really teach your clients, your CEO clients to view this with intentionality and strategy, you dive deeper and tell us what you mean by that?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yes, absolutely. So, when I got into the HR space, I did so because I thought that it wasn't working.

And my vision in my companies were to disrupt the HR space and have business owners and CEOs utilising HR.

And I'm talking from a performance. engagement perspective, come at it from a different way. And so one of the key areas is culture, that's been buzzword for some time now.

you know, we hear different definitions of it's how someone, how people feel and all of those things, yep, yep, yep, that's, you know, true, but our company, what we call it is we architect cultures, because I believe that employee experience needs to be as intentional and strategic and process focused as your customer experience.

So a lot of companies would have their customer experience of what happens when, you know, your sales experience, and then when a customer comes in and what's their journey with you, the same needs to happen for people.

And ultimately, that then creates a certain culture. The problem is, is that people think that two things. One, that they've got a good culture,

 

Matt Zaun 

I was was there anything in particular over the years that you had people say, huh, I never thought that my people really cared about that.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

And if so, what was one of those things? Yeah, so there's lots of things actually. But one that comes to mind is people wanting writing personal recognition one-on-one, more so than salary, in some instances.

But I will add something to that lately in the last year. I've seen public recognition go from the bottom of the list, moving quite far up the list.

So that's interesting. don't know if that's maybe the generation changing or whatever. you know, I'm a big believer that it's the little things.

And if you can be creating little things, That will give you a much bigger return on investment on what you may think in relation to a conversation and whatever else it may be.

you're internal and you have an office, know, the pool table or the billiards table, sorry, billiards table, my Australian just came in.

All right, so that's fascinating to me.

 

Matt Zaun

All right, so public recognition. So you're saying, what I hear you saying is that C-suite executives are doing better as it pertains to staff meetings, getting up and edifying their team, but as it pertains to one-on-one, the personalized, maybe more custom recognition, recognition is not happening.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yes, and well, people want this more than we realize, and we're not going to ask for it. And so I, in particularly in small to medium business,

as we have this benefit of being able to customize our employee experience. And one of the things that we recommend and that I did in my company was when people join, I get them to complete a dream catcher, which is basically a list of dreams of goals, aspirations they have for their life.

And that then becomes a really important tool when you want to acknowledge or recognize someone rather than thinking that money is the only thing, actually thinking, well, matters to this person?

So to give you an example, I had a team member, this was many, many years ago, she was an intern or a graduate and she was doing some work with us and we were moving offices and she spent the weekend with me and I care and doing all this stuff and I really wanted to thank her.

And she said to me, I don't want you to Hey, Amy, I just want to help, but I want to thank her.

so I went and looked at her dreamcatcher that she completed when she first joined. And one of the things that said was that she would like to own a house in the South of France.

Now, obviously, I couldn't get that for her. But what I did do was I bought her a book, a beautiful picture book of homes in the South of France and wrote, you know, based something along the lines of, you know, I've no doubt the achieve this dream when you, you know, you're so giving.

And, you know, whatever. And so that was really, you know, what would that have cost $30 and the impact was was huge.

And I've got so many examples of that. The other thing is that I will tell one more. It's a really great way to get to know your people because there was one time someone said that they wanted to learn the guitar.

And so I said in the onboarding, so why do you want to learn the guitar? what's that about and she went into this incredible story about her grandfather and how he played the guitar and her memories of that and then he passed away and this whole story and it was like wow I know so much more about this person because she put on there she'd like to learn the guitar and I asked why and we were able help her with guitar lessons after she'd been with us for a little while so I've got a bit off track I think Matt but I think you know think about things like this so that's very intentional but it's meaningful and it gives a really strong return investment but it is strategic and intentional oh it's absolutely huge so I do want to mention so you had said dream catcher this is something that companies can intentionally set up during onboarding with new team members was that correct yeah I mean we created it it's a literally a list

that says, tell us, you know, the 10 or 15 things, the goals you have. Actually, a funny one, client of mine had a guy who, he had on his, that he wanted a six-pack, six-pack of abs, and he'd done something cool and they had a Friday afternoon drinks and they got him a six-pack of beer and referenced his dream catcher.

So, yeah, and really, we implement this in companies that now that, you know, have all their team. You don't just have to do it when people start, but obviously, you do it, get into the groove of when they start, but get your team to do it now and just see what interests them and then when there's a celebration, a birthday or an acknowledgement.

Check out the dream catcher and be creative and you get a really good return on investment.

 

Matt Zaun 

I love that. So, one of the things that I like to teach my clients is that during an onboarding event

and they need to be focused on sharing strategic stories that exemplify the values that they say they have. one of the things that I often recognize is a leadership team will often tell the words of values.

So they'll say, you know, integrity and putting the customer first, whatever the value that they say that they want to uphold, but they're not sharing those company course stories that exemplify the values.

So I always mention, you know, pin point three stories that you can share during onboarding that really paint the scene for this new team member.

I want your cultures about. So outside of being strategic as it pertains to storytelling, what other things can leaders implement into their onboarding?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yes, I could do a whole day session with you on company values and how they should be used as one of our key offerings, actually, because I believe that most companies that they're fancy.

words on a wall, and they actually should be tools. And that's creating Vision Mission Values is a very strategic activity that often is done by the marketing department.

And thinking with the customer in mind, which is fine, but there also is the values that should be created internally.

That should be a tool for the employees when they don't know what to do. And there's a whole lot about that.

But to go back to your question, think about the employee experience from the moment that they hear about your company, it's through a job ad or on LinkedIn, or they drive past your building, to them going through the process of, say, interviewing with you, starting right through their career for, say, five years until they leave.

All the things that happen in that time. So obviously the recruitment onboarding first 90 days, their reviews, their salary changes, their promotions,

happens, when life happens and they are not performing or they stop and have family or whatever it may be, they do training, they end up getting promoted.

All of the things that occur during that time right up until when they leave and when they become an alumni, which people don't think about of their employees as alumni of their company, that is the strategic plan.

So being very intentional about the experience that every employee has, which is your company experience. So it doesn't matter whether, which department they're in, who their manager is, they have the company experience that covers all of those things that's going to happen to them in their, in their employee lifetime with you and designing those so that they get the result that you are wanting, which is ultimately what we all want.

high-performing and engaged people. Pretty simple, sort of. For sure.

 

Matt Zaun 

All right. I need to hone in a little bit on this alumni of the company idea because I've never heard that before ever.

love that. And as everyone listening to this episode knows, if you went to a school and you loved it and had an awesome experience, you're going to tell everyone in the world about it.

And if you hated your college experience, you're going to tell everyone as well. So is there anything specific that you had mentioned regarding how to have, let's say, a good taste in the employee's mouth when they do become an alum of the company?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yeah. So think about it exactly like how you said. You want a past employee to talk positive, vitally of you, refer potential employees to you.

And some of them, if you know they're staying the same interest. they could become clients depending on on what you what you what you do.

So if you think about what happens when someone leaves one they they make a choice to leave because they you know found a better opportunity or you exit them because they're not performing or they really don't like it.

So say that those are those things or you lay them off. The way that you handle those situations not only is everyone that's still in your company watching and so it impacts morale but when they leave the way that that experience happens and it doesn't matter if it's not a favorable experience such as someone's being terminated because they're not performing or someone's being laid off.

You still have an opportunity to give someone a good experience and to help them after they leave keeping contact with them so that so that they aren't it isn't negative they don't

sort of leave the job and then never want to think about that again. We should be, and also the other thing to consider here, and this is most of the things that we teach and implement in our clients is as a result of me needing them in my business as my business group, I had no experience managing people.

And so as my business grew, I needed to do certain things and, and you know, I had to try things.

And I had experiences where people left and, you know, it wasn't on good terms. Or, you know, we, I wouldn't have wanted to bump into them at a restaurant.

And that really made me feel awful. And I realized that, you know, people are going to leave, especially now.

mean, you know, what's the, what's the likelihood of someone staying longer than two or three years? I mean, that's changed so much.

And so people are going to leave. so that's going to happen. And it doesn't have to happen in a really negative way so that everyone that's left you is sort of not, yeah, no longer part of the family, if you like, if you know what I mean.

 

Matt Zaun 

Absolutely, no, that's great points, great points. I want to dive even deeper into culture, so recently you wrote a piece called The Culture Tax.

I thought this was fascinating, so just a few pieces from it. You mentioned that at a certain size, culture can no longer be managed by osmosis.

So my question is, what's the tipping point where an organization will start to feel the shift? Is it a certain number?

Is it a certain, well, like people number, revenue number, certain structural establishment of the organization, what would you say that this is the tipping point where you absolutely need to be hyper-focused on culture?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yeah, so from my own personal experience and from so many of my businesses that I've worked with over the years.

Often like the first five employees are friends, people that are taking a risk to come and join you and you tend to make decisions together.

It's like a team. people in the business aren't necessarily looking at you as a leader. They're looking at you as they're joined to be part of something.

And then after that, when you start to grow and need to bring people on to grow your team, then you start getting stuff that are being hired in going through a recruitment process and then looking at you for an employee experience like what they may have had in a larger company.

And so I often find that once we get to like seven people and above, the culture already starts to change.

And I noticed a huge difference from five to 10 and then 10 to 30, I was, you know, just a completely different experience because also you

role is the CEO changes too. If you're a founder, your role and your and employees access to you changes significantly as your business grows.

So I say to people, if you can think about your culture strategically and like a marketing plan from the beginning, it will save you so much heartache because I don't know one person or entrepreneur that went into business because they want to manage people.

And it is the most challenging part of running a business. I think the things that keep people up at night are staff and cash flow.

So if we can reduce the impact of what will happen, people will leave, people will go to your competitor, people like things, that's business as usual, that's just your best employee will suddenly

have something happen and they won't be the best anymore or whatever it may be, two great employees might not get along.

Stuff happens, that's just part of it. But we want to reduce the impact of that as much as possible.

And I would want to do that right from the beginning, if possible.

 

Matt Zaun 

Absolutely. I was laughing when you said that because that is so true that people don't start a business to manage people.

They don't wake up one day and say, you know what, I want a ton of people that I need to manage and have all that stress and frustration with.

So what do you think one of the most overlooked consequences of that disengagement would be? Disengagement with the team.

think a lot of leaders underestimate this hidden cost of a weak culture.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

I see it all time.

 

Matt Zaun

know you know this for sure. what do you think like an overlooked consequence?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yeah. So one of the key overlooked, one of the key things is people knowing what success looks like. So this is going to sound really basic.

So people, companies have job descriptions that they use as something that they put out to advertise when they've got a vacancy.

But not many companies other than my clients have what we call outcome profiles, which is basically telling you that if you are doing this job successfully, this is exactly what it will look like.

And that doesn't mean that they're doing the job successfully, 100% of time, you know,% perfect. And that's not really the goal.

for people to be able to go home at the end of the night and go, did I do a good job or am I doing a good job?

I'll assume so because no one said otherwise. That's usually the case. And so what happens is that we have people that are not really

doing a very good job. The founders or the SCOs are getting frustrated think it's a people problem, but often it's a clarity of role and outcome problem.

The other thing with that is that many roles are designed, are not designed intentionally, so we have a lot of we'll find that there'll be roles in our company where it requires two completely different styles of people in that role, which is likely to result in someone failing at least in a third or 50 percent of their role and that's because the role is the problem, not the people.

So we look at culture like what can we do to make them feel good, what activities can we do, what values can we put up on the wall.

The first thing to do is to go if I look at this job, does this person and myself as the founder and CEO, does this person know exactly what success looks like and I think it I

If you're listeners are thinking about their companies and think about it this way, this is like a pretty good way to test whether your roles are clearly defined.

If I was going to have a performance discussion with you about something that you're not doing or you're not meeting my expectations, could there be a chance that your expectations and my expectations are two completely different things?

And if that's the case, then we don't have clarity. We want to be able to go, this is what success looks like and it doesn't matter, know, it's not, this is not about you getting it right all the time, but you've got to know what it, what it looks like.

And that is the thing that is missing from every company that I go into in the first instance.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, it sounds basic, but as you mentioned, so important. of things I like to talk about is that storytelling paints the picture, right?

So if we're sharing stories on what we mean, this is what success looks like, it's going to go over a lot better with our people.

I love that the outcome profile and just because it's basic doesn't mean that it's bad I want to remind everyone especially.

I know a lot of my listeners are into football You know Vince Lombardi tons and tons of wins one of the things that he always did after a game when his team lost He would literally hold up a football and say gentlemen This is a football and then they would break down all the basics of what they were doing wrong what they could improve on And I think it's a really good point that often we lose ourselves in what matters most You mentioned that clarity piece that clarity of role.

That's so important if we could have an incredibly Intense type a go get or an organization highly motivated But if there's not clarity with what they're doing, it's absolutely lost.

So I appreciate you mention that I think it's also a really good segue into the idea of structure So you recently wrote a piece.

I love this. It says your 10x vision deserves a 10x team, but your structure won't get you there. So you talk about the brutal truth that organizational structure can sabotage growth.

So I want to talk about this. What do you think one of the biggest misconceptions leader has regarding their structure?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Well, one people don't look at it regularly enough. So structures often just become what they are because over time.

So, oh, we need that person. So we'll put that in the or the org structure. Now, I know we need someone to do that.

And it doesn't actually make sense. So most times when I look at an organizational structure, it doesn't make sense anymore.

But there's a couple of things here, but one of the things in relation to what we're saying before about managing people, the biggest, I just see this all the time where the only way for someone to be promoted or

get increases or recognition is for them to be managing people. And so the prep with that is that, you know, there's not that many good people managers.

Some people are just really, really good at it. And you know, we learn and we develop. some people are naturally good at it, it's really, really hard.

And so what happens is you take someone who's really awesome at their job and then you take them off that to manage people.

And then they're not any good at managing people. You've lost your best person doing whatever it was. And the team they're under are not performing either.

You know, that sounds extreme, but it happens all the time. So with org structuring, you want to look at career, where if you're thinking about career park planning, what is the way for people to progress and progress, you know, is different things for different people other than managing people?

Can you have specialists and experts and whatever? How do you stress? to your company differently so that you can grow and utilise and engage those people but not put them in charge of others if that is not what they're good at.

So that's one thing and then the other is, in a lot of cases when I do org structuring, there are so many roles that aren't needed and the efficiencies down.

So that doesn't mean that other roles aren't needed because they're then roles that need to be recruited but there's usually a lot of inefficiency because the role doesn't make sense.

There's no success. We hire, we've got someone doing a role that in that role has got tasks that are $100 an hour tasks and $20 an hour tasks.

You don't want someone all those roles. in the task in the same role, then this all comes into your org structuring and where roles sit.

So that's a snapshot of something that we could really go down a rabbit hole with.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, no, I appreciate that. So as far as let's say this week, so let's say there's a leader listening right now, and they realize based on what you said that their structure might be off holding them back, what's one actionable step that they could take the rest of the week to at least put in motion changing that?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

What would you say this is the number one thing that you should start with? So the first thing I would do is instead take all the people out, take all the people out, put them on the bench and write the actual roles, not the so don't have a person and then their have a role and then put the people's names in the boxes.

And if you are in a growth mode, you might find that you have someone who's in multiple boxes. You might yourself be head of sales, CEO, whatever, whatever other things that you may be.

So firstly, get really clear on who's doing what roles, because then you will know one of the next things you need to hire, the next positions you need to hire, and also where basically where you're losing money, missing opportunities for leverage.

So that would be the first thing that I would do.

 

Matt Zaun 

I think that's an awesome idea.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

I appreciate ensuring that.

 

Matt Zaun

So let's talk about 10-year-old sell. So if you were to go back to when you were 10, because I always look like backtracking and figure out how did all this come to be?

when you were 10, did you enjoy being around people? are a part of maybe a sports team? What prompted your picture curiosity from a people perspective?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yeah. That's a very interesting question because I consider myself to be an introvert with an extroverted life and I seem really extroverted but ultimately I get probably more energy from within than I do which is basically extroverts and I was an extrovert and would put myself in positions of leadership and

big groups of friends, the ones that would, the one that would organise things. And as I've, as I've got older, I've realised that it's an extroverted life that I chose.

And so I think about being 10, I didn't have a really great childhood. So I don't look, when I think about it, I look back and I think about the challenges that I was having in my life at that age, as opposed to why I was naturally drawn to certain things.

 

Matt Zaun 

But I wanted to be, I wanted to be an actress. Do you think that the challenges spur on this like an element of empathy where you could relate to people more and you didn't want them to face challenges that you experienced?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Could that be part of it? Well, I think that here we're making the assumption that because I'm in a culture in the space of HR that I'm

about caring for people but that's that's really not where I come from that I don't care about people but I in relation to my work I'm the reason I started this business was because I felt that we needed to be much more commercially driven I think much more commercially strategically in relation to our people for a business perspective so my all my our goal in our and our business for our clients is what is the founder of the CEO want to do with their business are they wanting to sell it in five years are they wanting to I don't know whatever retire take it over from a family member what are they acquire what are they trying to do and then my job and my team's job is to work out from the people side how do we make that happen how do we ensure that we've got the right people doing the right things that are enjoying it that we were

We're really aware of our risks at any one time, I'm talking about risks like, you know, if you work in professional services, then you have risk that someone will leave and take your IP and you can have as many legal documents in place as you like.

But ultimately, you know, that's just that happens. Just like if you're in a manufacturing company, your machinery is going to break down at some point.

We don't want it to happen. We don't want it to happen very often. And when it does happen, we want it to be back up and running pretty quickly, but we need to prepare for that.

Same as with the people. So that's what I mean in relation to reducing risk. Now I can't remember. Oh, yeah.

Sorry, gun.

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, you're talking about strategy, right, because we have talked about the care, but it's a lot more focused on the strategic approach.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Yeah. So one of the things you're saying for, so I think the HR department is one of the overdone, ineffective departments.

in a lot of organisations, not all of them. There's some incredible people out there leading HR to plants, but because they are too focused on being the police or the therapist.

HR is there to get the people to achieve whatever the business is trying to achieve. don't have a business that people be also don't have people without the business.

going back to what led me, I've always had a major interest in people chasing their dreams and so therefore I was drawn to entrepreneurs and people who take risks to see if they can.

And that's how I was always driven. I want to do just to see if I can. And so for me, I was drawn into work that would be working with other

CEOs and business owners that are trying to bring something into the world or make their impact, and then how can I, with my area of knowledge, help them do that?

 

Matt Zaun 

Yeah, so I appreciate you sharing all that. I am intrigued and interested in knowing like what sparked this. So if we go from when you were 10 transitioning into your teen years, you mentioned lot about strategy and helping people achieve their goals.

you involved in sports? Were you involved in any kind of extracurricular activities like a chess club? Or where did you get your strategy and your ambition to go after goals and achieve them?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

So I was in sports teams all through school. was in a probably like a B player, could participate in most things, but it wasn't awesome.

I really did go down the drama, speaking, speech and drama, acting. That was where I'd did all my extracurricular because I think I was interested in the lives of people.

also, and also like all through school, I didn't know, I mean I wanted to do drama but when I left school I still didn't know, I remember my career council just didn't know where to put me or what to advise.

Back then there wasn't any talk of entrepreneurship, I was at an all-girls school, they're what we didn't even, I know that all-boys schools had economics as a subject, we didn't have economics as a subject.

So there wasn't any sort of, I didn't even know anything about that and so when I went out into the world I tried to do the traditional path of going to university and I dropped out three times, I was trying so hard to do what you meant to do but I just couldn't learn that way and I was investing in life coaches,

and I was backpacking, my friends were in London working, I was backpacking through Southeast Asia, I was always just trying to, I was much more interested in like who I was as a person and the way I thought and built and what that meant as opposed to, you know, the traditional education and that, you know, then led me into entrepreneurship, but also part of that was that I, as I mentioned, I didn't have the best childhood and one of the things that I was taught, not deliberately, but I was taught was that I can't rely on anyone to look after me.

I have to, I've only got myself that I can trust to look after me and that was, I learned that at a very young age and so part of being an entrepreneur,

was that no one has control over my job or my day or my year. because I have no real version to risk, I was really comfortable in doing something that I thought I could be creative and I could be independent and choose the path.

And that's not only just in building a business, but also in how we built the business and how we designed the things we did.

I wanted to disrupt the HR space. wanted to get out there and say, this is not working and be disruptive.

so the getting into this stage of being an entrepreneur and working in this strategic way, I think really came more from

You know, me and my life, as opposed to necessarily specific experience like uni or sport, I've always, my relationship to time is long term, so I find it really easy to look at 10 years from now and be able to see it really clearly, but right in front of me, I find much harder.

need more analytical people and with me for those types of things. So yeah, I don't know if I've answered your question.

 

Matt Zaun 

So, so I'm hearing a little bit of a reoccurring theme in what you're saying. So, you know, you had mentioned essentially that you learned early on based on the challenges of your early childhood that you needed to take care of yourself.

This almost sounds to me almost like a no plan B, burn the ships mentality, no retreat. So here's why I'm interested to learn a little bit more about that is often when I talk with people that have this.

You know, burn the ships, no retreat onward. They're, they're incredibly intense and sometimes even , but, you know, I had a conversation with you a couple of weeks ago, but we're talking now, you don't, you don't strike me as someone that's really like .

And so how do you stay grounded and how, how have you been able to be more even killed as, I mean, you've, you've worked incredibly hard, but how are you able to stay more even killed through that intensity?

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

I'm very interested to know your thoughts on that. And Matt, you know that my life manager is no plan B and I have a tattooed on my arm.

 

Matt Zaun 

I did not know that I was tattooing on arm.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

When you said don't want me, I have been the boats.

 

Matt Zaun 

It was like, that's my life mantra. I have a tattooed on my arm. No, that's awesome.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Because the reason that's my life mantra is because I believe if you've got a plan B, it's just natural that we would take it.

It's like, that's why I have a personal trainer. because if there's not someone they're telling me to do the extra reps, you know, if I'm tired, I probably won't.

And so if you have an approach where there isn't any plan B, and this is what you want, then nothing's going to stop you, then you're much more likely to achieve whatever your goals and dreams are than if you have got a, I really want to do this, and if it doesn't my it's no plan B, what do you want, you focus on that, and whatever happens along the way, even if you don't get to the end result, you're going on a journey that's going to lead you somewhere that you're meant to go.

So, oh, so you're talking about the intensity. So I think some people on my family would say, oh, it's very chaotic.

And, you know, I've always been looking for the next thing. and wanting to try different things. I know many of my team over the years would say that our office was like we were guinea pigs because I would see something or read something and go we should try that see if that actually works.

And so, and I've done a lot of, I have had a lot of coaching and and leadership, will leadership coaching specifically to my style and certainly have grown as a result of that because I didn't realize how unsafe I could make people feel in my leadership style.

was sort of like, yeah, I remember one of my coaches saying to me, it's like you're saying to everyone, get in this boat, don't worry about the life jackets, I've got to, I know where we're going and you know, it's all over the place and everyone's freaking out and I'm like, why are you all freaking out?

I've got this, like you don't need to worry. And I remember this. session one we spent probably six months really working through my leadership and so probably now I'm more grounded also you know I turned my life upside down I moved to you know America middle age with three kids as a single mother I started all over again so I'm I'm pretty grounded and humble because I you I take lots lots of risks and I'm aware that you know what that what those risks mean I love it thanks for sharing that all right one more question so what would you say you could say one or a couple cultural differences between Australia and the United States specifically the New York City area well we are Australians are much more on time to meetings

 

Matt Zaun

Awesome.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

That's the first one thing I noticed. Well, so this is the thing that I have found most challenging for me coming here with cultural difference.

We have a thing in Australia called Tall Poppy Syndrome, and what that basically is is that we tend to put people down when they're being successful.

And so we're not ones to self-promote or talk ourselves up or brag. We're more likely to do the opposite.

And one of the things I noticed coming here is Americans are amazing at self-promotion and really saying, I am the best consultant in this area and really good at how much I and so did some people around me that I was doing the opposite.

I wasn't that found really hard to promote myself, sell myself in that way where I would be heard. And that's been, that's been really interesting and challenging for me with this difference in culture.

And I'm certainly not nailing it by any means, but it was something that, and also the other thing I was going to say was, I've been here for just over five years now, there was this Aussie that came and did a talk to my entrepreneurs group.

And I was listening to him and thinking, oh my gosh, this is what I was doing, really underselling and underselling themselves and just the way that we communicate as Australians is just, yeah, we, you know, I've learned a lot of great, great things from my own.

American friends.

 

Matt Zaun 

Awesome. Well, thank you for sharing that. appreciate that. And I appreciate our conversation today. So I learned a ton.

I have a page full of notes right here, but there's three things in particular I'm going to take away from this conversation.

So one is I really appreciate what you mentioned regarding a lot of CEOs don't know what matters to their people.

And based on these surveys, you know, you recognize that though public recognition in staff meetings might be up, one of the things that you found was that people want more personalized one-on-one recognition.

I think that's incredibly important. I think a call to action for everyone listening is are you actually customizing that recognition one-on-one just doing small simple things can go a very, very long way.

The second thing is I really like what you talked about the outcome profile. I think this is so important.

You said when you're doing the job successfully, this is exactly what it should look like. Clarify, clarify, clarify. clarify.

And then the third and final piece, as I think there's a lot of misconceptions about HR clearly. You know, we talked about fluffy.

You mentioned the police or a therapist, and you had said that HR should get people to achieve whatever the business wants to achieve.

There's intentionality, there's strategy with that. I love that, that it's so, so wise. So, if someone wants to get more information on what you do, they want to reach out to you for your services.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Where's the best place that they can go to get that information? Well, they can check out our website at what's next PX, which is W-A-T-T-S-N-E-X-T-P-X-P-X, for people experience.com, or connect with me on LinkedIn.

So, what's, and I would be happy to talk to you, and, you know, reach out, tell me a problem you're having, and I'm more than happy to talk through it.

 

Matt Zaun 

Perfect. I will include that in the show notes. People can just click and go from there. Thank you again.

I really appreciate your time.

 

Sel Watts (wattsnext)

Thanks, Matt.