Part 2 : Company Culture and Trauma | Stories With Traction Podcast

SHOW NOTES:

SERIES: This podcast episode is a part of a company culture series with Ricardo Gonzalez on the Stories With Traction Podcast.

SUMMARY: In this episode, Ricardo Gonzalez and Matt Zaun discuss why leaders' trauma might negatively affect their company culture.  

RICARDO GONZALEZ BIO: Ricardo is the Founder and CEO of Bilingual America and the author of numerous books that focus on multicultural leadership and cultural communications.  He has consulted for many multinational and Fortune 500 companies. He aims to help organizations develop healthy cultural mindsets and skill sets since this drives human connection, creativity, and collaboration.

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

PAST EPISODE MENTIONED: Company Culture Statement Needed | https://storieswithtraction.buzzsprout.com/1781130/10862290-company-culture-statement-needed

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://www.linkedin.com/in/mattzaun/

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

Sales and Marketing all through the lens of strategic storytelling. Enjoy this episode rt t regarding company culture with Ricardo Gonzalez, I am so unbelievably thankful he was willing to do two episodes regarding this unbelievably important topic. For those of you that did not listen to the last episode, I highly recommend you pause this episode go listen to the first part. In addition, I will have another episode in the show notes called company culture. Statement needed so there's two episodes to check out before this one. I highly recommend that but let's dive in. So for those of you who did not listen, Ricardo is the founder and CEO of bilingual America. He is the author of numerous books that focus on multicultural leadership and cultural communications. Welcome back, Ricardo.
Thank you, man. Appreciate it.
Yeah, and I appreciate your time. Every time I talk to you. I'm learning a lot of different concepts that I never thought before as well as other people listening to this. You know, we were talking offline about just how deep some of these ideas can go and it does go deep and we'll get to that. But I want to leave I want to pick up where we left off regarding something that you mentioned on the last episode regarding culture. in of itself as a whole. You mentioned beliefs, values, norms, symbols and language. Okay. And you'd mentioned that, hey, no wonder leaders values are off and they don't even know the definition of culture in of itself. Of course, there would be some crack, so to speak regarding the values. So let's unpack that a little bit more. I'll give you some examples regarding myself, maybe you could help steer me regarding what is a belief what is a value just so people listening can can really grab a hold of this? So several years ago, I was doing everything I possibly could to study masterful orators, okay, so I really focus on strategic storytelling and really focusing on how can people inspire, persuade, prompt in action with the person or audience that they're talking to? So this led me to in depth in depth study regarding politicians regarding comedians, actors, anyone that is in front of people and connecting, but a lot of this was done from an academic perspective. And then I recognized I was missing a really important puzzle piece to this equation, which was artists in the music industry. And I recognize that some of the best songwriters have very specific frameworks for the songs that they produce and put into the world. In fact, songs that sell the most actually have very specific frameworks. So I started going into this whole avenue of what can we unpack for musicians that can be used in the business world and I highly recommend anyone listening to this. I mean, everyone talks about creating a tribe of people around them. What better way to what better entity to look to than the music industry? I mean, rock stars know how to create a tribe of people around them for sure. And there's a lot we can learn from rock and roll, just one genre, but there's a lot we can learn from other genres as well, but specifically the entire framework process. Okay, so this led me to telling myself the story. Because again, stories do have traction in many, many ways. The story of I need to look outside of academia. And other different industries I wasn't really mindful of at the time. That led to me saying I'm very much going to focus on creativity within my business. So take us through that. So we had the story of me doing intensive research recognizing that I was missing this one piece, which is the music industry. So that's the story that I have is the is the value or the belief, creativity.
Well, I wouldn't I would go back even further, you know, what was the belief that you ascribe to that caused you to think that studying the greatest operators in history would unlock for you? What was it the belief that the power of the spoken word is the greatest power on earth? It was that a belief for you? Because that would have created the drive to go deeper. Right. So I'm curious as to what the belief was that actually got you on that path? Why you did it in the first place.
Yeah, so to answer that question, I was listening to two speeches, one from Martin Luther King Jr. and another one from John. F. Kennedy. And I'm watching this thinking what what is happening right here that is causing this audience to literally be on the edge of their seat? What what is happening there has to be different patterns regarding the way information is being utilized that language so to speak, you mentioned utilize to connect with the audience was which led me to alright, what is the framework? What are the patterns with other leaders and all these different things started to come up regarding Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. I mean, pick someone that's been able to connect. Now the missing piece of that was our so that was the pattern that was the system that was always
true connection happens through the spoken word. Yes,
absolutely. That would be the so that would be the belief is what you're saying. Yeah. So because that belief would drive the rest of your activity right. Sure. So everything
else that happened to all after that, that has gotten you to this particular point in time came out of that one, core belief it set everything in motion, right. There I would, I would reference President Obama's speech at the Democratic National Convention. What was it in? 2004? I believe it was, I think it was 2004 which propelled him that one speech actually propelled him to the presidency had not been for that that one speech, you know, so you can look at but you have to have a core belief right, that drives behaviors and in the construct behaviors are the are the are the norms, right? So what did that what was the value that was created by your belief that the spoken word is the most powerful force on earth and then that would create a value? And then, you know, everything else for you has been an offshoot in your program and everything else is around stories, but everything kind of comes from that core belief and drives down through and now that's not a culture because it's, it's not necessarily you're not with a group of people who are sharing that same belief. You're, you're kind of creating that group of people to some degree, right. But it it certainly does follow that trajectory. I don't know. Does that make sense or no? No,
absolutely. So alright, so what I'm hearing is that the belief that I had and still have to this day is the power of the spoken word, right, which led me to believe that hey, I need to be more. I need to allow myself to be more creative, to bring other elements on board. That's where the whole songwriting perspective came in. So the value would be creativity, but the belief would be the power of the spoken word. Am I getting those two things right. Yeah,
I think the creativity would be more you know, if you if you were to structure it in a statement, you know, I believe that the spoken word is the most powerful force on earth. And then you can go because then you almost just make the transitionary statement, although you would not include it, because I believe that I value creativity, god, okay. And because I value creativity, behaviors within these, this culture of people who believe this and value this will be x, y and z. We will, we will practice music because it's a highly creative act, we will practice XYZ because you know, so you could spin it off that way, if in fact, you wanted to create a culture around
that. Sure. So this is this is fascinating to me because I feel listening to you talk record as there is a difference between the belief and value. Yes, a lot of leaders, I think, aren't even putting values down properly that so my question would be, is integrity a value or is that a belief you value integrity, so then there's going to be a value that comes from that as a subcategory? No, integrity is actually a norm. So, yeah, I mentioned that because I've seen numerous companies, some leaders or play Listen to this, to put it in more practical
terms in our culture. Sure. People must speak with each other, which also touches into language, right? But people must be, you know, full of integrity or that's a it's more of a norm than a value. So if you kind of came back and you could actually restructure what the belief is what the value is what the norm is, how that impacts our symbols, right? Sure. And by the way, this is kind of interesting. Most people when they go to when they most people, when they think about culture, what do they think about? They think about music, folklore, dress, and food. Those are the those are the three things that people think about when they think our culture and all three of those things are actually part of symbols. Interesting. They are all part of the expression. Now sometimes music will express the beliefs of a culture, but they're all symbolic. They're all visuals within that culture. So if you think in terms of symbols, as visuals, like in a company, most people think about symbols like their brand logo, and that's like, okay, but that's not really those aren't necessarily the symbols. For example, part of Apple's culture when Steve Jobs was part of one symbol that it is immortal. Is him getting up in front of people speaking in a black T shirt, that's a symbol. Sure, okay. So dress is a symbol food is a symbol music is a symbol. Those are all symbols of the culture. They're outgrowths of the beliefs, values and norms of the culture.
Alright, so this has fascinated me and I'm sure this is fascinating. A lot of people listening because there are a lot of companies that will say integrity is our value. So you're saying that that's more of a norm. So there's a lot of definitions that are off here.
So what would be the belief we believe all people deserve the truth? Sure. Right. Okay. What would be the value? So the belief is that we believe all people deserve to hear and speak to be able to have the truth. Now, most companies don't actually believe that because a lot of companies are very good at hiding things that they don't want employees to know. Sure, or stockholders, share or share our stakeholders, whichever one you want to say. Right? Most people are very rare that the federal government is incredibly good. So they actually don't have the belief that people should are entitled to know the truth.
What if they did,
that people are people are entitled to have to know the truth, then that would create the value within an organization or within a culture that it is important think of value as in terms of another word and that's importance. Sure. It's important that the people within this culture are truth speakers. That's the value. Norms are the expectations within this culture. We expect all leaders to always speak the truth with their people is flipped over to language you go, you know, we expect all leaders to speak the truth with all people in a loving and respectful manner. Right? Sure. I mean, you can take almost anything but you've got to get back to that core belief. Right? Sure. What is that core belief? I mean, the entire Jewish religion is built around 10 commandments. Those are these 10 core beliefs.
Sure. Right. Absolutely. Okay.
But it has it's lived on for centuries. Why? Because they're clear. They're not too many.
Right? Yeah, anybody can understand what they're saying. You know? And then you decide, do I want to be part of that culture?
Sure. Right.
I think, again, this is why I'm not a fan of mission statements too much. And I'm not a fan of vision statements too much. And I'm not a big fan of value statements. I'm a huge fan of cultural statements, but hardly anyone has any. And if there's a work that I think is incredibly valuable, that I can help companies with, it's that one, to help people to develop a culture statement correctly. Because here's why. Because you can actually get a very, very good culture statement on one page of paper that can be framed and put on the walls and put on the website and every new person can memorize it, and sign a piece of paper that says, I agree to this. Right? In your onboarding, and everybody in that C suite went for from there forever. Fourth, agree on what the culture is. Absolutely. I
love it. Now
some people say well, yeah, but we want luck. If you don't have a strong macro culture, all these your company will be a series and sets of subcultures.
And some of those subcultures might not be what the company wants. Absolutely,
or there'll be fighting with different problems of leadership, which is already happening. Look, one of the reasons the United States right now is struggling as a country in some ways is because the macro culture has become very clouded. Sure. I would challenge anyone to define right now, the macro culture of the United States of America. Very, very difficult to do. Sure. Yeah, that's a good point. So if all citizens that people in that culture don't know what that is, then what happens? People feel displaced. And you can bring that down to a corporate, you can bring that down to a division you can bring that down to a city you can bring that down to a municipality, it doesn't matter, but the principles are the same and I think that that's the point I'm trying to make
that's a really good point. So let's dive a little bit deeper because I'm fascinated by this is
don't get me in trouble here man right
okay trouble now let's let's go a little bit deep let's have I guess, I guess was on fun with it, even though it's It might turn a little bit dark. Years ago, I had that's a great preface as years ago, I had a very, very unhealthy relationship with success. And there's multiple reasons for that. There's nature nurture. There's all kinds of elements regarding in my DNA to have an unhealthy relationship with success. Now, one of the things to my one of the the elements that I had an advantage with is that I live in a culture that values tremendous work ethic and hustle even to the detriment of myself and people around me okay. So regardless of the culture that America is, if we're going to use the US as an example, we highly value extremely driven people and that's there's many,
what's the belief behind them?
Well, the belief behind it is I need to go go go or I'm worthless. I'm, I am nothing so to speak. That would be the belief behind I
think there's a core belief on the part of a lot of people and that is if you don't work, you have you shouldn't eat and you don't have you don't bring any value to society.
I mean, that is definitely part of it. For sure. So it's basically it's based upon the, the understanding of the value from a human being perspective, right? I value myself because of XY and Z. Well, for years, it was good because I could go go go and I could get stuff done. But there was a lot of different elements. Regarding my identity that was off. Okay. So there was different elements of let's say, I hate to use the T word trauma. I think people view trauma as a much bigger thing and there are different instances that would fit in that category. But there's, there's there's different traumatizing experiences that we go through that really gear our beliefs in a certain way. And I don't think leaders are willing to really dive deeper with that. And it wasn't until I got some incredible mentors in my life that were able to point to my blind spots, and recognize that I was destroying myself and people around me because I had a false narrative of what I thought success was. So again, we're gonna go a little bit deep here is that what if there is a leader that's gone through trauma and they have a belief system that they're pushing on others that don't fit within that organic culture that you mentioned in the first episode, and they're actually causing a detriment to that organism, that organization so to speak, and it's to other people's detriment, but that is what they believe. But what they believe is unhealthy. What would you recommend? needs to happen in that instance?
Well presented maybe survival and maybe unhealthy to the organizational culture. I have several thoughts on this and I love this question. Okay. So first of all, I want to say this. We can be incredibly well intentioned and sincere and be wrong. Right. So I have no doubt in your progress to quote unquote, success, that you were very well intentioned and sincere and trying to do the best thing for you and your family. Right? Sure. But later on you came to recognize it as perhaps not the best behavior for you. Right. And so I want to have a little bit of compassion here for leaders who are you know, look, we're all humans. I love a Wayne Dyer said. He said, we're not human beings trying to be spiritual. We're spiritual beings trying to be human. And we all struggle. Everyone, you know, we need more grace in this world. So I want to start with that. Okay. The second thing is I think we live in a country that does to some point still value. People recognizing their need to grow, and that's quite forgiving. And that's changing. Our culture is changing in those ways. But there's still some strong elements of that that as long as people are willing to take remedies to make positive change, then most people will give them that benefit of the doubt. Right. Okay. The third thing I would say is that to answer your real question is should that person stay in the organization? The answer is no. Not unless they're willing to take where they're at. And compare that with the actual beliefs, values, norms. Symbols and language of the company and make real progress towards aligning with that. And the reason it's no is because it's good for no one. Okay, it's not good for the person and it's not good for the organizational culture. It's very difficult. They may be high performing, but they may be toxic to that culture. Right. And so unless there's remedy, then that person would be better off finding another place that would be more aligned to where they're at, if that's who they want to be and how they want to live. So that's how I would answer that question. Because part of the responsibility of leadership is to curate culture. And curating culture involves sometimes moving people out of that culture who are in fact damaging that culture. Now, some people may see that as being discriminatory or as being non inclusive. We're not talking about dei here, we're talking about culture. And so if you truly want a culture that is unified and harmonic, and has true fidelity, just as if you have to weed your garden and you have to trim your shrubs and your trees so that they're healthy. You have to do that with culture. That is part of your responsibility as a leader in the curation of that culture. Right now, leaders are just scared to death of doing one of their main responsibilities, and that is to curate culture, because they're afraid they're gonna offend someone in the process or that they could fall under some sort of and it's just stuff that is just very difficult to navigate. And that has to be navigated the way you ultimately hear that is by making sure that the people who come into your culture look, I value. I give you a belief of mine. I believe that right now, just to keep it that I believe that right now that Latinos are Hispanic people, mostly women, by the way, are drew are the economic driver of the United States. And I believe that because it's a fact. Okay, but I believe that the data is there. Okay, because of that. I highly value the engagement of Latinas and Latinos in business. So could I go work for a company that had an organizational culture that would not allow people to speak Spanish in the workplace for example? The answer is I wouldn't go there. Do they have a right? I don't know when this cut and us they may not have it right anymore and other countries, they may have that right. Organizationally, you know, you have to look at the legal aspects of things, but I'm just given an example. I wouldn't fit there. I wouldn't want to be there. So I'm not going to waste my energy suing them to give me my way. Like, go find a culture that lines up with me. I think we're spending way too much energy trying to fix everyone instead of us, fixing ourselves and then aligning with the groups that best align with us. I do think there has to be alignment. But that's that's a misunderstood term. What's the alignment to the alignments to the culture? And that doesn't matter if you're black, white, Hispanic, Asian, whatever race or ethnicity one might be. That matters of do we align and our beliefs and our values and our norms and our symbols and in our language. That's what matters there has nothing to do with race and ethnicity. Okay, and that's where we're getting messed up and in some ways to take it deeper, if I may. Okay. One of the things that I have found is that this is tough work. It's easy for a leader, a CEO or CFO or CEO. To put this off on to the HR the department and say you're in charge of culture, that's easy. It's much more difficult to look ourselves in the mirror and to recognize I may have some healing to do myself. And I have no right to try to lead the culture of this company until I am culturally healthy and skilled. That's hard work. But here's the here's the fallout from not doing that. One is and we've seen this now a million times over some leader saying or doing something that got them fired or canceled or blacklisted or whatever, right. We've seen that and we're gonna keep seeing it. See what nature right? So if I don't do that work up front to fundamentally transform who I am how I view culture, how I view people of other cultures. At some point, I'm going to misstep. And in the world we're living in and the environment we're living in, it can cost us everything. Right. I don't have to give examples because everybody knows what I'm talking about here. Absolutely. Okay. And I want to go back to your whole thing on trauma. I have an example of this because I have a person I know who is a leader, super smart guy. Graduated from one of the academies. And every time the word Mexican would come up, he just would, you could see his face and sometimes verbally, and he hated these people. Wow. And I I you know, one time I asked him a private I said so and so as I said, What happened that caused you to be so adamantly against the Mexican people going to your point of trauma, and he looks at me and he says, To me crying. My son was killed by a Mexican. Wow. So trauma can very much impact how we view people from other cultures shown. Right? That's reality, man. And if I don't, you know, I think some people don't realize how much cultural therapy is like real therapy, right? Because it's life. It's what we've been through. It's what we've seen. It's who's maybe hurt us. Who said things about us maybe what we heard from our parents or what we didn't hear from our parents.
Right. Yeah, that's a really good point.
So I think everyone I mean, we do this to our cultural mastery experience, which is just amazing. Because when people consistently come out of this, they go, Oh, my God, I'm a different person. But it didn't hurt. Because we don't judge them. It makes us you know, what if I could say it in business terms, what if I could teach you to move from reaching 10 million people to reaching 100 million people in X amount of hours? Who How are you gonna do that? Well, that's exactly how because when you learn to properly engage and work with and collaborate with people of other cultures, guess what you just did you expanded your influence exponentially. That's a fantastic point. Right? You not only did you expand your influence exponentially, you now have put yourself you have protected yourself you have put a layer of insulation around you, so that now you're much more educated as to how to approach people of other cultures, which is going to deeply and significantly minimize the chance that you might say or do something that would in fact, get you cancelled or fired or suspended or whatever. Sure. I can only see good things coming out of that work.
Absolutely. No, no, I this is all extremely good to unpack and process i One of the things that I will throw out though, because I know that there are people listening to this that can relate to this experience that I had. I was working with a gentleman last year. So you had mentioned if they're not a good fit for the culture, they should leave right and that's a that's a valid more
remote, or change. Remedial. Yeah, absolutely. or seek a process to change.
Sure this person was the founder and CEO, right. So the likelihood they're going to leave is probably not likely right. So then it goes back to change. Well, the danger was this individual, highly skilled knew how to produce results for his shareholders. So he was making quite a bit of money. However, background as he's being raised, parents go through a horrific divorce. His father is an aggressive alcoholic. There's trauma. So back to your point regarding language the way this individual spoke to his employees, the team members they didn't appreciate in fact, on every survey, he's scored the lowest that communication Okay, horrific communication, terrible connecting with people however, there were different systems and the technology that they this this entity was selling was producing financial results for shareholders. So now we have two different worlds we have this person's a producer, they're in the driver's seat. They're not gonna get fired. They're not gonna get forced out. You know, this individuals making shareholders very happy. So now it goes back to change, right, changing that, but that's all based on trauma which geared this person to speak to people in an important way. So now there's almost financial dollars tied to it if we're going to talk in business terms, because this person is eventually going to have a revolving door business where people are going to turnover. Yeah, and turnover is quite costly. Right and depending
on how viral the group of employees is and how active they may be on social media, it will complicate bringing in new people at some point in the future.
Sure, sure. So at this point, there has to be some type of change based on what you're saying.
So what happens is, is look again, peel back the layers of the onion, right? So here's a guy who started he started the company you said, right, yeah. So he literally could have if he had been self aware and aware of his proclivities, he could have created a culture where people where he hired a certain type of person who would respond to his type of communication. He could have done that. Look at give an example. There are football coaches. Right. Who are tough. Get right in the face of the players. And there are players who want to go play for this guy, right? Because he's a quote unquote, winner. Like I mentioned any names but examples about correct or not correct? Absolutely. Okay. So a business person could in fact position himself or herself as that type of coach. Look, I'm straightforward. I'm in your face. Sometimes I may say something that doesn't feel right. But I can't have people here who are hypersensitive or sensitive to these things. So do you fit that mold? Do you want to come and play with me? He could have this is all I'm saying. He could have filled his ranks with people who would have understood his culture understood his approach, but he wasn't self aware enough. So he hired people who clashed with that, right? No good recruiter would do that. Right.
You're making too much sense.
So he has other flaws. He has flaws. Is is not setting expectations correctly. Not onboarding correctly, not setting the culture correctly, and frankly, not recruiting correctly.
Sure. Yeah. And the reason why I want to unpack this with the record is because I know there are people listening that think to themselves, I have a successful company because of profitability, and that is an element to business but yet, the foundation could be having cracks and I'm sure you've seen time and time again. There could be very unpleasant things that happen when the culture is based around language that is just eroding and people are starting to feel threatened. This happens all the time with companies that scale incredibly quickly. They come out of the news.
Sure, I'm bitter culture is changing mad. Sure. You know, Gen Z doesn't process their values the same way the baby boomers did. Sure. I mean, the culture is changing and leaders who can't adapt to that are won't adapt to that. Then they're going to struggle with these generations. And you know, if you're, if you're in an area where people expect a great deal of perhaps even political stance and things like that, and you take another stance, you're gonna struggle with those people. Are you not willing to take a stance on certain things, you may struggle with those people? You know, it just depends on you. But at the end of the day, the business owner fills his company with people who either will align with the culture that she or he has established or wants to establish. So the great error or at the root of things is not establishing clearly the culture of the company because you could establish a culture where in the language people speak loudly to one another. You ever been to Puerto Rico or Dominican Republic? I personally I've not people speak loudly. You go to a bar or someplace and the music is so loud you have to in most places is so loud, you have to almost yell at the person next to you to be heard. Okay, and some people find that atrocious, it's part of the culture, right. And so there are pockets of cultures that but it goes back to what we began with. And that is every business owner every leader has the ability to either cure or create or to curate, everybody has to curate the culture. So I would from a cultural standpoint, that's from the that's the aspect from which I'm speaking, your friend may have all kinds of trauma. And somebody may sit back and say he shouldn't speak that way to people. Maybe what we really shouldn't be saying is he shouldn't speak that way to those people because those people don't respond to that. Right. But he had the choice in his hiring process. To tell people that goes back to transparency. Right. He had the choice to say, I don't know who he is. I have no idea. You're certainly not going to tell us nor should you. But is he a yeller? Does he sometimes look Steve Jobs by all accounts was not an easy boss.
It's been well documented, right? Ray
Kroc, from McDonald's fame was not an easy boss. Everything I know about and heard about the way Nick Saban leads his team is incredibly genius. But he's not an easy guy to play for. He did a very demanding but all of these people have made a decision that this is the culture I want. I'm not here to judge whether or not your culture is right or wrong. To me cultures are but what you're describing is a very weak culture because you have a leader who hasn't set the culture. So now there's rebellion against and it's not even against him. It's the way he's speaking, right? And language is part of culture. Sure. So maybe the culture is stronger underneath because he didn't create it properly. And they have actually more power than he has
interesting
said to you that either the leadership creates the culture or and if they don't, if they absolve themselves from this responsibility, if they don't, what happens the aggregate of the people will eventually organically create a culture. And if that leader or leadership doesn't fit that Guess who's going to take the hit at some point? Either they're going to do mass firings, because they have power to do it, or the power of the influence of the employees will get some of those leaders out and give you an example where that happened. You remember back do you remember Papa John's?
I do. We do remember that situation? Sure. Papa Giada.
He was ousted and he was a strong person on his board and he founded the company, right? Sure. But even he was not above being taken out when what he said was deemed as inappropriate to the culture of the company. Sure.
That's a very decent and realistic example to point to.
So I'm not making a judgment on cultures because you can't judge culture culture is once you make a judgment on a culture, you can no longer actually understand it. Because now you're reacting to it emotionally. And once you react to the culture, emotionally, you have no ability to really assess it.
Interesting. That's fascinating. So one of the things I want to mention, and I don't want to make a prediction because a lot of predictions that have come and gone the last couple of years have not come to fruition. So who knows what's going to happen in the next months, years decades to come? However, I don't think it's unrealistic to think that due to AI due to artificial intelligence, that is in the process of being created and who knows where it's going to be in the next couple of years. I do think it's realistic to paint the perception or paint, paint the idea that there will be companies that rise and fall quickly. Okay, so imagine individuals that would have had to work years and years and years and gain wisdom, through experience, be able to do things in an extreme quick turnaround time. So I do believe we're going to start to see this where there's going to be all these different companies that are going to be launched due to AI due to all the different elements that you can do, but because of the leader not having the wisdom, not setting the groundwork for culture. It is going to come and go would you not necessarily agree with but do you see where I'm going with this?
What are you going with? I think you have to look at and you have to go for every movement. There's a counter movement, right? Sure. And so for the more people become technologically dependent, the more hungry they will become for human connection. That's the opportunity for the leader. So in the past, the leader was incredibly driven by process and task and results. I think the leader of the future in the future culture will be an expert in cultural communications and in leadership of people. I think it's going to tend much more to the soft because the hard is going to be out there a commodity, okay. The soft skills which the AR cannot replicate, right. But all the knowledge based stuff, I think we're going to become obsolete, right? Somebody sent me the other day this from the chat GPT right and says you need to study this as well. I'm already looking at it, but he said, you know, can Chad GPT just go out and replicate your Spanish program. I said to some degree. Here's what it cannot replicate. It cannot replicate the one on one coaching with a real live human being who actually encourages and cares about those students. So we're putting a lot of emphasis within our company with our trainers on the human side. Because the knowledge is a commodity. Sure. It's it's the process of relationship that will have great value. So I think if you think about it, you know, like, we'll chat GPT will artificial intelligence be able to replicate all the metrics of a DI department? Yep. Will it be able to replicate someone putting their arm around another human being? Know that takes us into the whole cultural discussion of virtuality and hybrid business and, you know, companies now some of them are calling their people back to the office and that's a whole nother but it is actually a cultural discussion. And that is how do you lead a how do you implement and develop culture in a virtual world? Sure, but we haven't mastered it in the physical world, right. And now we're looking at the metaphysical and we go okay, now, we've got all these decentralized people sitting at home on Zoom. And how do we unify a culture?
It's a great question. And to your point about ai ai cannot replicate love, empathy or passion. And that's really important to recognize now, I do believe that to tick technology, we're going to see very young founders of companies skyrocket and if they don't do what you're saying, regarding setting the groundwork for culture they could fizzle out just as quickly as they arise because they don't have that groundwork. So I highly recommend people listen to what you're saying recorded because you're making very, very good points about what we need to do not only from a company perspective, but also internally. Individual. There could be elements of trauma or background stories, and experiences we've gone through that dictate different elements of our beliefs. So I very much appreciate everything you shared. There was a ton that we unpacked in this conversation. There's there's three simple things that I want to highlight though that I don't want people to miss Ricardo, you mentioned the difference between beliefs and values. So I know that this is simple. It wasn't like we did get deeper in the conversation. But I would encourage everyone listening to this to really pull up the values that you have or think you have as an organization and really start to backtrack and connect the dots to the beliefs where do they come?
Right? And it's and we have been able to understand them for 1000s of years. You said to not have too many. It's not memorable. So I would encourage leaders, do you have 27 values? I'm using air quotes as an organization. They're not going to be remembered. In addition, I very much appreciate you mentioning sometimes a leader can be well intentioned, but be wrong. And and is that leader strong enough to make the changes they need to make in order to really carry out their mission, the impact that they want to have on the world through the organization so very much appreciate those three points. Ricardo, there's a lot that people can get from what you do.