Mel: [00:00:00] Have you ever heard a senior leader talk about your organisation's great culture and thought, "Are we working in the same place?" As change and comms people, culture shapes everything we do. If the culture is toxic, it doesn't matter how good our messages are because people just won't engage with them.

Yet culture is one of those words everybody uses and yet very few can define. Well, today's guest has made it his mission to fix that. Shane Michael Hatton is a keynote speaker and the bestselling author of Let's Talk Culture. He's Australian born and London based, and he works with leaders across the UK, Australia, and the US.

He's drawing on a national study of more than 1,000 people leaders to make culture practical enough that anyone in an organisation can own it. Now, in this episode, Shane and I talk about what culture really is and why we often try to fix it at the wrong altitude, as he calls it, why we can't survey our way into behaviour change, and Shane's six conversations [00:01:00] that leaders can have to build culture by design.

Plus, the one question you can ask your team tomorrow. And of course, we cover why comms professionals are the composers of the orchestra of culture, and how shared language, stories, and team memes shape the way people work. So without further ado, here's Shane Shane Hatton, welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter

Shane: Oh, I like the title. This is such a fun title.

Obviously, I expected nothing less coming from you

Mel: Well, I'm very excited to have you here because this has been a long time coming. But before we kick off, can you tell us a little bit about you? Who are you? What do you do? How did you come to develop your expertise in this space?

Shane: Depends how philosophical you want me to get.

Do I, do I go deep- ... about who am I really in life?

Mel: Um- Oh, does anybody know?

Shane: Yeah, I, I sa- That's what I'm saying. I, I, I met with someone just recently and they said, "You know, Shane, I still, I still feel like I'm trying to figure out who I am." And I said, "I'm so sorry to disappoint you. I'm 10 years into running my own practice, and I'm still trying to figure that out."

Um, so if someone asked me if we were at a, a [00:02:00] dinner, dinner conversation s- and you know, you go around the table and introduce yourself, they say, "Tell us about yourself," I always say to people, "I am Australian made, currently London based, curious by nature and a creative at heart." So that, that is who I am as a person.

Uh, but I've spent the last decade essentially traveling the world and helping organisations demystify this strange thing called culture, and more specifically, develop the skills that underpin what it takes to build great culture. So I'm on a mission to try and make culture as practical as possible so that pretty much anyone in an organisation could own it.

Mel: I love that because it is a pretty nebulous term. And so let's- It is ... start with that basic question. What is culture when we're talking about work?

Shane: Oh, this is, this is the number one question everyone wants to know, which is how do you define culture? And what, that was one of the, the, the reasons that I went on this mission to try and explore what organisational culture is and what it means a few years back before I wrote Let's Talk Culture.

Um, I think culture is really easy to [00:03:00] describe, but it's super hard to define. Mm. Um, because right now as it stands, there is no real universal definition of what culture is. There's lots of different perspectives and a lot of different interpretations of what it is. But if you ask me to simplify culture to its essence, I would say culture is essentially the behavioural norms within an organisation.

Uh, it's essentially, you know, the old adage of the way we do things around here, is, is essentially it's, it's how we do things as an organisation. It's how we behave. But the, the more, I guess, meatier description of that is it's every definition of culture is made up of four key ingredients. One, it's always something that's collective, meaning that wherever you have a team, you have a culture.

It's made up of a whole bunch of things which are unseen, your values, your beliefs, your meanings, your assumptions. It's observed in a really practical way in your behaviours, your policies, your practice, your procedures, your comms, and it's learned by the people around you. Mm-hmm. So I think if you understand that and you understand those elements of culture, then I think you know the levers that you need to create culture by design.

Mel: Yeah. And when you say those unseen things like values- [00:04:00]

Shane: Yeah ...

Mel: well, when they're unseen, how do you measure them? I'm asking the tough questions today.

Shane: I know. I, the, the- But these are the right questions. These are the questions that people aren't asking enough about culture. So one of the things we always say is culture is unseen.

So I, I, I do this exercise when I'm speaking at conferences, and I ask people to kind of put their finger in front of them pointed up to the sky and then I ask them to point in a direction on the count of three and I'll say like, "One, two, three, point to your values." And everyone has this awkward moment where they have to try and decide, do they point to their head?

Do they point to their heart? Do they point to the wall? And then I'll ask, "Point to your meanings or point to your beliefs," and everyone kinda changes directions. They don't know what to do. But I would always ask, do your beliefs influence your decisions? Do your values influence the way you show up to work every day?

And the answer is yes to all of these things. But you can't necessarily touch or, or kind of experience and point, and, and, and point at them. So for expectations and values and your meanings to be something that you can measure, you have to be able to clarify them in a set of observable behaviours, which is what does this expectation that we have of one another or what does this value look like actually in [00:05:00] practice in a set of observable elements?

And then once we have those observable elements, then we can start to create a, a measurement tool, which is how much are we living out what we say we wanna live out versus what we think we're living out

Mel: And it's interesting too, because I, I've... When I've spoken to people who have been really unhappy at work, they often do point to culture, right?

Like it's a toxic culture is what they call it. And yet when those things are being raised with senior leaders, it often doesn't resonate. If you're talking to a senior leader about their culture, how would you describe why it matters so much?

Shane: Okay. So I've done a lot of deep thinking about this over the last four years, and I had this kind of crystallisation moment only just a few weeks ago, and I've just started speaking about this at events and conferences because I've actually started to bu- put all the building blocks together again, and I've started to now take a step back and I feel like for the first time I've started to see the, the shape of the tree, just not the detail of the leaf.

And I, I think this is where we [00:06:00] get culture wrong. I think most of the times we get culture wrong because we're trying to address culture at potentially the wrong altitude. And I, I imagine culture has these like building blocks that go from ground up, right? So if you imagine the foundation layer of culture, everything builds on this layer of psychological safety, and we kind of know this.

You know, Google's done a bunch of research on their teams. It's, it's quoted e- everywhere you go that psychological safety matters. What I didn't realise about psychological safety is that it actually is not just a matter of how you read a room in terms of a leader's experiences on the team members, but there is two components to psychological safety.

Amy Edmondson's work in like the late 2000s talked about your read of a room, and then she did some additional research later on that talks about your imported rules that you bring into the room, and it's called this implicit voice theory. So the idea is that psychological safety is not just how you experience a room, but also the unspoken beliefs that you carry into a room that have been left unchallenged.

So when I talk about the foundation [00:07:00] of culture, if you don't address psychological safety from a lens of, well, what are our unspoken rules that we left unchallenged, and what are our people's experiences in the room, everything else above this becomes overly optimistic because people can't speak up and, and share their opin- opinions honestly.

The second layer above psychological safety is the area that we can act on as leaders and, and we can touch on that, we'll come back to it, 'cause that's the only thing we can control. And then if we get that layer right, it shows up in engagement. So most of our leaders and teams, they're tracking engagement, but engagement becomes the lag indicator of culture.

Mel: Mm.

Shane: And then once we get engagement start to shift, then the results layer is what comes as a consequence of all of that, our employee engagement, retention, performance, revenue and profit. And so we address culture at the wrong altitude. So we often come in at results and we're like, "Well, we're not getting results, so we need to drive a high-performance culture."

And then we drive the performance, and then our engagement starts to slip, and then all the things that we know we need to do that sit below that... Are done by default rather than by design, and then ultimately the [00:08:00] safety gets affected in, in what it looks like to be in the organisation. So we're addressing things at the results level and pushing down, or we're trying to serve our way into behaviour ch- survey our way into behaviour change, which is the engagement layer.

Mel: Mm.

Shane: Or we're trying to train our way out of a psychological safety issue, and we try and run more leadership programs to try and develop out of that. So those three layers is where we get culture wrong, and there's the one practical pragmatic layer that I think we need to act on, and that's where culture starts to shift and change.

Mel: Well, let's talk a bit, bit more about that. So- Mm ... like, like you said, survey our way into behaviour change. Uh, feel that to my bones. Um, you talked about that leadership layer and how it is s- the one thing really in our control. What do you mean by that? Mm. What, what elements of that can we control?

Shane: Yeah.

So when I wrote Let's Talk Culture, I looked at five conversations a leader can have with a team, and since I wrote the book, I, I threw in a sixth conversation 'cause I felt like I, there was one that was missing. And the layers of culture that we can change a- a- are six kinda key conversations. The first one is expectation, which is answering the question: What do we [00:09:00] expect of one another here that we've never explicitly said out loud?

And this is one that is causing so much frustration in teams. Um, I love this quote by Torri Alitto. She's a New York psychologist, and she said, "What isn't communicated is felt. What's felt is interpreted, and what's interpreted is often inaccurate." Mm. And so everyone's frustrated with each other on the team because we have expectations of one another that we've never said out loud.

So the first one is to ask what do we expect of one another here? And as you do that, you start to realise your team has a lot in common. And so we might find some themes that exist within our team. Often we call them values, themes, however you wanna language it. The second becomes the clarification conversation, which is what do those, those themes or those values look like in practice?

Because we can't have an agreement unless we're both agreeing on the same thing. So we are defining what the behaviours look like, how would we see it, what would we hear, what would we say, what would we do? And once we define those behaviours, then we need to find a way to talk about it. And this is one where I think for official- especially for communication professionals, we play such a significant role.

It's the communication [00:10:00] conversation, which is what's the role language plays and what's the role that communication plays in, in embedding culture. And then the last three are around capability, which is do we have the skills to deliver on that culture? And then confrontation, which is how do we challenge it when we get it wrong?

And then celebration, which is how do we recognise it when we get it right.

Mel: Oh, I like that. And your book, as you said, has the first five conversations in it. Can we expect an updated edition with conversation six? I...

Shane: You know, my, my goal in the next 12 months is to update the research and- Love it ... expand it from Australian research to global research, and then to add, add the sixth conversation and to, to put it all...

'Cause everything has, I guess, the building blocks of the cultural model, uh, but now it's all, it's got a lot more structure to it. So yeah, I, I hope next year we'll have a revised edition coming out.

Mel: In that, so you talked about going more global, and I know you do- Mm-hmm ... do a lot of work because you are based in London, but you, you travel around a bit.

How does societal culture impact business culture or work culture? What are your observations? Oh, yeah, I

Shane: had this conversation literally with someone last [00:11:00] Friday- Oh ... who has an Australian office and a US office, and we were discussing how the, the nature of the country and the, I guess, the societal culture flows over into the organisational culture.

Um, one of the things, you know, we were talking about, and I, I've had a couple of conversations with a few people about this, where we talk about how in America there's like a high sense of autonomy, uh, when it comes to l- leading within an organisation. Um, and there is an element of self-promotion that exists within that culture, which is a part of aspiration.

Whereas when you come to a place like Australia, self-promotion immediately gets seen as ego, it's seen as narcissism, or it's, you know, cut down with tall poppy. So your societal culture bleeds over into your organisational expectations. So I think this is like when we talk about the imported rules in psychological safety- Mm

the things that we bring in that are left unchallenged. So if you're, if you're an Australian going into the [00:12:00] US or let's say even going to the UK, you have very different rules that you bring into the organisation, and if you never challenge them, what you end up doing is, is kind of hitting these conversations with people where your expectations are, are misaligned.

And yeah, so it definitely bleeds over into day-to-day.

Mel: Mm. I, I've, I've experienced that myself. Um, I worked in London for a couple of years myself and, um, it was, it actually surprised me, I think, at the time, I was quite young, but how different the workplace culture was in many ways. Uh, and certainly having done some global work now over the last however many years, I'm very, I'm much more cognisant of how that impacts even the way you talk at work.

You know, um- Mm ...

basic example, uh, in Canadian or northern, North American workplaces, and this is a generalisation, but you, swearing is not a thing you do.

Shane: Yeah.

Mel: Whereas you go into an Australian business comms team, and people are popping off all day, and it's, it's [00:13:00] something that I've had to really be cognisant of because, you know, being Australian and growing up in that culture, uh, to me it's just second nature to throw a swear word in there, and it'd be relatively meaningless.

But, um, it's just one example of how I realised, oh, okay, I've really gotta pull back here. Which does- Mm ... bring me to the question around language and communication, and-

Shane: Yeah ...

Mel: bit of a chicken and egg question. Does communication influence culture or does culture influence communication?

Shane: This is the, this is the similar question-

to are leader, are leaders born or made? Uh, I don't know that there's, there's, there's an answer to that. I think i- if you, if you have... It's not about if you have culture or if you don't have culture. Culture is a, is a baseline wherever you have a group of people that are gathering together and meeting together and, and operating together.

So I always say culture is not something that you build, it's always something that you, you kinda have to design and shape. So it's not like you, you don't have it now you do have it. So in one sense your culture [00:14:00] exists because of the norms that you've created within a group of people. So in one way your communication has influenced the culture that you have, and then at the same time when culture's by design you can shape the language, you can shape the conversations which will then move it from, say, something that which is default to something which is designed.

So it, there is this kind of like, it's almost like a, a cycle. One feeds the other, which goes back into the other. So yeah, I'm not really sure if there is a which comes first.

Mel: Well, there we go. You've ha- heard it here first, folks. It's, it's a little of both. A

Shane: little of both,

Mel: yeah. A little of both. So most of the people who listen to this podcast are change and comms people.

Shane: Mm.

Mel: How should we be considering the role of culture when we develop our comms and change strategies and provide advice to our stakeholders?

Shane: Yeah. So one of the things I talk about is, is one of the, the missing ingredients that I see a lot of organisations, uh, gloss over or not really pay attention to when it comes to culture building is the role that organisational, shared organisational [00:15:00] language plays in creating culture by design.

So I had this-- I spoke to the IABC in New South Wales last week, and I've, I've spoken to a few, um, groups of communication professionals, and I, I'll give you the big point or the big landing idea that comes out of all of these keynotes. It's that, um, in the orchestra of culture, I believe that communication professionals are the composers.

We have the ability to be able to write the sheet music and the composition that allows our organisation to, to s- to sing in tune, and to be able to play in tune, and to be able to create the culture that we want. Um, when we survey people in our research, only about thirty percent of people saw shared organisational language as an important role in building healthy culture.

And so I think this is, this is the gap. Most people don't realise that language is, is influencing and shaping culture by design, and communication professionals are the people who understand the value of language and our words. So we, I guess we have a role to play to educate, so talk about the [00:16:00] importance that communication plays, and to also craft and shape and help our, help our leaders to shape this, um, and, and to shape organisational language.

Mel: Can you give an example of how language might-- how that cultural language might show up?

Shane: Yeah. So I mean, there's, there's, there's a bunch of different ways. I-- Usually there's two kind of ways that I encourage communication professionals to leverage their skill set in the organisation. One is through storytelling, and storytelling we get.

So we understand that the stories you tell are ultimately playing a role in helping people to make sense of the culture. So I, I did a podcast interview a couple of years or a few years ago now with Ginger Hardage, who was the people and-- head of people and comms, which I thought was a really interesting take on HR and comms coming together.

And she's at Southwest. And so Southwest has been voted one of the best cultures in the world for something like nineteen years. And I said to her like, "What, what did you do early days to just build that culture?" And she said, "Our CEO would get on, uh, his cell phone and he would call and do a [00:17:00] conference call once a week, and everyone would gather around speakers, and he would just tell story after story after story of what good looked like."

And she said, "Shane, that was one of the most fundamental, um, ingredients of helping us build great culture 'cause everyone got to have something which was really meaningful and memorable to talk about, um, the culture." Um, the second thing which I think is a great opportunity for us is to explore the role that memes, team memes play.

And memes for me is not like internet memes, your viral memes. Memes is... It actually comes from Richard Dawkins' work around the study of memetics, which is, uh, genes which are kinda passed on and shared. And this is more about when I say memes, they're small, simple ideas or language kind of mantras that get shared and spread because they're both memorable, short, and easy to remember, but also me- personally meaningful to people in the organisation.

Um, so I'll give you example of one 'cause I think sometimes memes are easier to explain. Um, so I was working in the research for my book, uh, with a recruitment company in New [00:18:00] South Wales called Beaumont People, and they were voted one of the best cultures of under 100 people in Australia. And one of their mantras or little memes they had was TOFU, and TOFU meant to take action, um, uh, what is it?

Uh, take ownership and follow up was their kinda thing. And now there's a really fine line between jargon and acronyms and memes, but it was meaningful to all of them because of the context that they were in, and everything was about TOFU. Like it was all TOFU this and TOFU that. Or I, I worked with a CEO of, um, Off Your Tree, which is like the Australian brand that has, you know, all kinds of like alternative culture.

And they had this thing which is, you know, it was the DBAD, and they had silicon bracelets for all their staff, which basically just said, "Don't be a dick." I love it. And it was just one of their memes that they created. All these things are like little hints and indicators of the culture that they're part of.

Mel: There's some great ideas there.

Uh, thank you for sharing those as well. So one more formal question for the f- well, at least for the formal part of today's [00:19:00] proceedings. Tell us a bit about your book. So I know it's been out for a few years, but- Mm ... and you are going to do some more research, but tell us where that idea came from and w- how you, how it actually started.

Shane: Yeah. So I, one of the things that, you know, I, I wrote my first book, which is called Lead the Room, and it was all about helping people who were in high levels of position of leadership communicate a message that counts in the moments that matter. And it was essentially, how do I mobilise people at scale from one kind of central communication point?

And when I finished that, a couple of years went by and my publisher came to me and said, "Hey, we want you to write a book. What, what do you wanna write about?" And I had been hearing people talk about culture for a decade, you know, maybe even more. And even one of my first jobs or one of my, my s- first senior leadership jobs was essentially someone said, "Hey, culture's part of your remit."

And I remember saying, "Yeah, of course. Yeah, no worries at all. I've got it." And then thinking to myself, "What on earth is culture? What am I supposed to do about culture?" And I realised everyone had that same experience. Everyone's talking about culture, saying how important culture is. No one really knew what it [00:20:00] was.

So I went really deep on it and I essentially, I sat with, we interviewed, we surveyed over 1,000 Australian managers, people on the front lines of culture, and said, "Tell us about what you think about it." And as I started to read through the results, the big one that stood out to me was just 3% of people in Australia felt confident, like fully confident to build great culture.

And I said, "Okay, so everyone's talking about it, but no one really knows about what are they supposed to do on Monday when they get into the office- Yeah ... to actually build great culture." Yeah. So that's kind of where Let's Talk Culture came from.

Mel: Oh, I love it. And I think there's, there's still so many gaps, isn't there?

What, what I see- Mm ... is, uh, people become leaders for the first time, um, whether it's promotion or they've, you know, applied for a new job, and, uh, like, the research shows this as well, about 80% of them are never given any formal training or mentoring or anything. It's just like- Yeah ... you've got the leader title, so you should just know what to do.

And unfortunately, then people then go on to either just muddle their way through or they replicate behaviours they've seen other leaders do, which isn't always ideal. Mm. [00:21:00] And one of the big gaps there for me is obviously communication, learning how to communicate and lead through change as a, as a leader.

But you're absolutely right. Something I hadn't thought about was the culture piece and, you know, "Okay, go and build a culture. Go fix your team's culture." Yeah. "Okay, sure. I'll just pull that out of my hat."

Shane: Where do I start? Where do I go? What's the first thing I do? You know, if, if someone said to me, "Go and build great culture tomorrow," what is the first thing that you do?

And I would say most people I talk to wouldn't have an answer to that question.

Mel: Mm. So what would you answer that question with?

Shane: So I, I mean, I obviously think six conversations is what you're gonna have. But if you do nothing else, the most productive use of a conversation would be to sit your team down, take 45 minutes, half an hour you could probably get away with it, and just ask one question: "What are some of the things that we expect of one another here that we've never said out loud?"

Mel: Mm.

Shane: And if you have that conversation, you'll start to realize that, A, there's some really helpful expectations you have of one another that some of, some of the people on the team aren't living up to, [00:22:00] so you get the chance to readjust and re- realign expectations. You have some expectations that people have of one another that are unhelpful, are unrealistic, and you get a chance to reframe those expectations.

Or you have a brand-new set of expectations which comes out of it where you say, "Hey, actually, I think maybe this is an expectation that we don't yet hold that is a helpful expectation for us to have." Mm. So you get to know, like, which are the things that we wanna stop, which ones are things that we wanna start, which are the ones are the things that we wanna continue.

Even that conversation alone is extraordinarily helpful for teams.

Mel: Mm, I can absolutely see that. Thank you for sharing that with us. So Shane, we have three questions we ask every guest on the podcast. Are you ready for those?

Shane: I'm, I think I'm ready.

Mel: I believe in you.

Shane: Thank you.

Mel: What is an unexpected or left-of-field way you learned a valuable lesson about communication, and what was it?

Shane: A left-of-field way that I, I've learnt the value of l- of communication. Uh, honestly, I think most of my communication lessons, uh, have not come from corporate experiences, they've come from personal [00:23:00] relationships. And it's usually me doing something wrong. It's usually starting to realise that I had an image in my mind of how, uh, of what my perspective was and, and what my viewpoint on something was, and I said it, and then it didn't land the way that I hoped it would land, and then I got some feedback on it.

And so most of those experiences in my personal life carry over into my professional life. And I have a friend, Rowan Dredge, and he often says, "You've gotta know what it looks like to be on the other side of you."

Mel: Mm.

Shane: And I think personal relationships are a great way to hold up a mirror to what it's like to be on the other side of you that you get to take into the rest of your business and your life and your practice.

Mel: Yeah. That's a, that is a great quote. Um- Just make sure that you're not holding the mirror up too close and it's distorting the view too. That's the only, that's the only downside of that.

Shane: Yeah. That's a nice, that's a really nice take, yeah.

Mel: Yeah. Um, next question, what is a book or podcast you love and would recommend to our listeners?

Shane: This, this is really controversial. This is probably the most controversial take- Ooh ... is that I, I don't really listen to podcasts. I, I, I have a [00:24:00] podcast. I did seven seasons of a podcast. Um, but I tend to, I tend to listen to music more than I listen to podcasts. So for me, me it's books. Um, if you're a communication professional it's, it's, it's a messaging bible essentially, which is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.

Oh, I love that book. Brilliant, brilliant book. Yeah. It's a really good classic. Um, but if you're looking for something more modern, I guess something more, more recent, I love Superthinking, uh, which is essentially a book of mental models. I'm such a mental model person. I think everyone needs a set of tools that they can lean on.

Uh, so that's one I'd recommend.

Mel: Superthinking. Awesome. Gotta go look that up after this. And last question, if you could wave your magic wand and change one thing about communication at work, what would it be?

Shane: Look, I mean this in, in the most, um- Uh, in the best possible way when I say this, I, I, I got asked this last week what...

a similar question, and I would say that I, I, I would wave a magic wand and I would allow comms people to give as much time, attention, care, and effort [00:25:00] to themselves as they give to other people. Mm. I think we are a giving profession, and we give a lot, and we show up at all hours, and we show up in crisis, and we, we show up when it's tough and when there's not a lot of recognition and credit.

And, and we do that for a lot of other people, and I don't think we necessarily give ourselves that same level of care, and I think we need to see more of that in the profession.

Mel: What a great message to end on. Now, Shane, if people want to find out more about you and the work you do, what's the best places for them to do that?

Shane: Yeah. Uh, I, I show up anywhere under Shane M Hatton. M, M is for Michael. Um, Shane Michael Hatton is what I go by because there was, uh, a very famous golfer named Shane Hatton that ruined my SEO, and also- ... someone who con- so who put some pretty big, um, financial fraud claims, uh, crimes through. Ooh. So I tend to avoid Shane Hatton.

Um, but I think I'm doing my best SEO out of it. But Shane M Hatton is where I am everywhere, and, uh, shanemhatton.com is the best way to connect.

Mel: Awesome. Well, we'll include those links in our show notes. And of course we'll see you at [00:26:00] Fusion in Brisbane.

Shane, thank you so much for joining us on Less Chatter, More Matter today.

Shane: Oh, I love it so much. Thank you so much for having me.

Mel: Thank you.