Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Today Is Kate Jones founder of Neon. Today, we’ll explore the challenges of turning around a toxic company culture, the strategies for rebuilding trust and the essential first steps to get ready for a thought-provoking discussion on organizational transformation and company culture. So Kate, thank you so much for joining us.

Kate Jones (Guest): Thanks for having me. It’s lovely to be here.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): It’s lovely to have you and we want to hear a little bit more about Kate, founded, Neon in 2013 after 10 years in corporate consulting, and 10 years in social work, and probation for 10 years, before that her purpose is to help people live lead and work well, and she specializes in leadership development and culture change in purpose-led organizations. She is a professionally certified coach, the architect of deeply human leadership, and the leader of a global community of people who share a purpose about changing the world of work called the Deep Human Culture Club. Based in London, UK Kate believes that most organizations need to make the shift from hamster to human. She is passionate about connection and creativity. I love that.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So I’m so curious to hear a little bit more about your past job working in a correction facility and…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): how that kind of ties and has helped you and your role today.

Kate Jones (Guest): The corrections facility said in your accent sounds so much more hardcore than

Kate Jones (Guest): so I studied modern languages at university. I had no idea what I wanted to do. Didn’t actually want to do any of the things that most of my colleagues were going off to do, management consulting, actually, or law, or I don’t know what else. And I just wanted to do something that was in line with my values. I’d still do, a very strong sense of social justice. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I ended up going straight from university to volunteering in a day center that was run by the Probation service. And so, it was used by all manner of people not necessarily involved in the criminal justice system. But we’re homeless, had mental health problems, had addiction problems, etc. And I absolutely loved it. and again, kind of accelerating the story, but it led me to train as a social worker and as a probation officer and I specialized in working as a probation officer. So, in various different guises, I was involved in that kind of work for about 10 years. So a lot of the workers of the Probation officer were about.

Kate Jones (Guest): Testing people for community penalties. So once somebody has pleaded guilty or been found guilty often unless it’s incredibly serious, they’ll be assessed to see whether or not they’re suitable to be supervised in the community. So that was kind of in the court and then actually supervising people who were made subject to community penalties in the community and then doing some visits to people that were on reminder custody to assess them as well. And it’s funny because lots of people, at the time and sense of said gosh that sounds so difficult but actually the work with the clients I really really loved and found very deeply human and very rewarding but the leadership and culture of the public sector was what I could not.

Kate Jones (Guest): And any longer, which is ultimately, why my brain needed a bit more stimulation maybe as well. So I left and joined a management consultancy and then I was there for 10 years, which sounds much less interesting to the majority of people now. It’s kind of like, no,…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Haha

Kate Jones (Guest): Tell me about when you’re a probation officer.

Kate Jones (Guest): But yeah, and actually to your question about, what’s the link? I mean, I think that I learned pretty much everything that I know about how to develop rapport with pretty much anybody from any walk of life. But how to develop relationships that are catalysts for change, which is basically what consultancy’s about and it’s definitely what coaching is about. So obviously the kind of nature of the work that I do has changed and as much as the context, has changed a lot. So I went on from working with people who committed offenses of burglary, or robbery or who knows what to working with teams and individuals in an organizational setting. and became increasingly interested in what is it that enables organizational cultures to change and organizations to

Kate Jones (Guest): To become more of a force for good and become more human essentially. But I would say that relationship piece is the big link between and also my motivation. I guess. I’ve always been interested in making a positive difference in the world rather than just kind of, I don’t know doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff or I don’t know. Whatever other motivations people have.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, I actually observed a link just from what you were saying just now. But I think a lot of times we view people who have committed these crimes as criminals, we view them as criminals and…

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): then in the workplace, we don’t necessarily we should but we don’t always view them as people either we view them as employees, and so there’s really not too big of a difference there in kind of stripping those I don’t know.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Kind of viewing people not as As the labels instead of their human selves

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): But when we strip that back and we actually care about them, as you said, being deeply human, and trying to understand them. And I mean, I’m sure it was so interesting. Being around these people a lot of times they’ve had horrible upbringings, really hard lives. and you’re never gonna understand that, even try to understand if you just see them as criminals and so on the employee side, trying to understand where people are coming from, when maybe they have a hard day at work or what they’re bringing to work with them. When they’re having poor performance or any of those things trying to understand them and help them reach the very best that they can be?

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah, I completely agree. There’s lots of ways in which through the language that we use or the labels that we provide all the distance that we put between us and another person or group of people, we can objectify them and kind of make them into something or someone else make them into others. And that leads us into all kinds of difficulty, in terms of division, and conflict, or a lack of compassion for other people. And remember, just a store. Because I also volunteer for a charity called Crisis at Christmas, which is something that just provides the kind of segue of services in the kind of Christmas period and it’s used by, some of those people will be mixed up in the criminal justice system, but a lot of them are homeless people who have nowhere to go over Christmas. And there’s again friends of mine who kind of know that I do this on Christmas Day. Gosh, that must be so difficult and how do you relate to those people? But actually

Kate Jones (Guest): It’s three, it’s just like being alongside Human to human is one of the things that I enjoy most and makes me feel most alive, and I think that it’s a lot of that I completely agree with you, Crista gets lost in the organizational context as well. And, leaders kind of, especially the larger, the organization loses connection with the human beings that actually make up their teams or their functions or their whole organizations. and I’m sure we’re gonna talk about the sort of deeply human leadership thing, but one of the cornerstones of that is So the ability to develop meaningful connections with people rather than just it being a transactional thing, where I’m interested in

Kate Jones (Guest): because of what you can do for me, what you’re going to deliver. And also care, the ability to actually care about other human beings and the extent to which they’re thriving or not at work and…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I love…

Kate Jones (Guest): in life.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): how for already getting into this right off the bat.

Kate Jones (Guest): So there are definitely some crossovers Yeah. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): That’s okay. Give us a high level. What is neon in your company that you found? And tell us about your well-being equation.

Kate Jones (Guest): Okay, I found it neon in 2013. So after I’d left my management consulting firm And it’s a consulting and coaching company that specializes Building deeply human leadership capability in purpose-led organization. So I don’t exclusively work with and by purpose organizations that have a purpose beyond profit and so they could be private sector charities. And most of the

Kate Jones (Guest): You’re watching work. Be it with teams or individuals and I do some leadership development in terms of building the capability of leaders in the form of leadership development programs. And I do some leadership strategy stuff. So I’m really interested in the contribution that leadership makes to culture and the contribution that culture makes to driving well-being and performance. So I’m absolutely evangelical about the imperative of culture to be a business issue. Actually? Because, the old Peter Drucker said that culture is a strategy for breakfast, which isn’t to say that strategy doesn’t matter. But that is if you don’t pay attention to culture

Kate Jones (Guest): You can easily be sunk by it. So that’s most of what I do and then probably about 20% of what I do is individual coaching for people who are trying to escape the awful cultures of those organizations that they’ve chosen to work for or whose call to adventure in midlife is kind of inviting them to do something else. So I do some life coaching with those people which will probably be less of a focus in our conversation. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So as you are talking with these leaders, you obviously have a framework. We’re talking about your deeply human leadership framework and the deeply Human Culture Club. Tell us more about the framework and how you go about coaching these leaders.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yes, so, I have the sort of signature method and framework I have called the Five C’s of deeply human leadership. So,

Kate Jones (Guest): In essence, for me, deep human leadership is characterized by clarity of purpose. So leaders who not only are clear about their own and their organization’s purpose, but really importantly are able to bring that to life for people. So that employees feel a sense of purpose in their day-to-day work, which even in many purpose-led organizations is not a given because everybody’s caught on this hamster wheel of busyness,…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): More good.

Kate Jones (Guest): where they’re too busy to think or connect to anybody, clarity of purpose and connection, which I talked about before, which is about relationships. So the ability to inspire relationships of trust and followership and amongst people within organizations consciousness. The third which is about emotional intelligence and the ability to take responsibility for your impact rather than just crashing around unintentionally causing damage or not being a force for good and creativity. The fourth sea which is about

Kate Jones (Guest): Creating environments of belief where people actually believe that stuff is possible rather than feeling kind of without a sense of agency and without a sense of optimism. And finally care, so, of which self-care is the necessity for leaders to take responsibility for their own and that being really important as well as obviously kind of care for other people that work with you and also care for the wider world, for the whole thing about businesses, as a force for good.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.

Kate Jones (Guest): So that’s the sort of model of deeply human leadership and that kind of informs all of the work that I do. As I said, whether it’s kind of team or individual culturing or coaching, or whether it’s more on the sort of strategic level, in terms of looking at how to develop deeply human cultures, deeply human organizations.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): that has some Connection for me to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and that the different innate needs that we have as humans. And just looking at those five C’s, I just wrote it in my notebook here. I love how you’re bringing some very on purpose, human components. While also talking about business pieces too, like clarity of purpose. I think that can apply both to the leader being the

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Overseer of the organization which is a non-human entity. You have to know what the purpose of the business unit is, but I think it can also spill over to What is your purpose as an individual, as a person, as a leader, and how you can purposefully affect or The lives of the people within the organization, because you’ve got these people humans, who are the operators of the business, the non-human entity, and there is a relationship there between the people among the company, the people outside of the company’s other individuals and to the business unit that non human entity, that’s part of this conversation as well. I love those five C’s. That’s very powerful and I want to give some more thought to it as well. I like that. Yeah, and sorry, backtracking just a little bit.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): we were gonna ask you a little bit later who you feel in an organization is responsible for culture and it sounds like you would say, the leaders are. Kind of responsible.

Kate Jones (Guest): I would say that it’s a shared responsibility. I would say that everybody is responsible for culture but in terms of…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay.

Kate Jones (Guest): I think it’s important to look at it through a power lens because there are power dynamics in organizations, obviously, in any system. And so for that reason, I think that there is a particular level of responsibility that sits with leadership. And I would also say

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And influence right and influence, they have greater influence to kind of improve that the culture.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah, influence and responsibility and influence. Yeah. But I don’t think that they can do it on their own. I think you asked me earlier about my employee wellbeing equation, part of that is self-responsibility. So I’m a massive advocate of organizations needing to do more through their leadership and through paying attention to their culture.

Kate Jones (Guest): To do what they can to make sure that people are and people are at their best if you like. and I also think that as individuals, as individual employees, we need to step up in terms of the degree to which we take care of ourselves. You…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Mm-hmm

Kate Jones (Guest): There are lots of people for all kinds of very understandable reasons. Work themselves into the ground are unable to say Boundaries are not clear about what it is that they need in order to thrive at work. Don’t look after themselves, don’t eat well or sleep enough or do some of the things that just enable us. And, there’s tons more and it will vary from individual to individual. so I definitely think that it is a partnership. And I don’t think you see as much actually written about or talked about what the individual must do. A lot of the time, it’s what the organization or the leadership can do. And I think it is a bit of both to be honest.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Yeah, one thing I was gonna say is at a previous company, I was in a leadership role in R and was tasked with administering, the employee engagement survey and at the end of the engagement survey, the individual would receive a report highlighting their own engagement and that was to act as a catalyst for helping them …

Kate Jones (Guest): Okay.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): where they’re at. And I think, honestly, there’s too much entitlement and what’s in it for me and what you can do for me mentality in the workplace.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And I think you need to realize that, you’re the captain of your own ship, take charge of your own life and if you don’t like where you’re at, then it’s not good for you or the business. So make a change. And, we’ve had a lot of layoffs on the scene lately. A lot of shake up in the marketplace and economy, and it’s, putting different equal living rooms out there for people, but

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Who cares about that when you as one person are not aligned with the organization that conversation matters, very much to you because it’s your life and if you’re not satisfied, then make a change. If you lose your job tomorrow. You’ll figure it out. Something’s gonna change the world isn’t going to end because you’re unemployed for a time period. I’ve seen that

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): First hands in my life and in various different circumstances you can get through that hard moment and you can get to something That’s a lot more exciting, a lot more fulfilling. So I love the fact that you have this portion of what you do Kate where you’re helping people navigate that change for themselves because that’s dramatically affecting one individual’s life at a time. And it’s also improving businesses and company cultures because we each have to be aligned for there to be kind of a collective equilibrium within a company and a culture.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah, yeah. I completely agree with you. I think, and the whole coaching industry is based on this idea that I trained originally with a coaching school called the Coaches Training Institute, which is based in the US and the language that CTI use is that everybody is resourceful creative and whole

Kate Jones (Guest): W h O L e. So in other words we might need help from time to time. Yes, it’s helpful to have a kind of co-pilot who’s walking alongside us but we’re not broken, we don’t need fixing. And actually we are responsible resourceful grown-ups, right? and often in organizations, you can find a kind of parent child cultural dynamic where, the leaders and the managers kind of know best and in fact in some ways the whole kind of idea of management is based on the idea that managers kind of somehow know better and we’ll sort of show those underneath them, kind of what it is that they need to do. But I think that that’s fundamentally flawed and problematic and that actually treating people like adults and asking them therefore to take their part of responsibility for themselves and their part to play their part in creating the kinds of organization that they

Kate Jones (Guest): What they want is really important and at the same time, that is important. Alongside organizations and leaders kind of needing to do better as well. I would say,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah, I would say it’s interesting because we’re talking about the influence that everyone in an organization has had. And I think it’s clear that everyone impacts the culture. And…

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): so if you go in there with that purpose of helping these individuals and everyone kind of being on the same page. I mean, that’s where you want to get company values and the impacts that Matt has and…

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): actually just creating your values and never looking at them again, but trying to Make that ingredient in the culture.

Kate Jones (Guest): Bring that to life. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): The people what the culture?

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah. In day-to-day reality. Yeah, yeah, I mean Matt, you were saying before you’re talking about kind of people versus The business. But I mean, the business is people, really there there’s kind of policies and procedures and structures, but really all of those things are made by people and in service with people and without people there businesses don’t exist, do they?

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think you’re totally right. So I’m curious and…

Kate Jones (Guest): No.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): in all your consulting that you’ve done, you’ve probably come across some companies or some organizations that They’re doing pretty well, but you go in and you’re able to help them really improve and then you’ve probably come across some organizations that are struggling with this and maybe have more of a toxic culture. And I’m just curious, how has that been in your role as a consultant helping organizations that are doing pretty well and then maybe some that are more What impacts do you see, is it possible for these companies that have organizations that have more of a toxic culture?

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): To come back from that to improve and what are there, certain things you have to do to see that through. And then I’d also like to hear maybe a little bit about just those who are already doing pretty well and how they’re able to come even further.

Kate Jones (Guest): Go. That’s a lot of questions in that, I mean probably…

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah. Loaded

Kate Jones (Guest): since I’ve been consulting and coaching for 22 years or something and probably, In terms of, when I’m asked to come in and do stuff around culture and leadership, it’s usually because it’s not going terribly. and also I think let’s be clear. The whole world of organizational culture is really incredibly complex. I think Crystal and you and I had a sort of pre conversation, it’s almost like a bit of a sacrilegious thing to say, given the kind of work that I do but the notion How realistic is it to think that you can radically change organizational culture, particularly at scale and organization of thousands?

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Right.

Kate Jones (Guest): You think of some banks that are hundreds of thousands of people strong and I think when it went at a smaller scale it is much much more achievable and at an earlier stage in an organization’s life cycle. So some of the work that I do is with a startup organizations

Kate Jones (Guest): and fundamentally, I mean you can bring about changes. I mean, because in the main I work on my own and so a lot of the time I’m trying to chip away organizational culture, particularly when I’m working with individuals and teens and I definitely believe that it’s possible to make a difference and it can sometimes feel like a bit of a drop in the ocean. The reason that I love the strategy stuff is because it’s more likely to have a broader reach. So I do think that I wouldn’t be in the line of work that I am. Unless I believe that it was possible to make changes in terms of the question of toxic organizations. I don’t think that you can turn around a toxic culture without making radical changes. In other words, taking some people out.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Yeah.

Kate Jones (Guest): I think it’s very rare. I’ve never come across a situation where that level of dysfunction can be remedied and I don’t know, rectified or healed without some degree of

Kate Jones (Guest): radical change in terms of the people in positions and that not necessarily in leadership positions. But I do generally think that there needs to be some kind of radical leadership change when you’re trying to come back from a toxic cultural scenario. I don’t know if that’s the case.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): Okay, I just had one thought on that piece. I agree with you about the need for removing some players in the game. Essentially, I call those bad actors. Yeah, yeah, some bad accuracy from a company,…

Kate Jones (Guest): It. Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): but I’ve personally had situations where I’ve seen one or multiple leaders. Have a really bad reputation within an organization for not having a psychological safe environment around them. And then I’ve seen those same individuals get plugged into another company and have a personal reset.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so they go to this other company and it’s this moment of introspection and there they are. Also in a new environment and I’ve seen some of those individuals change and…

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): thrive, but to your point, I think it can be very difficult when you’ve got those individuals staying in this environment where everything’s the same and to just change. I’ve also seen that an individual, like that, makes the change, but everyone around them. Won’t let them. Don’t believe me changed. And so they’re still perceived as their past behaviors.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): And so,…

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I think,

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I guess maybe this isn’t the best human trait but we sometimes have a hard time getting things. Letting things go, forgiving and moving forward. And when we’re talking about work culture, this isn’t family dynamics, this isn’t your blood relatives where you’re connected, no matter what there can be changes, and that’s not a bad thing. You’re business, coworkers and everything. That’s a different relationship dynamic and your family and so yeah, I agree with you. I just wanted to kind of add to that. No, I also agree. That’s one of the most important things to radically change a toxic culture.

Kate Jones (Guest): There’s two things that listen to you, that kind of come to me. Listen to you, one is I agree that families are not organizations but you’ll probably familiar with the whole, systemic work around constellations for example which is originally kind of introduced by Bert Hellinger who I think was Austrian I think but this whole idea that there are patterns of behavior within systems, whether their family systems or organizational systems patterns that can be passed down from generation to generation unconsciously. And as a result of

Kate Jones (Guest): That’s called unhealthy and unhealthy system dynamics and patterns that emerge in the context of those unhealthy dynamics, that can be passed down. And that actually, in the systemic school of thought, you can remove somebody who appears to be the problem quote on quote. And you can find that the next person that goes into exactly that same role behaves in a very similar way. And it’s actually something to do with the dynamic of the system rather than the dynamic of the other particular individual. And so I find that really interesting. If you’re talking about an individual who goes from one organization to another and then has a kind of personal reset. If you think about it in the context of human relationships, somebody can behave a certain way in a romantic life partnership type scenario. that relationship breakdown breaks down that person goes off to another relationship and actually

Kate Jones (Guest): in the dynamic with this other person has found a different way of behaving in a different way of being in relationships. So that’s one thing. And the other thing is about the power of the environment. And in some ways, this is another connection back to my probation and social work days, in the world of addiction. There’s a lot I’m talking about, the rehabilitation of offenders in the prison system. For example, there’s so much evidence of the fact, people kind of get taken out of their social environment of rubbish housing and no employment. And, a peer group that is behaving in a similarly unhealthy way. Let’s call it.

Kate Jones (Guest): You take them into the prison environment and then you return them afterwards, the same environment from whence. They originally came and where they originally, kind of developed these addictive habits, or patterns of thinking, and behaving, and lo and behold, they relapse and they behave in a similar way. So, there’s something about the power of the environment that doesn’t make organizational culture go back to the same by being an unbelievably powerful force. That is really difficult to unpick and say exactly what it is, that is causing this sort of tidal wave of power and influence on the way people behave. But it’s definitely a thing.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): So many things that influence the culture. Kate, thank you so much for being with us. Yeah.

Kate Jones (Guest): Yeah.

Kate Jones (Guest): Thank you, I really enjoyed it, too. We could have carried on talking for ages.

Matt & Crista Vance (Hosts): I know that’s what I was thinking. That was honestly fantastic and for all of our listeners, we will have a link so you can And follow Kate on LinkedIn and research a little bit more about her business neon. We’re so grateful for you being here. Thank you for taking some time Kate. Thank you.

Kate Jones (Guest): Thank you both so much.