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Coaching for Leaders

426: Five Lies About Corporate Culture, with Ginger Hardage

Coaching for Leaders

Dave Stachowiak

Business, Management, Careers

4.81.6K Ratings

🗓️ 19 August 2019

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ginger Hardage: Unstoppable Cultures

Ginger Hardage is the former senior vice president of culture at Southwest Airlines. She led a team responsible for building and sustaining the organization’s legendary culture and communications enterprise, resulting in 23 consecutive years on Fortune’s list of Top 10 Most Admired Companies in the World.

Today, Ginger leads Unstoppable Cultures, a firm designed to help organizations create and sustain cultures of enduring greatness. She facilitates the annual Unstoppable Cultures Fellowship to help leaders of all kinds take practical steps to create the culture that will help their organization thrive.

In this conversation, Ginger and I discuss the five lies she’s seen come up again and again in her work with leaders who are struggling with culture. Perhaps most importantly, Ginger emphasizes that leaders need not accept the default culture, but should work to define the culture.

Key Points

The five lies Ginger has uncovered about culture:

  1. Culture is someone else’s job.
  2. Our values are on the wall.
  3. Culture is fluffy.
  4. If I empower my employees, I might lose control.
  5. We can’t afford culture.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

We know a good culture when we see it, but often we don't know where to start.

0:05.0

On this episode, Ginger Heartage returns to discuss the five lies of corporate culture

0:10.0

and how we can do better.

0:12.0

This is Coaching for Leaders episode 426.

0:17.0

Produced by Innovate Learning Maximizing Human Potential. human potential.

0:29.0

Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is coaching for leaders and I'm your host Dave Stahophiac.

0:33.7

Leaders aren't born, they're made.

0:36.0

And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom

0:39.0

through insightful conversations.

0:41.7

And a conversation that comes up all the time amongst leaders is how do I do a better job at really honing in the culture in our

0:55.0

organization that is going to serve the customers well, serve our employees well, and do the good work in the world

0:58.0

that so many of us want to do.

1:00.0

And yet, of course, culture is difficult, and it's nebulous for many of us and almost, I was going to say, almost none of us really received a lot of formal training and how to do this well.

1:12.1

We've learned as we've gone, maybe we've taken a class here or there. But I think the more we can learn about really nurturing a corporate culture, the more we can thrive, not only ourselves, but more more importantly the people we serve.

1:24.3

I'm so glad to have back on the show today someone who's just such an expert on culture

1:29.0

and will help us to really uncover some of the myths and lies about culture so that we can do an even better job at creating the culture that is going to help us to lead to greatness.

1:40.0

Glad to welcome back to the show Ginger Hardage.

1:42.8

Ginger is the former Senior Vice President of Culture at Southwest Airlines.

1:47.4

She led a team responsible for building and sustaining the organization's

1:51.8

legendary culture and communications enterprise. and admired companies in the world. Ginger has received numerous honors throughout her career,

2:04.8

including induction into the Public Relations Hall of Fame

2:08.0

and has been named as one of Texas's most powerful

...

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