Five Tips from Leadership Experts for Job Seekers: How to Find the Right Role and Thrive in Any Industry

Welcome to the Distinguished podcast, brought to you by the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. I’m your host, Arun Upneja, Dean of the school. Today, we are thrilled to have Dr. Taylor Peyton with us. 

Dr. Peyton is at the forefront of organizational psychology as the senior psychologist for BiasSync, a company dedicated to fostering diversity, equity and inclusion within the workplace. Beyond this, she’s the co-founder and president of Mojo Moments, where she champions a certification program for coaches eager to merge human motivation science into their practice. While we were sad to see her leave her role as a leadership professor with us, her journey is a testament to the pursuit of one’s dreams, a path we are excited to explore today. 

Dr. Peyton is a maestro of organizational culture, a critical element for the sustainable success of any enterprise. She’ll share insights on why finding a company with a culture that resonates with you is more than just a comfort. It’s crucial for professional success and personal satisfaction. 

In her work with leadership coaches, she strives to instill that creating a robust organizational culture isn’t serendipitous. It is a deliberate act that requires ongoing attention and effort. So, let’s dive in and learn how to nurture a workplace environment that thrives on intentionality. 

Welcome, Dr. Peyton, to the Distinguished podcast. 

Thank you for having me, Arun. 

So with that, let me start by asking you to define organizational culture. 

Organizational culture is a force. It is both a visible and invisible force that exists at the group level or the collective level. And that force massively influences employee behavior and your organization’s chance of success. 

And I like to speak about organizational culture simply by saying, it’s the way we do things around here. Fundamentally, that’s what organizational culture is. And if you follow Edgar Schein’s work, former professor at MIT, he just passed at the beginning of 2023, and he was a huge contributor to the field of organizational behavior. 

He has a great way of describing organizational culture. He talks about three layers or three levels of organizational culture in his definition. He talks about artifacts, espoused values and assumptions. 

Wow, three things. Can you help me understand what those three are? Maybe some examples and more simpler explanation. 

Sure. So I’m from Los Angeles, and I know Disneyland best of the Disney Empire. So I’ll use Disney to explain. 

I love that. 

Artifacts and behaviors are the visible aspects of organizational culture. So if I were walking around Disneyland for artifacts, I might notice that their cast members, they call their employees cast members, is an artifact of their culture. I notice their cast members are smiling constantly to create this magical feeling. 

I also notice that Disney has a slogan that is the happiest place on Earth, and that’s an artifact of their culture. Maybe I’m hearing chimes in the air, the ringing sound of chimes that create a magical feeling. And so that’s all part of the experience they’re creating. 

It’s also part of their organizational culture. And so that’s the artifact’s layer of Shine’s culture definition. At Disney also, they have the espoused values layer according to Shine’s framework, which is, for example, the value of expressing happiness with their guests and with each other, and the value of optimism, and they also have the value of show being on to perform. 

So even when their cast members might be cleaning up around the park, they are mindful that they’re still on and they’re still performing. Those are values they say they have, and that’s part of Shine’s second layer. The third layer is the assumptions level that Disney would have, which might be the assumption that if cast members and guests are happy, then everything is better. 

Then our organization is more successful, our guests are happier, our job satisfaction is higher, and then that’s a better experience for all. And you know that it’s an assumption that you’re pushing on in a culture when if you say something to challenge that assumption, people start to get upset or feel uncomfortable. Because imagine walking into Disney and saying, your value for optimism and happiness, that really doesn’t matter. 

They wouldn’t stand for that. That’s really deep in their culture. So that’s why I love the assumptions layer of the culture definition, because it’s the most mysterious and difficult one to shift and examine. 

So artifacts, second one is espoused values, and the third one is assumptions. 

So that sort of extends into the next question which I have is, you know, listeners are trying to figure out, okay, what kind of culture is my company or my organization? So how do they figure out? Are these three, is this framework that you just described, is that a good way for people to figure out what the culture of my company is right now? 

Okay, so what are the artifacts? You start noting them down. What is the espoused values? 

You know, what is the leadership saying? And then the assumptions part. 

It is a great way to observe your culture, to have that framework guiding you. However, the challenge of being a part of an organizational culture is when you are internal to that culture, it’s harder for you to see what the culture is because you’re absorbed by it. So another practice I like to encourage organizations to consider is to bring someone in to the organization who’s brand new, maybe a third party, even a family member of someone who just hasn’t seen the culture, and ask them, what do you see of our culture? 

And that will be very insightful usually because they’re not influenced by it. 

So this is what I was going to ask later, but this is I guess a good time to ask that question, which is we give advice to students that you go and don’t worry too much about the money or other aspects, but a culture fit is very important. So how do students when they’re interviewing or even a new employee when you’re interviewing with a company, how do you figure out if there is a culture fit between you and the company? 

I would like to advise students to consider asking the question, what are the core values of this organization? Ask their interviewee or ask their interviewer that question because then you can see by how the interviewer responds if the company has done clear values work. Everybody in an organization ideally should be able to describe your top few values if they are faced with that question. 

Another thing I would recommend for students to do is remember that what an interviewer might say about their culture could be very different from what the reality of the organization’s culture is. And so look for implicit clues. Look for behaviors. 

Don’t only go off of what people say verbally when you’re exploring the culture of a new company. For example, maybe the company says that they value promptness, but they were 20 minutes late bringing you in for your interview. That would be a clue. 

What is this culture really like even though they say they might want to be something else? And then another thing I would recommend is, especially to an early career phase person, be courageous to experiment with a culture that you might not think fits you at first. Don’t only look for the culture that makes you feel comfortable because you might have a lot more of a growth edge if you join a very hierarchical bureaucratic culture when really what might feel comfortable to you at first is a family-oriented collaborative culture. 

So consider it part of your growth. 

You know, one of the things that people talk about a positive organization, a positive organization culture, but that word can hide a whole lot of things, you know, and you mentioned some of them if it’s a busy culture or if it’s a very intellectual type of curiosity type of culture. So obviously the leaders take a big role in establishing the culture. So what are some of the steps that leaders can take to cultivate a positive organizational culture regardless of the way they define their culture? 

Well, one big piece is feedback and to do feedback immediately. So if I’m a leader and I really want positivity and high trust in my environment, in moments when I see people violating that, I intervene and I give feedback usually in the one-on-one. It’s safer and more comfortable. 

And then sometimes in a group to say, no, we don’t do things like that around here. So you know how I said culture is how we do things around here. It’s also how we tend to not do things around here because one of the assumptions of culture is that we need to be thinking about what doesn’t work for us as a group and nipping that in the bud and not letting that perpetuate. 

So in addition to building organization cultures involving positivity and trust, what are some other qualities of organization culture that leaders might find helpful to have in today’s world? 

Well, culture is a unique thing. It’s like a fingerprint. And so it’s hard for me to recommend from a normative lens. 

Every hospitality company should have this kind of culture. It would be impossible to do. But I could add to the positivity and trust topic you raised, definitely being service oriented is that it’s such a big piece of hospitality and the philosophy behind a hospitality. 

And also, given our global context, we live in a pretty siloed world these days. And so what I also love to see in hospitality organizations from a cultural lens is the value for giving back to their surrounding communities and involving people in efforts for volunteerism. So The Breakers, Palm Beach in Florida is a great example of that. 

They, as part of their culture, give their employees volunteer time off. Full-time employees get two days a year to dedicate to charitable causes. And then they give an impact report at the end of the year showing, look at all that our employees did and they do that in their onboarding process as well. 

They, from the beginning, going into The Breakers, Palm Beach, you are learning how to do community outreach. And so that’s a value they instill within their people. And why that’s important for building a positive culture is you are helping your employees feel like they’re contributing to something greater than themselves. 

And that can cultivate feelings of deep meaning and belongingness in your people. 

There is this concept of psychological safety. And obviously all leaders want their employees to feel safe in their environment. So can you sort of describe this concept and tell us why it is an important aspect to note when analyzing an organization’s culture? 

Yes, psychological safety is when team members share the belief that it’s safe to speak up or safe to express their differing opinions or to admit mistakes or to ask questions. They feel safe around doing that because they do not fear repercussions from doing so. And so it’s very important to have psychological safety in a culture because if you don’t, then it’s hard to observe what kind of culture you have because you have people who are hiding. 

And then you don’t receive those feedback loops that are so important in shaping and maintaining a culture. People are hiding instead and they’re quiet instead. And then your leadership doesn’t get the kind of feedback they need to make smart decisions about the future because people aren’t offering and they’ve withdrawn for whatever reason. 

They don’t feel safe. I have seen a company where the leadership very much values voice in the company. And so the head leader, they make sure that in a group setting, if someone gets interrupted while they’re talking, that leader will say, no, hold on, let so and so finish their point. 

And then the floor is given back to the person who was speaking. And so that reinforces the value of voice. And that’s the leader protecting the tendency of the team to interrupt each other, jump all over each other, and then distract. 

And so because the feedback is received well by the leader and the people speaking are given the space to do so, that’s perpetuated throughout the culture. There’s a culture for voice. 

So then employees can feel safe regardless of your level. If you’re a senior executive or you’re a relatively new hire, everyone feels empowered to speak, and that is one aspect of safety. 

That’s the objective, yes. If you can achieve that, that’s a really healthy thing in a company to have. 

So we’ve just covered the dark side, which is a lack of psychological safety. Let’s turn to the light, which counters when the safety is missing, so trust building. You are the co-author of Trust Score, a specialized training program and assessment for trust in organizations. 

So can you describe to us what is Trust Score, how did you validate it, who’s using it, and more importantly, who should be using it? 

Thank you. Yes, Trust Score is a project I embarked on maybe seven years ago with two co-authors, one based in San Diego and one based in Sweden. And it is a training program that helps leaders and their teams measure the level of trust that they have in their group and mainly the amount of trustworthiness that the leaders’ followers grant them. 

So we measure how capable, how reliable, how caring and how open-minded the followers perceive their leader is because all of those factors play into trust, the trustworthiness of the leader. And so we have a program for that to say, for those courageous leaders out there, if they want to know how their team feels about working with them to take this assessment and take this program. And the assessment has been validated statistically and it’s a reliable assessment. 

We’ve done three studies to support it. We now have over 3,000 respondents contributing to the quality of that assessment to make sure the items we’re using are the right ones. We do have the leaders rate themselves on how trustworthy they think their people will say that they are and then we put that score against how their followers actually feel about how trustworthy the leader is. 

And so part of the report gives the leader that gap to say this is the gap in your perception and if you want to move the needle more toward truth and to a higher trust culture, this is the direction to take. 

So we just talked about trust score. There is another concept, related concept, which is high engagement work culture. So for leaders who are interested in building a high engagement work culture, what recommendations you have for them? 

Any tips or special hacks? 

Yes, I would recommend that as a leader make sure your people are getting their needs met fundamentally and that starts with a good compensation package so they can pay their bills, get good health care and all those things that good workers deserve. But also it involves making sure that your people’s basic psychological needs are met. And so here’s where I’m excited to announce the creation of an assessment for motivation that can help measure that I’ve designed for Mojo Moments, our motivation company. 

It can help leaders measure the quality of motivation in their team and also help leaders measure their own quality of motivation. So from taking this motivation matters for you assessment, it’s what it’s called motivation matters for you, leaders can learn the level of choice that employees perceive that they have, the quality of connection employees feel at work, or the quality of connection that they feel toward the mission and purpose of the organization, and also the level of competence their employees feel. Because choice, connection and competence are the heart of human motivation, according to Ed Deese and Richard Ryan’s self-determination theory. 

And so we have done some great scientific work to validate this instrument against existing academic measures in the literature that you would recognize, if I name them Arun. And so we’re doing this measurement of motivation at a very skillful level, and we also have a program to go along with it to say, all right, now that we’ve identified that thing you’re missing to create that highly motivated culture, what can shift in your favor? Where should you put the work? 

And so we have the motivation tool. And then the other thing I would say to leaders for an engaged culture is really think about what people find meaningful about working for your company. When they find meaning in the work, that is a very highly motivating factor. 

Also, when your people find that they have task variety in their job, they’re not doing the same thing over and over again every day, that’s a very motivating feeling. And also when your people feel like they have career development opportunities, growth opportunities, that helps with their motivation as well. So those three things, meaningful work, task variety and growth opportunity. 

And we have researched, I’ve done lots of research with Dr. Dre Zegarmy on his work passion model to prove that. 

So can you talk a little bit about this tool now? Is this like a survey that you do of the employees? And based on that survey, the results of that survey, you would then have a follow up model or sort of a process for the leaders to engage in to improve them. 

That’s right. So the version of the tool that’s coming out spring of 2024, it’s called Motivation Matters for Leaders. And that would be for leaders and their teams to fill out the survey. 

It takes 10 to 15 minutes. And then they’ll get the results in a report format. And then from there, there’s a program that they can learn about how to shift the needle in the areas where they might be most lacking. 

We also have an individual measure, which is Motivation Matters for You. And that is, anyone can take that as an individual. You don’t need a team around you to take that measure. 

But similar objective, we’re measuring the quality of motivation at work. For the leader assessment, we’re measuring the types of behaviors leaders can do to help create an autonomy-supportive environment for their people. 

Okay, so a few years ago, I was listening to a management guru who said the following, let’s get the right people on the bus and let’s get the wrong people off the bus. You know, frequently we see top leaders bring their own team when they take the top job in any organization. So the question for you is, can people change? 

Have you seen examples of where a leader can change the culture? Or is the best philosophy to completely disrupt the current culture and try to bring in a new team with a new culture? Now, I know that I’m conflating people and culture, but then you are the expert. 

Help us untangle this. 

Well, you and I have been around in circles about organizational change and organizational culture, so this makes me smile you’re asking this question. But what I know about change management is that 70% of organizational change efforts fail. And so what’s funny about your wording is you’re asking, is the best approach to completely disrupt the current culture? 

And that’s a very negative connotation, because the reality is with change comes loss. It’s like tiny deaths that people have to endure whenever something big is changing. And so it’s very much the work of leadership to figure out how to work through the repercussions of the change to anticipate what people will suffer from as part of this change, but know and help people see how this change is ultimately in service of something greater. 

And so my question back to the leader would be, how long do you want this change to take? And also, how long do you have for this change to take? Because some organizations will not survive if the change doesn’t happen immediately. 

So of course, bringing in your own team is the faster road to change. You see pro sports teams do this all the time, but it is a matter of how much time do you have. And I’m a Leadership Studies PhD, and so I believe very much in development and growth and how you say, can people change. 

I say Arun, wholeheartedly, absolutely. And it’s a strong personal value of mine. And professionally, I do a lot of work in that area. 

Fantastic. So I hope all the leaders who are thinking of taking new jobs are listening. Okay, now I have to admit that when you were here on the faculty and we were trying to implement huge amounts of organizational change, you were very, very key in helping me go through that entire process. 

So I am forever grateful. And what I would like to ask you next is to teach or coach the entire workforce one small bite-sized lesson here that would help move the world, even if a little bit, in a more psychologically healthy direction. What would that be? 

I love this question. This is a great question. I would love to encourage people to always take responsibility for their own happiness and to not let their happiness be contingent upon other people, other things, rewards that might come their way, an outcome that could go one way or another. 

I think if we all take more responsibility for our own happiness, then we can show up more whole, more well, stronger for everybody else around us. 

That is an outstanding direction for everyone to take. So really appreciate that. Thank you, Dr. Peyton. 

It was a pleasure to talk with you today. Special thanks to the team that produced this podcast, Mara Littman, Andy Hallock and the entire team at Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. To keep up with the Distinguished podcast, be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. 

Please remember to rate this podcast as well. You can also learn more about our undergraduate and graduate programs at Boston University School of Hospitality Administration by visiting bu.edu/hospitality. Thank you.