What is “corporate culture”?
The basic assumptions we all share—how we believe things “should be” at work – how do they come to shape this phenomenon we like to call “culture”? How can we influence, shape moods, and delight in cultures that actually work FOR us and not AGAINST us? In this episode, we discuss these issues with two super engaging individuals – one with a long and profoundly interesting track record behind him – Heiko Hutmacher (owner of “Hatter Advisory”, former CHRO and Board Member at Metro AG), and one young eager and just starting out – although he has achieved some pretty amazing stuff already – Gabriel Ganev Keubgen (founder of the tech Startup “MIA” and TedxEhrenfeld in Cologne). Enjoy!
So, what did they discuss?
Hanne Lindbæk
So hello to everyone, and welcome back to that human-centric podcast. Today, we are going to talk about this most difficult and flighty—yet absolutely life-changing—topic for any corporation. We’re going to try to discuss the beast that is corporate culture. What is it, actually? How does it come to life? Who owns it? And how can we influence and change it? Can we change it? Does it change us? Of course, we all know the saying “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” and I guess even with money, people would find it possible to put some kind of value or monetization definition on corporate culture. This podcast you’re about to enter also has a commercial side to it. And we are so happy about the guests we managed to get for this one. So we’ve been trying to kind of mix up the ages here. So we’ve got one kind of seasoned and mature gentleman; he’s actually been there as head of HR for Metro for a number of years, among other things on his very impressive CV. He’s now running his own company. His name is Heiko Hutmacher. And then, on the other side of that table, we have the young, up-and-coming entrepreneurs with a rather brilliant entrepreneurial spirit, like Gabriel Ganev Keubgen. And well, to just give you a little bit of a teaser, guys, we ended up discussing, among other things, emotions and how they come into the workplace. In this episode with two men, I’m just overly thrilled about this episode. What we would like you to listen in on is a bit quirky, but we’re trying to geek out on how we can actually be conscious. And how can we shape and all of us actually, whether we’re a leader or not work to create the culture that is needed to do good work together? Have a listen. So guys, today we are talking about this most crucial and yet most flighty of topics, we are going to try and nail the beast that is corporate culture. Oh, God, if I had a penny for every time I’ve heard that terminology mentioned in a corporate context, and how many times we can get confused about it, it comes to kind of the same amount, doesn’t it? What is it, actually? And how does it come to life? Who owns a corporate culture? And who can change it? Can we change it? Does it change us? The oldest thing around, of course, is the one about culture eating strategy for breakfast, and I guess even the money people would find it possible to put some kind of value or monetization definition on the table when it comes to the creation, existence, and also the change of a culture in a corporate workplace. What is a company with a bad culture worth, and what is a company with a good culture worth? All of these questions and many, many more, I hope I am looking forward to dig into together with our most honorable guests today. Heiko Hutmacher and Gabriel Ganev Keubgen. That’s a mouthful for me right there. Well done have both taken the time to join us. It’s lovely to see you both. Thank you so much for coming.
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
Thank you for having us.
Hanne Lindbæk
Thank you. Thank you, guys. Heiko, you’re even dialing in from exotic Thailand, aren’t you?
Heiko Hutmacher
Yeah I mean, I feel a little bit awkward looking at my living room there, which is a fake virtual background. I’m actually in Koh Samui, Thailand.
Hanne Lindbæk
So Heiko, if I’ve understood things correctly, you’re that, like the former Chief Human Resources Officer and board member at Metro AG. You’re currently the owner of something that you called Hatter Advisory. So ladies and gentlemen, we have a senior on our plate, a senior within the field of HR, and I can’t wait to discuss with you both what it’s been like for you over the decades that you have spent in the world of corporations and dig into the topic of HR. And at the same time. Also, I know that you have a very, how shall I put it, “future-driven” perspective still. And then on the other side, we have Gabriel Ganev Keubgen. Are you there?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
Yeah, I’m here.
Hanne Lindbæk
I think we’ve kind of asked you to come to the microphone today more as a representative of something younger, I guess. Sorry about that. But your reputation precedes you. You do have an entrepreneurial spirit around you. And you are also an avid believer in the importance and force of HR. Yes, I truly do. What is the most important thing for you if you just mentioned something off the top of your head?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
I think the people who put people together who can work well enough together also have to have or dare to have a little confrontation. I would say.
Hanne Lindbæk
Oh, yes. Oh, I love that. So not only to be nice together but also to dare to create friction and have real discussions. And that’s a brilliant point. So, Goblin, you are the founder of the tech startup. Mia. Is that how I say that? Yes, in Kalani, and you’re also the founder of TEDx in Kalani, so yeah. Congratulations on that. What is better than sharing ideas where they spread? Hmm. If we get down to business, gentleman, we also have today’s speaker at the microphone. Svetlana, you’re here today in a kind of little bit different capacity, because I want to use you two gentlemen, who are of course external influences today. And look in at the Deutsche Telekom phenomenon and try to describe maybe a little bit Svetlana, where the telecom culture is today needs to be today and tomorrow. And what kind of cornerstones can we find that constitute the corporate culture in telecom these days? pleasure. Yeah, so that kind of ties us all together? Here we are. If I just started off with the first question, guys, and anyone can answer this one, why do I know that it is? But why would we say that culture is actually good for business? Why do we care about it?
Heiko Hutmacher
Know, I’d gladly give that a shot. Because it is one of the if not the real differentiator between successful companies or not, of course, you have companies that possess a certain code or that possess, you know, patents, and work on that basis. But whatever other company you have, eventually, you just simply need to work through people if you have a strategy, and you want to put it into place that only works with people. And so, therefore, it is absolutely a differentiator.
Hanne Lindbæk
So here we are, at the very heart of this podcast project of ours, and of course, we’re calling ourselves the human-centric podcast. And it is, of course, because at the center of any attempt at creating an implementing a strategy in a corporation lies the human effort lies the human perspective, it has to. And so you’re saying it’s absolutely crucial. It’s black and white?
Heiko Htumacher
Yeah, I would. You know, sometimes when you talk about human-centered organizations, you talk about the importance of people. And sometimes it all sounds nice, being in the third person. But a tremendous part of change in organizations is actually fighting to find ways to really personalize it. When you try to change something, it’s easy to point somewhere and say, “We need to change this and that,” but there are always three fingers pointing at yourself as well. And so therefore, the ability to change oneself as a leader, as a middle manager, or as an employee is absolutely crucial.
Hanne Lindbæk
Yeah, so, oh, I love that. So taking it from that them over there to them, the US. It’s us. It’s me; it’s us. Yes, yes. Oh, that’s super, Gabriella. What are you thinking right now? Why should we care about culture from your perspective?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
As a representative of young people, I would say that young people are very, very, very passionate and striving to have something to work for, something to believe in, and someone like a leader who believes in us. And I hear that every day when I’m talking, for example, to the TEDx team, who are maybe looking for a job and are feeling desperate about that. And I think it’s all about, as one of our former speakers told me, not doing the right thing but not doing the wrong thing. You can only ruin someone’s motivation by maybe not communicating well or by putting barriers up and making things more difficult. And therefore, I tried to see myself only as an enabler. I’m like, in the past three years and TEDx. I’ve been trying to step more and more back of doing things and rather enabling things for the other people, so that they can have fun that they can put their ideas on the TEDx stage.
Hanne Lindbæk
So we sense that behind the phenomenon that is culture, however, we are going to try and define it today. lies human activity, human choice, and human behavior. So like what you’re saying, Gabriella is how you choose to be with your gang. I would guess that creates a kind of culture and TEDx Colonia, am I right?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
Yeah. Like right now, we’re doing a survey with the university to see how happy people are, and just when I posted the question to join that survey, everyone answered yes. Here’s my email, please. I want to contribute. And that just makes me so happy and proud of what we’ve achieved. And I know that there are a lot of things that we can do better. And, and also, I want to mention that I worked at a company called Oscar a few years ago, which is a small consultancy for young talents who want to strive, consult companies, and develop themselves. And there, I had this culture, which was, in my opinion, absolutely perfect, because everyone was striving to be better while also striving to take on responsibility. And we didn’t have any boundaries, because even the CEO of that company was young and had the opportunity to be a consultant after like three months, and then take over the board of that company. And I think that’s not everything. It’s a small bubble that works by itself. But you could see there that so many people would put so much effort and energy into working and having fun. While I don’t know, like we were really having a struggle of finding a solution for a certain problem, then we would have some fun playing kickball or whatever. and then going back to the problem. So the dedication comes with fun and also with different perspectives, because the teams that were put together were not put together to have the same people, but someone with a perspective on this side and someone with a different perspective on the other. Through these experiences, I just believe it’s so crucial.
Hanne Lindbæk
Okay, you are mentioning so many very, very valuable things right now, one of which hit me hard: the simple idea of having fun together. I actually heard the other day that you can measure the success of group therapy by how much laughter has existed in the group. Right. And that’s like real laughter You know, that kind of laughter, that kind of word—stop or go away. So I think you are so onto something. You know, if I were pretending to be an engineer listening in right now, for a second, I would still be going, “What do they mean when they say culture?” What is it? And how can we define it? So I’m going to try people I’m bringing to the table today, a definition is from one of my big mentors. And personally, I have really tried to kind of read most of what has been created in the last few decades. He’s coming of age. His name is Edgar Schein, and he’s an old Swiss MIT professor in organizational psychology. So here goes here is a suggested definition of culture, from Professor Edgar Schein, listen up a pattern of shared basic assumptions that a group has learned, as it solved its problems of external adaptations and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid, and therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way you perceive think and feel in relation to those problems.I know it’s meaty, but I love this one. I think what it’s saying to me is that through solving problems together, we get to a place of thinking we understand something, and that understanding takes the form of assumptions that we will hold up together. Does that make sense to you guys?
Heiko Htumacher
I mean, it does make sense. For me, there’s a somewhat simpler way of putting it: it’s the way it feels around here. And this, the way how it fits around here is of course set by the experiences that you make. And these experiences are both driven by behaviors displayed by leaders, by managers, and by coworkers. But it’s as well set by the rules that this organization has, you know when you have very narrow boundaries of your own responsibilities, you’re boxed into certain areas and not supposed to go to other places, then indeed, that creates a certain culture. If you do what Gabrielle was so nicely describing there for us to go other places, you create energy. So it’s simply how it feels around. And all of the conditions that make this which by the way, when organizations that try to change cultures often underestimate that it requires adaptation from various levers rather than only one or two.
Hanne Lindbæk
Lovely, love it. Any other reactions on my attempt at or Edgar Schein’s attempt at defining culture for us?
Svitlana Bielushkina
I agree Hana was your definition and also released with high court simplified in his own words, my definition of culture is very close to what Heiko said. So that’s how it feels in here, but it’s actually the smell of the place. So then you come in and you have the smell, and you can’t describe it. You just feel it—you feel what it is—you know, it’s freedom and intrapreneurship, and it’s fun, or you feel constraints and processes and control. And it’s not you didn’t have to over engineer that. But that smell gives you an honor cheer, whether you really want to go and run and deliver and be super committed, and do more than expected, or it gives you a feeling of tiredness that you just want to follow from, you know, from nine to five, or whatever hours you have and not do more. And even the smallest environment that is created has a fundamental impact on business, productivity, and innovation. And then, of course, you know, success in the market. So that smell, which I fully agree with, was a factor in the company’s percentage. So you have to know.
Hanne Lindbæk
I love that. And thank you for those words; we’d love it if I took you back to you. Heiko, I have to ask you out of curiosity, if I had asked you 20 years ago, would you define culture the same way? Or has this changed for you in the last decades?
Heiko Htumacher
I mean, there are some things that have definitely changed. So for example, Gabrielle was talking about purpose-led organizations. You know, if you would have 2025 years ago, 30 years ago, you would have asked people about purpose led organizations, you could have read a little bit about in Good to Great, because never returns through. But if you could have tried to bring this into an organization, mindfulness and other things, I think most of the time, you would have just been walked out afterwards. So in this regard, you know, the greater depths and the greater focus. There hasn’t been for me come over the last year 2025 years?
Hanne Lindbæk
And have you? You know, it’s the traditional role, isn’t it? Like when I’ve met HR directors for different companies, over the years, I have met a lot of frustrated people who’ve been trying to get their voice heard at the table around topics such as culture.
Heiko Htumacher
Well, it’s, when you’re looking at the role of HR leaders, they have really shifted, you know, when you take it a little bit like the Russian Matryoshka, these little dots. Beginning there’s when the boss all administration, then very quickly, it became the industrial and Employee Relations Manager, then it became employee development. And then it became a little bit like human capital development. But the real voice of HR is actually only really hurt, in my view, when you become the leadership and change consultant of the company, which is kind of like the biggest metro cover; all the others are inside. And so therefore, there’s a lot of organizations struggling with the fact that, you know, the both the strength of this HR side as much as the interpretation of the role, as the leadership and change agents of the and consultant of the company is not there.
Hanne Lindbæk
Yeah. So yeah, I even find that some of the time I hear there’s a difference in language and terminology. So I hear that, like with money, people will be talking their commercial language, and then the HR language is somehow different. and it’s like magnets that you can’t get to work together.
Heiko Htumacher
That is deadly. Because unless you speak the language of business, can you be a successful HR leader? It doesn’t work any other way?
Hanne Lindbæk
That’s good advice right there. That’s interesting. I’m just aware; I want to kind of try and harvest all this experience that you’ve had. What would you say? If you were to talk to a young HR director of a company today, what would you say? Let’s say within the telecom industry, what would be your top advice? How do you take business life into the future? from an HR perspective?
Heiko Htumacher
I would kind of answer in two ways. One way would be to address a little bit some of the things that Gabriella has been doing, and the other is a more principled one. I think the more principled one is, you know, just like you said before, the weight fields around here are most of the time defined basically by one person, which is the manager. So of course of the department and the effort going into making these managers, stronger people, leaders, you know, you cannot invest enough in it. And I see organizations often not doing that, which comes with a lot of things. And then the other thing is in the recruitment really go much, much more for attitude, and character rather than anything else, because there is this beautiful quote by a military man of all people, but he said Norman Schwarzkopf leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character if you need to be without one without a strategy. And, you know, what Gabriele did at the Oscar where we met together and what he does on things like TEDx, bringing young people to places where they do more than learn content but learn something about, you know, building character, is totally central.
Hanne Lindbæk
Oh, God, and it just gives me hope for the future too. I have a son who is very much like Gabriel has that same mindset, and I, I’m so relieved that it’s actually there, and that it’s taking the place of some of the like the older generations more cynical, less Relational Approach to corporate life. Gabriel, what’s going on with you right now? What are you thinking?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
Yeah, I’m happy and sad at the same time. I feel like it’s good that it’s being talked about. And I’m listening to a lot of podcasts and other sources to get information on how things should be or have to be and how I can improve our culture. But at the same time, when, for me, I’m going to my clients, which usually are in the industrial sector, I see reality. and I see that reality looks very, very different. And that reality in industrial companies is far, far away from what we’re talking about right now. Because it’s not about the people, the people can be easily replaced. They’re not valued. They’re not being invested in; no one cares about what they think or feel. It’s just about doing your job, improving the process, solving the problem, and not thinking about what he actually or she actually needs to solve the problem. And even at BMW, which was my first stop, as an intern, I observed that the person who was most responsible for solving a problem was in a very pressured situation. But they were forced to solve the problem tomorrow because it was costing them so much money. But the person who had to solve the problem and didn’t have the space, or didn’t get the capacity to solve the problem, it was just trying to tell them to do it now, but not, and he was working from like, early in the morning to late at night, like limiting the hours he was allowed to work. But from that very, very first month of my work, I was thinking this is not how you can solve a problem.
Hanne Lindbæk
You know, I so agree with what you’re saying there. And I, you know, we humans, we are not artificial, we are indeed humans. And we are if we are something we are like hardware and software, whatever. But we are not machines. And we need to understand there’s this overflow of demand right now in so many industries and businesses, like saying, “Do more for less resources, quarter by quarter, be more exhausted, and take it because we all have to take it right now.” If it’s a mathematical equation, it doesn’t work. It just doesn’t work. It leads to chaos and destruction. And finding that we know that companies we like to compare ourselves with actually have kind of cracked this code, haven’t they? And I’m trying to look at resources and, indeed, human resources in another way. Thank you for bringing that to the table. And thank you for your sadness. I think it’s a very important sadness. Yes, there’s a lot of companies out there not living this truth, not doing this stuff, yet. It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? How can we influence them to walk in the right direction?
Heiko Htumacher
Maybe it drives association. For me the points you just made, which is, you know, very often, I find as well, that there’s a differentiation being made between the person you know, that is at work, and the person that is somewhere else and not at work, which in my view is obviously complete nonsense. Because we’re one human being, we bring our full beam into any place where we are. If there is an intention to go in the direction that Gabrielle would expect to find, then it has to start with leaders setting a role model of behavior. And only when they’re really starting to move can they expect the rest of the organization really to move. It doesn’t work in another way in my experience, and that really requires conversation in a team setting that involves open feedback for which you need to create trust; to have trust, you need to show vulnerability. So there’s a lot of steps that are required to get to this.
Hanne Lindbæk
Yes, and you keep coming back to this point. And I so agree, and I absolutely love you for taking us back there every time. The role, importance, and responsibility that lie on the shoulders of a leader and showing up So we’re defining this very flighty phenomenon. We’re absolutely sure that it’s vital and crucial and they can like mean your success or not, if you are a company, this phenomenon called culture. And we are pointing out how each and every one of us actually co-creates when we come to work, because if we don’t, we will influence the culture. The moment we come into the workplace, the moment we open our mouths a moment we look at one another well, and these days, we’re even sitting at home that’s a different topic all on its own. And then you’re saying that at the end of the day leaders They have a huge actually not only responsibility, but they have a huge opportunity, don’t they? to influence that culture and to color to make the right smell to make the right feeling in the workspace. What I love about the Edgar Schein definition, which I don’t think is quite accurate in terms of how it feels in a place, is that it talks about having assumptions that we share. And if we assume that you and I know and agree on some common rules, and we think we agree on what we agree upon, that’s when it gets dangerous, isn’t it, because then we’re not conscious of where we’re actually steering?
Heiko Htumacher
I’ve recently seen a company do a very, very nice survey where, in a team setting, they not only ask participants for a certain opinion on a certain topic but indeed ask as well about the underlying assumptions and make them visible to the team. So very, very great points were making.
Hanne Lindbæk
I love the idea of assumptions. And we are all making the assumption that machines aren’t where we create stories as we go along. So Atlanta, you’re bringing us to the story of the assumptions of the telecom industry right now. What are the basic assumptions you guys are running by?
Svitlana Bielushkina
You know what I’m thinking right now. Now let’s come to the assumptions. But what goes through my mind is looking back into my own professional HR. This haiku also gives a good example of material scars and says, “I’m coming from a Soviet Union background that’s very close to my heart.” The professional Human Resources department was very much about resources. It was very much about being productive and managing resources in the best way. And it has been decades like that without the word “human” in it. Yeah. I think now we come to realize that we have human resources we have they easily can come and go, if you don’t have the right skill set, then have the right talents in the organization. So we really have to change to make sure people select us as the choosers, they stay, and they actually can shine inside. So the whole assumptions and change what I’m experiencing right now in Deutsche Telekom that I will see in the outside world, is this changing the whole profession more towards human and not just resources? And in telecom, my story, joining Deutsche Telekom in 2018, was basically fifth reason to work with growth mindset and culture change. When we had segments of companies, which, you know, in telco is an incumbency, So we have organizations in the countries, and we are not partial estate owners; we are incumbents; we, you know, know the game, you know, we have power in the countryside. And to change the mindset from incumbency to incumbency—from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset— For me, the tipping point to join Deutsche Telekom as a company was to work with a growth mindset, work with management teams, and change your perception of a declining business. That telco cannot grow. Yeah, the telco is declining quarter over quarter and year over year due to change, perception, and growth per se. And to go against all the arguments, which are very intelligence, of a number of the management who had many, many arguments why we cannot grow, to actually say, Yes, we can grow. But you have to change the way you think and the way you deal with assumptions. You have to change the way you deal with the customer and how you meet the customer in how you live in breathes this growth mindset inside. So I think these rejuvenation assumption to concentrate on human Centricity putting very often employee first and customer second because employee creates the value for the customer, but also making customers as our offense. I would say it’s a huge transformation and it doesn’t happen. You know, in one day Gabriel, you say has a magic stick. Changes right now are a journey. But we are also very open and vulnerable.
Hanne Lindbæk
Oh, thank you. So Svitlana, that’s a brilliant input right there. You’re pointing to? Did you want to say something?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
Just wanted to add that I think the biggest problem and I think big companies like for example telecom or metro, they’re being forced by society and by their own people to make that change, because I think it’s inevitable that you can not do differently because just the next generation demands it and if you want to have future employees and future talents, you need to adapt to the market. But I’m really curious to see how small and medium companies will have been owned for decades or even centuries by families. How they will adapt, how they will understand the need, and how much time it will take them, because I think that is something very important, I heard a lot of people talk about their employees and their stuff and how they don’t put the employees on the sidewalk, but maybe the customer or even just the revenue. And so I think that is a cultural change that will take some time, but then create the culture of that company. go hike up.
Heiko Htumacher
So the comment I want to make is that indeed, I can recognize the comment that Gabrielle made about midsize companies, but I haven’t seen much of the other spectrum. So sometimes, you know, these hidden champions are actually very far ahead of the curve. Because I see them react very fast, very quickly, very agile. But indeed, you have as well the other side of the equation, which is the one that you described, possibly, this is still the majority.
Hanne Lindbæk
Backtracking us two seconds here, I come back to this idea in this podcast episode of the age of the older and the younger and sweet Lana, when I first saw the TED talk, and started getting into the material of Carol Dweck, that is the idea of growth mindset. I was so thrilled to say that this woman, who was not 25 No, she’s got maturity, and she’s got age on her body. And she’s got the insight and the wisdom of a generation that, of course, is so aware of what it doesn’t know. Now, in terms of the digital, like, we all need to be so digitally savvy these days, it makes a lot of people, even my age, feel like we’re over the curve feel like that we shouldn’t take up space anymore. I’ve had some depressing conversations in different corporations about this where people my age, and I’m 52, that’s breaking news, people my age are saying that, Oh, I don’t want to take up a place in the meetings anymore. because I can’t really follow all the digital development the whole time. So I don’t feel like I’m relevant. And then the young people are saying, “Oh, I don’t want to be rude or seem like I’m arrogant.” So I don’t want to talk too much. I don’t want to take up too much space, because I want to be humble and learn. And what we’re left with is, like, nobody speaking. The basic assumption is that what’s needed right now is a cultural change. And that comes with people expressing their opinions, communicating their meanings, and influencing the cultures that they are in. That’s basically what we’re saying here. Isn’t it? Heiko? This one goes to you. Of course, darling, I’m sorry to tie you and the age post together. What do you think about when you look at the younger generations? What advice can we give them?
Heiko Htumacher
Yeah, first of all, I think the H curve is one that you feel and relate to yourself. So I think thank you the outside measure, I think counts only insofar as you’re not having a learning attitude, and an openness attitude. I think if you lose that at some point in time, then I think it needs to be counted against one. I have to say I have not encountered any silent rumbles, really. I think people do make themselves hurt. And if you do have an organization like the one I’ve been to at least once, where, as you know, the organization previously was pretty much shut down by an overbearing hierarchy. And status driven organization, you can absolutely change that by simply a leader is bringing a little bit more humility and a little bit more. Yeah, just listening attitude to the table that doesn’t go like this. But you absolutely can get to the point that the rooms start talking, especially with the younger generation, and, by the way, as much as some of the owners are not shy, I have rarely encountered silent rooms.
Hanne Lindbæk
So if we have strong hierarchies, if we have, like, a little bit of an old-fashioned kind of fear-driven culture, you are saying, again, if we point to the leaders, it’s absolutely able to change. We can change it, but it takes leaders being more humble, listening more, and basically just role modeling. That’s what you’re saying, am I right?
Heiko Htumacher
This is the most important element of it. Extraordinary important because I do believe that a group of leaders of division, an organization of a country can just sit together and decide which culture they want to have, because I think that’s always how it starts. But then in the execution, it is, of course, the role modeling. But there are many more facets that make this work because you might have inhibitors. I don’t know, let’s say your title structure, the way you promote people the way you recognize performance that might all come and show you and direct you back into the old so there’s a lot of things that you need to adapt to eventually shift this sustainably.
Hanne Lindbæk
Yeah, we should have, like, a chief culture officer and then a cop company.
Heiko Htumacher
That’s CHRO, in my view, that actually even the CD I like it to be frank CEO. Yeah. You’re saying it’s the CEO because, yes, he or she needs to understand the power that sits within. And really good marks they absolutely have this, which is why you see much, much more conversation about these things. Nowadays.
Hanne Lindbæk
I do so hate every time I hear the terminology “soft skills,” because to me, there’s nothing soft about this. It’s like a, something made up to kind of I often heard I hear these words that people are calling it something wishy-washy. And I guess, if you are an engineer, it’s difficult to nail down, drill down, and put into an Excel sheet. This is what we’re trying to describe. And yet, we’re coming back to this pivotal point of saying it’s so crucial the whole time. Gabriele, is this advice you can roll with? Do you think you can go into hierarchical, old-fashioned cultures and change them by being more humble?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
First of all, I want to say that I am an engineer. Well, I’m very good with Excel. So I think you can combine both. And I think what’s lacking is the acceptance of emotions in the meeting room; it’s fine to be angry, and you don’t have to play a role that is expected of you to get your point across or get the promotion. And I think that’s a huge, huge, huge problem in our corporate world, that there is no space for emotions, there is no space for relationship, but only for facts whatsoever. But on the other hand, there are always emotions. And one easy example is that if you’re making a mistake in your private life, you would say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I made a mistake.” But if you have a hierarchical relationship and most of the people think it’s fine because I’m the boss, I can be wrong. And I think that’s something that is getting across but is still not there. Like, no matter who I’m talking to, every problem stems from not being able to express his or her emotions. And I’m having the same problem. I don’t feel like it’s accepted. And I think that’s huge.
Hanne Lindbæk
Wow, this is so interesting that we went to this place. I’ve only just recently, in my own life, learned to accept the fact that I have emotions, even when I work. But to even stop up when I experienced one that if it’s something I would call the negative emotion. I can these days; I’ve just learned to stop and go, “Oh, that’s interesting. What is that emotion about? Right? And then, so many times out of 10, I come up with something interesting: a new perspective on my own inner life, a new perspective on a relationship I have at work, or a new perspective on how I feel about tasks. So thanks for bringing that up. And yes, of course, because when we’re describing the feeling of a place or even the smell of a place, what are we describing? We are describing the mood. Among other things, we are describing the mood, aren’t we?
Heiko Htumacher
And we do as well react to our expectations as to what the situation you’re currently in, you expect what you expect it to be. I mean, Gabriella and I have gotten to know each other in a TEDx where I was actually talked about the fact that, you know, universities still teach people, you know, content for almost, I would say, almost 100% of the time. Yet, as soon as you go into the workplace, everything that you just spoke about makes a real difference.
Hanne Lindbæk
Yes. I’m just gonna barge in here. And I’m going to tell all our listeners, if you haven’t seen it yet, go and watch Heiko’s very, very excellent TED talk on emotional intelligence, which I thought was very, very, to the point and raises a lot of stuff that we don’t have time to cover everything in this episode, I would have loved to speak more. But yes, it is the individual’s responsibility to become fluent in the language of emotions and to understand emotions. I mean, even if we put that responsibility back on a leader, even that would make a huge difference, wouldn’t it?
Heiko Htumacher
If I could just throw in that I believe that a leader who is not able to show emotions in some shape or form will very, very rarely get the trust of people because vulnerability is the basis for trust. And if you don’t trust, you don’t have a chance to effect change. Because when you change, you need to trust somebody that the direction that you’re going is somehow one that you want to follow. So sorry, Gary. That connection I wanted to make.
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
Yeah, I find it funny. Like I Oh, So have or have always had issues with showing emotions. But I’m training, I’m learning, and I’m working on it. I lived in Latin America for a while, and everyone was telling me, “Oh, you don’t show emotions; you’re not emotional at all.” And when I come to Germany, they always tell me, “Oh, you’re so emotional.” So it’s always a matter of perspective.
Hanne Lindbæk
So that brings us to national cultures, isn’t it?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
But what I wanted to say is that at TEDx, I tried to embrace my emotions, try to tell what I feel, because I feel like there people are more open for it, and also more sensitive to it. But then, on the other hand, I take that attitude into, for example, a sales meeting with a client. And I understand or see or observe how they react to it. And I feel like they feel like—is he really like that? Why is he opening up? It’s not a private conversation, like?
Hanne Lindbæk
Where are the where are the borders between, like personal and private, that even that is fascinating. I want to bring something to the table here because, of course, I’ve delivered things like leadership development training and communication training to all sorts of corporations for nearly 20 years. And it took me far too long to realize this. But after a while, I was aware that it was like there’s this double standard. So so many people are telling me that yeah, so you go to a nice retreat, and you do like a leadership development workshop and you, you learn all these nice ways to deal with other people, you learn how to deal with emotions, you learn how to open up, you learn all this stuff, and then you come back out there. And the jungle is different. Everyone fights for himself. And there’s like a double standard, and so many people have kind of taken me aside and gone, “You know, what we’re learning here isn’t really worth anything because out there, I have to fight.” So to the people who are left fighting out there.
Heiko Htumacher
It triggers something for me, that I’ve really learned over my career, which is when you have really very central interventions, workshops that you want to do that help you shift in organization, you cannot run them in a random way. Which means you know, you send a couple of people there, then you send the next people there next, because every time you do that, people come back and meet, possibly a manager that hasn’t been going through it. So if you have interventions that are really aiming at a fundamental and sustainable change in behavior, you have to run them cascading; the board needs to start after that, their direct reports, etcetera, etcetera, until you reach everybody. Because only that way can you make sure that people understand what’s going on and what the next level will actually entail afterwards. So only then can you be congruent.
Hanne Lindbæk
And you know, speaking as an external in that connection, I would say, I totally agree with you. And so many times out of 10, as an external provider, you don’t get to do that. Because the company doesn’t want that. And then you’re left doing something. I have colleagues, and I know they’re not really believing in what they’re doing. It’s super scary to say this. But we know that we come and deliver a nice day or two or three, and then everyone has a “hallelujah” moment. And then you go away, and it dies. So I love your insights there and that you’re being systematic about it and doing a cascading formation. That sounds Yes. Yes, please, more of that. Sweet Lana, I bet you there wasn’t very much emotional intelligence in the old Soviet Union. Or was there?
Svitlana Bielushkina
You know, I’m looking at my daughter who was growing up right now here, and she’s with me, in Germany, and she’s been living in a number of countries up to now and in the schools. They’re starting with emotional intelligence. So she’s learning how to react when she’s stressed and how to react when she says something conflicting. and it becomes a fundamental part of how she is raised. and I wish I had it. I did not have it before. Oh, but it also was brings it to me when I’m listening to the guests, honorable guests, we have today that those soft skills, emotions in emotional intelligence, they’re not soft, they’re power skills. Yes. And we should stop calling themselves that because they’re not soft at all. They give you the power to really gain trust, to drive change, and to connect with people better. But also when you listen to people, when you work with people when you connect to different teams. If you’re able to read the motions, you understand that behind every emotion is a need for something. And if you’re able to interpret the needs behind the emotion and meet those needs, then you can actually change the behavior and change organizations going forward. So I think this is really powerful. And I hope that is going to be trained as haiku. I mentioned your top-down AI across many operations, because that’s the power skill of every leader we need to have.
Hanne Lindbæk
What a delightful conversation, and we can bring it full circle, guys, because yes, because we are indeed humans, we are not artificial. We have human intelligence, we’re not artificial intelligence. And if we are to compete in the future that we know is coming from both AI and big data, we need to step up. And we need to be very aware of what it is we have that is valuable as human intelligence. And I think part of the subjects that we’ve discussed together today is what so we’ve understood it, what’s makes a good culture. And a good culture is worth resilience. That’s a given. And it’s research-based. There’s nothing wishy-washy about that. And we’ve also discovered how if we do it systematically, and if we cascade learnings, teachings down from the top from the very top, starting with every each individual at the very top, then we stand the chance of actually leaders being the people who will take cultures into a good future. Is that beginning of summing up of the conversation? Yes. Who I think I did it. Oh, Heiko. And Gabrielle, we are so overjoyed that you took the time to be with us today. Are there any final comments you want to make? before we round it off?
Gabriel Ganev Keubgen
I would say that maybe continuing on what we’ve been talking the past minutes, that maybe also I think everyone can make a difference in shaping the culture by exposing their emotions in meetings and expressing how they feel doing something maybe expressing if they don’t feel good about doing something in a certain way. And then also, sometimes it’s not always cascading down, but bottom up where people within a team can be a role model in sharing their emotions, and maybe teaching the leader Yes, how to show emotions and how to deal with.
Hanne Lindbæk
I love this perspective, too. Because if we just push all the responsibility on the leaders, and we sit passively back and kind of go now change me, that’s not going to work either. Is it? So there’s individual responsibility. Thanks for bringing that up. Heiko any final remarks?
Heiko Htumacher
I find this a very, very inspiring conversation. And I haven’t used it in the context of a corporate setting in exactly this way. So another nice little learning to pick it up on another occasion where I’m working with people, so very cool telecom justice.
Hanne Lindbæk
And thank you for bringing up the idea; at the end of the day, that age is just another assumption. Right? So, guys, thank you very much for a delightful conversation. I think, as always, I want to talk more and dig deeper. I want to understand more about culture. But I think we did a little bit of groundwork here. Thank you so much for coming on the show, and I hope to speak again soon. Thank you.
