The Culture Coach
I’m Wendy Brand, Your Culture Coach, dedicated to supporting people-first leaders. Each week we dive into strategies and insights to help you build a workplace where employees feel valued, motivated, and inspired. From fostering tribal values and improving core processes to developing inclusive communities and responsive listening strategies, we cover it all.
Join me weekly for practical tips, expert interviews, and real-world examples to help you boost productivity, extinguish burnout and cultivate a vibrant organizational culture that reflects your mission, vision and values.
The Culture Coach
#083 A Culture of Listening and Engaging with Gianna Driver
This week’s podcast is episode 2 of 4, recorded at CultureCon in November. You may hear some of the background noise as we were seated right outside the conference hall at the Planet Hollywood Hotel in Las Vegas and there was an event setting up behind us.
My guest is Gianna Driver. Gianna has nearly two decades of experience as a human-centric people leader passionate about the intersection of culture and performance. Gianna has been the Chief People Officer of Lattice, which is a People Platform where over 5,000 of the world’s most strategic HR teams run their performance, engagement, career development, goals, compensation strategies, and people operations. She also served as the Chief Human Resources Officer at Exabeam, a global cybersecurity company, managing the strategy and processes related to building, investing in, and retaining talent.
Gianna is a recognized HR industry speaker and is frequently quoted in the media, including publications such as Fortune, Forbes, US News and World Report, Insider, and The Wall Street Journal.
Here are a few of my top takeaways:
1. Staying interviews are where you interview long-tenured employees who are generally high-performing to understand what keeps them at the organization.
2. When people truly feel connected to the company and its culture they stay.
3. Engagement surveys, smaller focused groups in person or on Zoom, and partnering with ERGs can be a great way to listen and receive feedback from employees.
4. It’s important to follow up on annual engagement surveys. You should circle back and repeat back what you heard, introduce an action plan, and then follow up in a quarter or two to share progress.
5. Change is the only constant. Lean into humanity and culture. Culture is not static. Culture should be shifting and evolving.
6. Seek out the culture ambassadors, those that have the heart and soul of the company. And, create a mechanism for hearing from these ambassadors.
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With 25+ years of leadership experience, spanning multiple roles across corporations and non-profits, I have gained a wealth of experience in understanding what makes organizations successful.
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