Building a Brand Culture From the Inside Out with Pam Nemec
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"So when you think about coaching leadership, Think about how your culture shows up in your recruitment process. How does it show up in your hiring process, Your interview process. What questions are you asking to ensure that this person is going to fit well into your culture and add to it and not take away?"
— Pam Nemec
1. Vision for Culture
- Develop a blueprint for company culture, focusing on respect, trust, and collaboration.
- Define specific behaviors and core values as guiding principles.
2. Coaching Leadership
- Align leadership coaching with core values.
- Integrate cultural aspects into recruitment and training.
3. Constructing Collaboration
- Establish routines for collaborative discussions.
- Value diverse inputs for impactful decision-making.
4. Communicating Culture
- Create a dedicated communication team.
- Use diverse storytelling to share cultural values.
5. Cultivate Connection
- Encourage personal interactions in meetings.
- Focus recognition on both achievements and adherence to values.
6. Commending Correct Behaviors
- Align awards with guiding principles.
- Develop criteria reflecting both quantitative and behavioral standards.
7. Commit to Caring
- Promote openness to feedback.
- Address concerns genuinely.
8. Cascade to Customers
- Foster a culture that encourages employees to become brand advocates.
- Create a positive cycle of shared stories for brand enhancement.
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Mike: Pam Nemec is a brand culture expert and speaker. Her thought leadership around brand culture via HR and brand communications has led to recruiting, retaining, and caring for over 50,000 employees and connecting with millions of customers over the course of her 20 year career where she ultimately led HR brand communications and culture for Whataburger, a multi billion dollar restaurant brand.
Pam knows that business can only be as good as the internal cohesion and satisfaction of its people. Hence her drive and continued advocacy for building systems that protect and promote the organizational culture. Pam speaks and consults on her proprietary model. the remarkable brand footprint. I could say that, the eight steps to building a remarkable brand from the inside out we will definitely, talk talk about that. Pam, welcome
Pam: Hey thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Mike: Me too. I'm really looking forward to talking to you and learning what you do and what you have to teach.
First thing I always like to ask is in your opinion what's the most important characteristic of a great leadership team?
Pam: Well you know after 20 years in the corporate world and 10 years before that and other other aspects of business
I've found that the most important aspect of a leadership team that makes them truly successful is what I call humble collaboration. And that is when you are able to sit at the table with your peers with your other leaders. Set ego aside and get to reasonable. Get to a reasonable answer, a reasonable solution and the the best solution the company that isn't about you. It is about what's best for all. And I think that is the mark of a great leadership team.
Mike: I love that. What was that phrase again? What did you call it?
Pam: I call it humble collaboration.
Mike: Humble collab. I love that. And what I love you know when you know when when I decide I said, hey I want some signature question at the beginning of my of my podcast.
And I thought well I'll ask this but maybe everybody's going to give me the same answer. I think I've now asked it about 10 times and I've only got the same answer twice.
Oh really?
So that's pretty pretty interesting. And you've given you've given even a new answer so that's great. And you know humble collaboration you know obviously fits in very well with the whole theme that I know we're going to talk about here around culture but culture I know is one of those terms if you ask 10 people for the definition of culture.
Seven of them won't give you a good definition and three of them will give you different definitions so how do you define culture? What does it mean?
Pam: You know if you had asked me that question 15 to 20 years ago when I was just getting started out in my career I would have told you that it is about creating fun, making work fun and I would have leaned toward things like events and parties and gatherings and those are all great and those are part of culture building but it is not what I believe is culture. What I learned is that real culture and fun can't even exist until you have respectful leadership and communication systems throughout your organization that keep everybody talking and humbly collaborating for the best solution for your organization
So that is my definition of a great culture.
Mike: Got it.
So again it comes back to that humble collaboration and what and you use the term and I love putting these together the term brand culture. And I love it because one of the things I've been talking to HR folks about and I I even hate that term HR you know to me it's it's talent or talent development or people experience something but I've been talking to them for a while about how yes HR and marketing are are typically very different functions and you bring a unique mix of both but they're typically very different but how over on the talent side or the recruiting side the HR side there's a big piece of marketing in there.
So I love your thought on bringing those together. But when you say brand culture what does that mean? Why do those do those two words come together for you?
Pam: So you brought up why it comes together for me actually because my background is largely marketing communications. So for 18 years, that is my actually more that 20 years years, 24 years that is the industry I really was focused on. And even in Whataburger it's all I did for 18 years. Social media, communications, internal and external. That's what I did. But what would get where it got interesting was when I took on HR.
And what I saw is just exactly what you called out. Is culture is not just company culture
culture can become your brand's culture if it's good enough. And that's why I say if you want to build a remarkable brand then build it from the inside out because until you get that inside right.
The outside will never get to the level of performance that it could and I saw that. I know that when you are treating your employees respectfully, communicating with them, collaborating with them, bringing them to the table making sure that everybody's on the same page. And you do that consistently
You are building culture. Sure you can have a party but if you aren't doing those things never going to feel very connected to the cause of the organization. So then you take that and you say now if we really have an amazing
well connected culture inside. How do I share that with the outside?
and when you think about recruiting if you're looking at your recruit to retire process and you aren't coaching and teaching and training culture throughout that entire process then you're you're missing an opportunity every time you recruit for your company if you have a culture that makes you that is a a performance driver that's a point of difference for you as a company and you're not talking about that when you're recruiting
then you are making a mistake because that's an opportunity that you need to sharing right out of the gate. You want to be attracting the kind of people that are going to fit in to that culture and make it even better. and if you're not sharing that out there when you
start with your recruiting message, again you're missing the boat.
Mike: So If I'm defining my brand and I love I love the idea of and you've kind of I think changed my language forever in that when I typically think brand
I think external. But if we look at it now is you've got kind of the external brand and the internal brand, that needs to, those need to align.
If I'm a CEO and I'm thinking about my brand do I start with the external, do I start with here's what I want my brand to represent to my clients, to the world and therefore here's the internal brand.
Here's the culture that I need to create or does it start with the internal? Let me define define the culture that I want to create and then how that aligns to the external. Which comes first or do they somehow all happen at the same time?
Pam: What I teach and one of the the first steps to the eight steps is to create the vision. And when I say that people, CEOs would immediately say well I I already have a vision statement right? Everybody has those. But what I'm talking about is I want to know what is your vision for your culture? Right? It's like if you were going to build a home. Okay as a single mom of two for 12 years I think of things in terms of a home right? So if you were going to build a home you would never build a home without a blueprint. You would never raise a family without a plan. You would have some idea of what it is you want to create. And so when you think about the vision for your culture,
think about how do you want your home, your company to feel? What kind of personality does your company have? What When people on the outside look in, what do you want them to see? And create that and make sure you know like this is what I want to build. This is my blueprint. This is what I want the house to look like when I'm finished. This is what I want house to feel like when I'm done.
And when can think about that and you get clear on your vision for your culture and let's say it is one of respect and trust right? When you know that's what want now you can start building all the other systems that are are going to bring it to life.
But without that blueprint, without that vision being very clear it's very hard to create an environment that teaches people not just what to work on but how you expect them to work. How do you expect them work together? And that's what I get into. Once a leader is clear on that and they know what they want to build then we can start building the systems that actually make that true to the organization. And I've seen situations where you will have pockets of good leaders. And when I say good leaders I'm talking about how they communicate, how they collaborate, how they coach, how they connect right? But not everybody at that right? not I be mean let's honest right? Not every leader puts that at the top of their list. And so what I have found is that if you can create systems that hold people accountable to those elements that create respectful communications then it will start to occur. But if you leave it to chance a lot of times it gets pushed that back burner and
It never comes to fruition. You might have a leader that has a super high performing team. Those The team's very connected. They're very informed. They are cross collaborative with other teams but then you have another group that just struggles. What I am a proponent of is as a CEO how do you build a system, throughout your organization that makes collaboration easy, makes connectionexpected, gives people a structure to follow that makes it real. It's the only way in my opinion to really build a team that's sustainable and scalable.
If you're in a small company, you can wing it. And I used to tell this story , when I first started out I had a team of two people. Well that was really easy to collaborate. It's very easy to communicate. I walked across the hall and chatted it up and I told them what we were doing and I went back to my office and then we all went back to work.
But when you have a team of 200 people and and then also in my case at first it was 25,000 people I was accountable for connecting and then it went to 50,000 and we were spread out across multiple states. So when that starts to change and you start to grow if you don't have a structure and system that's ensuring that communication is happening and collaboration is occurring and connection is going on throughout your organization then your performance starts to falter. And I believe and know that performance is strongly connected to your culture. So having those systems and structure and understanding the importance of that as you scale and grow are important if want to really achieve performance.
Mike: Going back to the vision which is the first step of eight of this remarkable brand blueprint. And I want you to you'll you'll take us through the others. We won't dive deep into all the others but I want to dive a little deeper into vision because it's so, such an important first step. And I want to make sure that we understand a little bit more than nuts and bolts.
So I know there are companies that I work with. There are companies listening where they have got a set of core values and and in my world with my my clients core values are not just nice words that look great on a website right? They are specific behaviors that are non negotiable. Typically three to six behaviors.
You know we lift each other up is one one of my clients use which is all very specific behaviors around you know collaboration would fit in there and respect and a lot of other of other things. One of my other clients has one called you know measure twice, cut once which is all about they happen to be in a business where the specifics and dotting every I and crossing every T are very important so if I have got let's say five core values with very specific behaviors and I have communicated that to the organization. Is that what you mean by vision? If I say, hey here are the these five behaviors. Anchor my culture they're what makes us best as an organization. Is that enough? Is that your vision for culture or does vision go deeper and wider than that somehow?
Pam: It is a start and in some cases to your point, some organizations have created values that are very specific and people can follow those. And other vision statements they're too broad, they're too general. And so people don't really understand what it actually means. And so what I like do is take it a step further and build guiding principles. And the guiding principles are those very day to day interactions relative to what are the principles that we are going to use to guide our interactions to guide our decision making and when you're building that, looking at a few things again back to my everything I talk about is founded in communication at it's core right? Because I believe that that is that can cure a lot of ills right? If we could just better communicate with each other. So when you think about the values that you're creating especially if you're in a growing organization looking at okay go back to the beginning of when you started your company and really think about what
what was the purpose and the reason that we founded this company in the first place and what were the core values back then and have those core values and have those behaviors that made us successful when we started have those been pulled through to the current day and are they being preserved for the future and really getting clear on which of those are going to be preserved and which one of those are going to take you in the future, which one of those need to evolve.
When you think about the principles think about the behaviors not just you know a high level "we are humble" right? We are a humble organization. Okay you're a humble organization. You want to be a humble organization.
Now tell me what does humility look like? Give me a example of what humility, how does that show up in your organization? Write those down as principles that people can carry around with them, put at the center of the table and say these are the things that are going to guide this conversation. Because a lot of times the values are poster on a wall. But they never get put into action. And what the principles do is take values and they put them into a more actionable format that people can understand and say okay I know know what you mean there. And then when somebody is not behaving that way it's very clear it stands out.
It's not up for everybody's definition and everyone's interpretation of what humility should look like.
It's so clear they can't get around it. And that's where I just take it one step further and build some guiding principles around it.
Mike: Excellent that, so that's the first step in this remarkable brand blueprint. Give us kind of the high level and then we'll figure out where where we might want to dig in but tell us what steps 2 through 8 are.
Pam: Okay. So I'll try to be I'll try to to be brief.
So the second step once you're clear on the vision is all about coaching leadership. And when I talk about coaching leadership I'm not talking just the top of your organization because I don't believe that that's your only leaders right? You've got leadership throughout your company. And so when are coaching leadership you could be coaching current leaders but you could also be coaching future leaders that you're hiring into the organization. And that is the time to start making sure that when you're coaching you're not just coaching them on what to do you're coaching them on how you operate as an organization going back to those guiding principles. So when you think about coaching leadership, think about how your culture shows up in your recruitment process. How does it show up in your hiring process, your interview process? What questions are you asking to ensure that this person is going to fit well into your culture and add to it and not take away?
How are you training you know how are you well first how are you orienting? How are you training? And how are retiring people you know, I've seen a lot of times companies can
be really they're you know they'll talk a good game about culture. But then they fall down when somebody is retired from the company and that means you know whether they're retiring themselves or the company's retiring them how do you do that respectfully?
You know if you knew that and you do, every one of those people that leave your company will become a customer. You want them to be a customer that advocates for your brand or do you you want them to talk negatively about your brand? You have to think about everything you do inside your organization is going to affect your brand at some point. because it doesn't just get contained inside the four walls. That's why I call it brand culture. Everything you do for your employees they are your they are customers too and you want them to be advocating for you. So that is coaching leadership.
Mike: So it sounds like a big part of coaching leadership is holding the organization and holding the individuals in the organization accountable for living those core values and living those guiding principles.
Pam: That's right. And it's up to us as leaders to teach them that. Don't just leave it up for interpretation because as you grow, it just doesn't work. It's too, you're too big and you're too dispersed and it just won't work. So you have to do it. So that's step two.
And then I'm all about constructing collaboration which goes back to my first answer. And when I say again construct collaboration seems pretty self explanatory right? But what are your processes as the CEO? How are you making sure the right people are at table? Is everybody that should be helping make that decision, sitting with the right leaders talking through that or maybe it's not just the leadership team. Maybe you need the people that actually do the work to tell you hey if you make that one change, it's going to cascade and have a domino effect that's going to cost us another million dollars to fix this thing that it just broke. Are they really looking at the impacts of the decisions and so I think that collaborating should be a process.
It should some in some cases and nobody's going to like this word but you've got to force it. You've got to force people to the table and you've got to get them talking. And what I what I've seen is that when you that it may feel awkward and clunky at first but the more routine becomes it becomes and the more often you do it the more appreciated people feel. Because guess what you're asking me for my input. You're asking me for my opinion. And you know what you're not just asking me you're listening to it and you're considering it and you've incorporated into the design and the plan that's going to roll out later and that is culture. I feel respected right? You trust me. You've asked me for my opinion. And I think so many organizations skip that step because they're in a big ol hurry to get it done and when they do that they they're missing the point. They could be saving money by putting the right people in the room but because they rushed to rushed to the decision they've not only created a culture that does not show respectful collaboration they also are probably not getting to the best solution because they don't have the right people at the table. So I think that is one of my biggest things.
Mike: One great example of that because I love, I love I love this point construct collaboration. I had a client that was they, they were initially rolling out their core values. They had done them in the past but it was on a piece of paper. They never talked, they weren't real. So I worked with them to create a real set of core values.
And one of the exercises I use to help my clients create core values is called the Mission to Mars exercise. What they did it's not important what that exercise looked like but what they did is they created something they called the Mars team. And the Mars team was I think it was six or eight individuals who just lived, they modeled the core values.
They were the folks they thought modeled the core values. They created a Mars team and they worked with the Mars team. Instead of the senior leadership team saying how should we roll out the core values? Let's put posters here and let's create a core value award. And let's do this and let's do that.
They brought in this Mars team and they said who are from all all throughout the organization said we want we want your help. How should we be communicating? How do we do this? They did a great job of it it.
And then the next step was they had a pretty low, they did an employee net promoter score. Which for those that don't know what it is, it is all about kind of employee engagement and they got a pretty low score.
So they were ready to look at the results and come up with a whole bunch of recommendations. I said wait a minute why don't don't you go back to that Mars team and have them help you figure out what to do and have them take ownership of some of the solutions. And it feels to me what like what this company did is a great example of this step three construct collaboration.
Pam: It is. It is. And you know I'll give you another analogy just to help bring it home for the CEOs out there listening. This is the way I look at it okay? I want you to imagine that you are gonna remodel your house okay. And it's a big remodel. You're going to remodel the kitchen, you want to relocate the restroom. You've got big plans for your house. And so you go and you hire a contractor and you and the contractor work it all out. You've got it all figured out and you've got the price. You've got the start date and the contractor show ups to your door on Monday morning to get started and your wife
answers and says I don't know what you're talking about and they're like well I gotta get started because I have it right here. Your husband said I could come in here. We're gonna we're gonna basically wreck your kitchen today and tear up your bathroom. And and she has no idea of the the plan. She doesn't. And now she's worried because she knows that relocating that bathroom is gonna be a big problem for ten other reasons. But no one one ever asked her, now would you ever dream of doing that to your spouse? It's a real question I'm asking you, would you ever do that?
Mike: Would I? I think I would have a wife retention problem if I ever, I've been married 33 years so I'm not quite that dumb
Pam: There you go. Okay so nobody would ever dream of doing that right? I would never do that to my husband and I would hope to God my husband would never do it to me because, you know to your point you would have a a retention issue. My point is we do that every day to our teams When we aren't careful that's what we do. The crew shows up at the door. They are wrecking things and the team is completely in the dark. They don't know what it is we're doing.
And maybe it's because the leader might have known but the leader never cascaded it to the team in detail. Happens all the time and so I just want people to think about the just the ludicracy of the thought of us ever doing that to our spouses but yet we do it so often when we get in a hurry to our teams and that's that's why I'm a big believer in constructing collaboration. You got to slow down, you got to get the right people at the table so that you can speed up. And I guarantee you, you will get a better result. You'll get better performance. So that is step number three.
The next one is communicating culture. Now this one is obviously something I'm extremely familiar with. It's about building your platform for communicating. And as a CEO they can definitely understand the need for this . A lot of times in companies especially in midsize companies, They might be putting that into the HR department and saying HR does all our communications and what I have I find is that it really needs more focus than that.
Put your communication team on their own and allow them to build a platform that is cross collaborative. They need to be in the different meetings. They need to be representing communications and projects. They need to be listening into these meetings so that they can call that information and share it back out with all the people that can't be in those meetings right? You need to establish a platform that has your system, your structure in place whether that is newsletters whether that's a digital newsroom, a podcast whatever those things might be. You create those elements then you create your your reporting team. Who's Who are your reporters right? Who's going to be going out there and representing communication in all of your different meetings establish that system and those reporters are accountable for listening, understanding, asking sometimes hard questions of the project team leads or other people in the organization so that they can communicate it back to again those folks that can't be in the room. And that helps move the organization forward. In addition to your culture communication is you need to beat telling stories. Let's go back to the values piece. When we talk about guiding principles and values, back to the interpretation of it.
There is one thing about saying the words. There is a whole nother level when you can show what you mean and when I when I say take translate your culture and your values and tell a story, share a video. Find a real story not one you made up not one that looks like an advertising commercial a real story within your organization. And I guarantee you you have them. They're about your people. There is is somewhere, somebody has gone above and beyond for either another a peer, a customer, a client and focusing and featuring those stories can do wonders because when they see it, they emulate it, others emulate it and then it starts to create this cycle. And the next thing you know you have a list of evergreen stories to tell on behalf of your company's culture and it just perpetuates itself and same for the customers side so it you've got to have that communication platform though, in order to do do that.
Mike: So Pam before we move on to number five, this communication team you're talking about if you are a you know Google you know you're a multi billion dollar company. You may literally have a communication team and a VP of communication. For for those that have small and mid market companies does that typically come out of HR? Might it come out of marketing? Is it more of a cross functional team? Who owns that communication piece typically?
Pam: Well I was not typical but typically and like I said a lot of times they put it in marketing. I would not do that. Sometimes they put it in marketing. Sometimes they put it in HR. I think that's a a mistake. And the reason that I think that's a mistake is anytime you put communication within a specific function guess what happens? That specific function gets the lion's share of the attention.
And if you are really creating humble collaboration within your organization you want an impartial party running your communication team. You want somebody that is equally interested in training HR equally interested in real estate what's going on with it
Every aspect of your organization they need to know about that. And if you have somebody within a specific function they're going to naturally lean into doing what their boss asked them to talk about.
Mike: So does that mean you need a head of communication sitting at the leadership team table?
Wow
Pam: yes
Mike: and it's interesting. That's something I think most small and mid market organizations may have a challenge doing so you stressing the importance of that may may change some minds cause that's not typical.
Pam: It's not and typically they'll put you. You know I've reported to the COO I've reported to the CEO. Most of my career, the CEO. And it it was a great advantage point because I was able to honest with him and say hey this is what I'm hearing. This is what's going on in the organization. He would come to me and say I think we want to communicate X Y or Z. And he was such a good leader. He always speaking of humble collaborator, he was one of them. And I could really be honest and say I hear you and I see why we need to do that. How about we do it this way instead of that way Right? about we comunicate it in phases? Versus all at once right? I mean we could talk through those types of things but I had his ear and I was able talk to him about that versus me having to go two three levels you know before it ever got to him. And in some cases it gets filtered. And so no I think you should have your communication person. I had a seat at that table I was with the executive team so no I think you need that person in the room to hear everything and have the context they need to be effective in their communication.
Mike: Got it. Let's move on to step five.
Pam: Alright so step five is connecting. So about how do you cultivate connection within each of your teams within your organization. And again this seems like well Pam that's dumb. Why Why would you even talk about that? They just need to know how to build relationships with their team. Again some people are great at it.
Some people are not. So what I talk about is how are they scheduling time to actually connect. Do they have regular weekly one on ones with every direct report they have? Are they talking to them on a regular basis. Does 15-20 minutes of their meeting actually give them the ability to just talk? Or do they just jump in and start barking orders right? So it's about how are they actually getting to know the people on their team. You know there's a a great story that I heard from a
past leader that I just love and I don't know if you know this but there are 10,000 species of birds out there. Now I'm not a bird watcher but there are 10,000 but the eagle is the only bird that will fly straight into a storm while all the other birds take shelter. Andwhat they do is they try to they fly into the storm because they know the winds are going to lift them above that that storm. And then they can rest while they kind of regroup. So that's the way the eagle goes. But when you
think about connection in your own team everybody faces storms. Every one of us we're going to face a storm of some sort in our lives and your teams are no different. And when you can be there for them and encourage them to kind of fly into that storm with them and be there to help them get above the clouds it creates such a a connection and such a sense of team and such loyalty that they...
number one the retentionbecause they want to they want to work for a person who actually cares about not just their performance at work but their performance at home. So I think those things are very very connected. and that's why I'm an advocate for building. put it on your calendar, create that connection not just in one on one meetings but through those events and through those intentional gatherings and making sure that your thinking about their development and their training and you're helping them get through the storms that they're going to face in their own lives
so you gotta be the eagle
Mike: so much more important now. And frankly more of a challenge to do with remote and hybrid environments where some of that is not just in the hallway. So that's great. Take us to number six.
Pam: All right so this is about commending the correct behaviors. And when talk about this it's go back to these values these guiding principles that you've established, that you've talked about in meetings that you write about, that you share stories about you care so much right?
You are all about behaviors but then the award ceremony comes along and the guy who gets the award, he hit all the numbers. But he was he absolutely left wreckage in his path because he was not following those guiding principles or the values of company. So when you think about the way you are commending behaviors. Do you have the criteria in place to really make sure that the person on stage has met that criteria not just from a numbers perspective but from a behavioral perspective? And in order to do that You've You've got to again, it takes some work. You've got to really sit down and think about what am I rewarding here and what does that look like? And write the criteria down. How are are you going to select that person? How are they going to How are you going to narrow down your candidates for that final person that's going to stand on the stage in front of God and everybody there and getting rewarded?
You've got to to make sure that's aligned to what you've been saying from stage as a CEO otherwise everything you're saying kind of gets an eye roll right? It has to be real. So that's my correct commending the right behaviors.
And then next step is commit to caring. And this is all about your feedback loops. You know, how are you getting feedback? How are you surveying? How are you responding? What are you doing about it? And I know I guarantee you you've seen this, that you get surveys back and CEOs and the leadership team hears it. And the very first response or reaction is probably some frustration and maybe a a little grumbling. Because how dare they say that we didn't do something correctly right? It's a a natural absolutely natural response. But what I would say is some of that's some of it's probably not what you want to hear but there's probably truth in everything that you are hearing. And so you've got to be humble enough to take it
and then really respond thoughtfully to it. Don't dismiss the feedback because when you dismiss the feedback then you won't be getting much more feedback. And then people just become quiet quitters on you
and being able to really allow people to speak their mind and share their concerns. A lot of times that's just all they want and they want you to to hear them and they want you to listen and they want you to say I hear what you're, I hear you I understand your concern and I'm gonna work on it and I'm gonna back to you in two weeks and I'll let you know what we're do. Something, but when you just go radio silent on people after they've done a survey
It's such a down killer you can't do it. You've got you've got to keep that follow up going.
Mike: What I think I'm hearing too cause that cause I've absolutely seen that and especially when a lot of the a lot of the answers on whatever survey went out were we need a better 401k, we should be making more money and it's like oh they just want more money. But so sometimes the response is good and bad or or kind of shoved aside but I think almost more often than that
I've worked with CEOs and leadership teams that do internalize it and say okay we've got to make these changes.
They start working on that which is beautiful but they never go back and communicate what they're doing. They don't go back and communicate. We heard you. Here's what we're doing. So the perception is even though they're working on it the perception is I'm not going to answer that again next time because they're not doing anything.
So sometimes you've got to be proactive in your communication not just your actions and say hey we heard you. We're going to prioritize. Here's the help we need. Here's what we can do. Here's what we can't do. That communication piece is so important.
Pam: Yeah so again if you had your communication person or someone from that team in the room when you're working through those things. They are your person to make sure that that gets communicated. The status, you don't have to have all the answers but you give people a regular status update on how things are going. And then also have other methods for people to talk to you when its not just a formal survey. Have some informal feedback loops that you can hear from others that may need to say something anonymous but they don't want to go to HR. It's not a big enough deal to to go to HR they just need some help with something. Those are the the other tips I would give leaders is have multiple ways for people to give you some feedback.
Mike: And what's the last step? Step number 8.
Pam: All right this is the best and this is the funnest one. This is when you get to cascade to customers
And I leave this for last because if you do the first seven steps. Then the cascade It starts to take a life of its own. And what happens is your internal culture is starting to show
up in your external brand. Meaning you will start to see things like your employees sharing their amazing experience working for you online. They're sharing it with their family and friends they are going above and beyond for their peers. They're going above and beyond for client and customers which is creating stories for your communication team to share inside the organization which means more people want to do that. And then those same stories are shared outside of your organization and you start to create a cycle where customers are sharing stories with you. Employees are sharing stories with customers. Employees are sharing stories with family and friends. Everything lifts, your recruitment lifts, your brand performance lifts. Your transactions lift. It's just everything starts to rise. And the only way to get to that is you gotta get the inside right. You need If you have 20,000 employees in your organization and you can make all of them feel as passionate about your brand as you do a customer that loves your product. Imagine the lift that you're going to get right? You've got to treat the people that work for you. They can be your biggest brand advocates.
Or they can be your worst nightmare. So you have got to treat them like these folks are your brand advocates. Make sure you are creating a culture that makes them so proud. They want to wear this t shirt man. They want to be at every event. They want to post online about their association with your company and same for customers. And when you can create that kind of magic that's when you start to see performance lifts. So that's why I say you've got to build that remarkable brand from the inside out. And it does start with leadership. It absolutely starts there. But it should cascade throughout your organization to your customers. And that's when you know you got something really cool and really special.
Pam this is so powerful. As we start to wrap things up talk a little bit about how you, how do you work with clients. Is it I know you do public speaking. Is it Is it just public speaking? Do you do coaching, consulting, training for those saying hey I need me some more of Pam Nemec. How do you work with clients?
So two ways, you just named both of them. I speak organizations so if you're having an event or you're having a big meeting and you want me to come in and speak on the things that I just talked to you about. I'm happy to do that. The other way is consulting. And you know people have asked me would I coach and I might do that here and there but my focus is really in consulting. And the reason being is that I need to understand your organization. It's not one size fits all. These eight steps or how I structure it so that I'm sure I'm looking at everything. But I like to go in and understand what the organization is dealing with. Where is it at? How are things going? And I may say you know what you don't need these two steps but you we need to focus over here. And so I like to go in and then I put together proposals. And then they.. accept and done. I kind of put it into phases and they can decide which phase they want to start with so.
Mike: Beautiful. So if folks want to find out more about you or get in touch with you how do they do that?
Pam: They can do it in a couple of ways. They can go to pamnemec.com and I have all my information out there and
Mike: spell that spell that out that out for them by the way, cause the last name it's not like Goldman like
Pam: yeah so it's Pam I don't think I need to spell that one, Nemec and it's N as in Nancy, E, M as in mary EC.com if they they could
Mike: that'll be in the show notes as well
Pam: yeah. so check me out there but you can also follow me on all the the regular social channels under the same name and or you you can just an email at pnemic@pamnemic.com. Happy to chat, get to know you and see if I can
help
Mike: Well if you want a great company you need a great a great leadership team. Pam thanks so much for helping us get us get there today. Great stuff
Pam: thank you, I love the conversation. I appreciate you having me on. And and II'm hoping this all helps the CEOs out there that are listening.
Mike: It will. We need we need more. We'll do a We'll do a part two at some point. Thanks Pam.
Pam: Great. Thank you.