Brand Shadow Series Ep 2: Understanding Organizational Shadows with Leah Stiegler

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:30:00 Shaniqua Welcome back to another episode of the From Illumination To Innovation. Vodcast. I'm your co-host, Shaniqua Brown, the founder and president of Elevated TA the government premier hiring partner. And we are continuing with our second episode of our three-part brand series, Brand Shadow series. 00:00:30:02 - 00:01:01:22 Stephanie Thank you. Shaniqua. I am Stephanie Crain I am the Corporate Mystic and owner of Tapas Innovation, and I am the author of the recently published book Brand Shadow: Understanding and Overcoming Corporate Toxicity and in our previous episode, we talked a little bit around individual shadows and sort of what that look like and how we are bringing our own shadows into the workplace. 00:01:02:00 - 00:01:27:06 Stephanie And today I am really excited because we have a fantastic guest joining us to help us explore the concept of the organizational shadow in more depth. And so our guests is Leah Stiegler, and I have to I have to read everything I was like, even though she gave I just wanna say the best, shortest bio ever. I love it, okay. 00:01:27:07 - 00:01:47:20 Stephanie And she’s a lawyer who works with HR and management to navigate the difficulties and life that happen at work. And so, Leah, thank you so much for joining us. And if you just want to tell us maybe a little bit more about elaborate on on your bio a little bit what that means. 00:01:47:22 - 00:02:10:01 Leah Stiegler Well, thank you guys for having me. I'm a management side employment lawyer, so sort of call myself an HR lawyer. My day to day looks like being on the phone with human resources or in smaller companies, maybe CEOs or CFOs and helping them navigate different employment situations, whether it's harassment, discrimination, sometimes it's not even a legal issue. 00:02:10:01 - 00:02:16:03 Leah Stiegler Right. And I say, you know, sometimes my answer isn't legal. And I don't mean that like, my answer is an illegal answer. 00:02:16:08 - 00:02:17:19 Stephanie Right? Right, right. 00:02:18:01 - 00:02:34:15 Leah Stiegler Correct. My answer is more business oriented, or we're talking about something sort of culture oriented before we didn't get to something that could be a legally actionable environment or some sort of lawsuit. So really just navigating, issues with employers do a lot of work force trainings with my team. 00:02:34:15 - 00:02:43:14 Leah Stiegler So often times out, you know, with the boots on the ground in the workforces. So I love it. It's great. And life happens at work. So thank you for having me. 00:02:43:17 - 00:03:07:09 Stephanie Absolutely. And without that, honestly, it sounds like you probably deal with a lot of interesting things, maybe some mundane things, but probably some interesting things that will come up for you and different organizations and yeah, I'm curious is we're here to talk about organizational shadows in particular. And I just want to like maybe preface a little bit just for my own, for the audience. 00:03:07:11 - 00:03:33:19 Stephanie You know, in the in the previous episode, we talked about the individual shadow and shadow just simply means unseen. When we're talking about organizational shadows, versus an individual shadow, an individual unseen shadow is also usually unconscious or it's not something that you're usually aware of. That might be true for organization as well, but sometimes with organizations that unseen means hidden. 00:03:33:21 - 00:03:59:13 Stephanie And so I think shadows can come up organizationally in different ways. Sometimes they're they happen we, I think companies maybe back into them a little bit and then sometimes shadows I think are a little intentional. And so I just wanted to put that preface out there and ask you from your perspective, I know you said that you, you know, read my book and just your own experience. 00:03:59:13 - 00:04:03:15 Stephanie How do you see organizational shadows showing up? 00:04:03:17 - 00:04:32:16 Leah Stiegler Yeah, sure. It a couple different ways. And just just my understanding sort of from reading the book is that there's sort of the shadows are sort of the, the things that a corporation, maybe the sort of forward thinking things, whether it's, sort of their values or their branding, marketing techniques. And then when you kind of the real ideas get behind that, lift that up, and then look at the actual culture and what's going on, and that I is if I read about that. 00:04:32:18 - 00:05:00:00 Stephanie Absolutely. Because way, one way I talk about addressing organizational shadows is through value alignment for organizations and brands to really not just be able to define their values, but also to take action on those values. And when they're usually a shadow, happens when there's a strong misalignment of what the organization is expressing as a value versus the what the actual experience is for the employee or the customer. 00:05:00:02 - 00:05:22:17 Stephanie And so again, it's it starts to show up as a shadow. And maybe the organization might use HR to try to mitigate that shadow. Or I say sometimes, you know, businesses might try to market their way out of a shadow like they rebrand because they, you know, I BP is one of my favorite like rebranding examples of like, well, let's just get a new logo and call ourselves something different. 00:05:22:17 - 00:05:40:17 Stephanie And eventually they'll forget what we did. And so those are, you know, kind of ways that I see organization using departments within businesses to sort of mitigate shadows. But ultimately, I think shadows are driven by leadership and the culture of the company. 00:05:40:19 - 00:06:09:14 Leah Stiegler Absolutely. Especially from, from the the employment side of things. I'll often see, you know, a company will have a value that they'll act like they are very person centric. You know, we focus on our employees, and the employees are really the focus. And my take is you really need that in a sense, you need to make sure that the people aspect of a company is healthy, because you'll never get to that, to profit if you don't have good people and good product. 00:06:09:14 - 00:06:37:16 Leah Stiegler Right. You've got to have that's part of the equation. And so I oftentimes I'll see a situation where, you know, companies may not you the leadership may not value HR in a way that is allowing HR to be, people centric or even management to be people centric, where, you know, focusing on ensuring that the culture is okay versus really just results driven management or results driven HR, or using HR like a secretary, almost. 00:06:37:16 - 00:06:45:15 Leah Stiegler Hey, just process this new hire, this, this termination paperwork, not really looking at the employee relations side of the business. 00:06:45:17 - 00:06:57:19 Stephanie I'm curious in those types of situations, how often are you coming in and mitigating something versus, trying to maybe prevent. 00:06:57:20 - 00:07:20:04 Leah Stiegler Yeah, what my general practice is hopefully to keep, companies out of litigation because litigation is extremely expensive. And so you want to try to do that upfront compliance. But I don't think I mean, a lot of companies don't necessarily focus on it or they may not see that, they may not they may be disillusioned as well as to their, their own, their own way. 00:07:20:04 - 00:07:39:22 Leah Stiegler The company is operating. Right. They may not self-assess in some way. And sometimes I'll see when a company faces a lawsuit. I'll give you guys an example. I have a manufacturing client that has recently faced a lawsuit, and I think they were very shocked. They were shocked by it. They felt like, oh my goodness. You know, we are this incredible corporation. 00:07:39:22 - 00:08:04:03 Leah Stiegler We do. So we even have lunch on site for our employees. Like, how could we how could someone sue us, right. We even give attendance bonuses. And you know, I'm looking at, the facts of the situation. And in one sense, you had this, you know, powerful floor manager who just sort of terminates someone, right on the spot, a long term loyal employee right in front of everybody, all the other employees. 00:08:04:03 - 00:08:31:07 Leah Stiegler And this employee had been there working overtime. And, you know, deep diving on issues and sort of really being a great team player, maybe engaged in one mistake, one miss, one aspect of misconduct. That was pretty serious. But to be kind of put on a platform. And Stephanie, you talk about it in your book, sort of big traumas and, and micro traumas and I think, you know, watching a beloved colleague get terminated in front of everybody. 00:08:31:08 - 00:08:48:20 Leah Stiegler Yeah, but that person is there working every week. And that, to me, seems like a big trauma. Right? Absolutely. And then this and the terminating person is sort of that, I can't remember the term you use, but in my head it was BAP or Big, the, the, the Big Ass Producer, the b. 00:08:49:01 - 00:08:51:02 Stephanie Oh the Big Ass Producer. Yes, I did, yeah. 00:08:51:04 - 00:08:53:09 I did, yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:08:53:11 - 00:08:56:07 Leah Stiegler If we're sorry. We're not, we're not. 00:08:56:09 - 00:08:57:03 Shaniqua Oh no. You're fine. 00:08:57:04 - 00:09:24:17 Leah Stiegler You're perfect. Okay. Yeah. I'll just say the BAP, right. You had this this results driven manager on the manufacturing floor, and the person was put there because they do produce product, right? They get they get the numbers going. They get, you know. But I will say, when they're faced with this lawsuit from a pretty, serious termination decision that was just kind of made off the cuff on the manufacturing floor. 00:09:24:19 - 00:09:50:00 Leah Stiegler The when the client gets the bill for my fees for dealing with a lawsuit, then the question is, how do you define that? This person really is a big ass producer, because if it's just to get product out the door, that's one thing. But if it's to ensure the company is getting product out and they're profitable. But in this case, once you add with you were to attribute my legal fees or our firm's legal fees to this manager's decision. 00:09:50:01 - 00:10:01:09 Leah Stiegler I don't think that person would be profitable. And so I think defining really what is a producer as well. And kind of, you know, ensuring that companies take a self self-assess their situation. It's really important. 00:10:01:11 - 00:10:44:00 Shaniqua Leah what you're saying is speaks to my heart. I, my business is in the employment side where we actually, focus on hiring. And a lot of like my conversations with my hiring clients is around how can like ensuring that we're hiring in a lawful manner, ensuring that our questions are lawful questions, ensuring that the our hiring decisions are objective and we have data to stand on when we're doing simple things like entering and, interview feedback that is compliant and not opinion based because litigations are very costly. 00:10:44:02 - 00:11:11:00 Shaniqua So in my research, looking at your background, I notice on your LinkedIn you mentioned that the three Ps I believe it was people, process and product as essential to like for like business success. So I'm curious if you could explain how ignoring these people issues like lead to organizational shadows that negatively impact company success? 00:11:11:02 - 00:11:31:15 Leah Stiegler Oh absolutely. And I wish I could tell you I coined the term of the three Ps And unfortunately, I can't even give you give credit to where I heard that from. But it really resonated with me as an employment lawyer, because you need that. You need to make sure that the people aspect of the workplace or is, is healthy. 00:11:31:15 - 00:11:46:13 Leah Stiegler Because I will say lawsuits are not always filed based on fact. Or maybe, maybe there is no such thing as fact. I can we could debate it all day, all day long, right? Every fact is really just everyone's perception of that. 00:11:46:18 - 00:11:53:09 Stephanie As I like to think of fact as perspective. There's truth, but facts is this perception. 00:11:53:11 - 00:11:54:02 Leah Stiegler Right. 00:11:54:04 - 00:12:17:20 Leah Stiegler And and so lawsuits are filed based on someone's perspective of feeling wronged or feeling unheard or feeling unseen. And, you know, I often tell clients, you know, you don't have to have a termination to even face a lawsuit. And in your sense, Shaniqua, you're dealing with, with recruiting, oftentimes people don't even know that they have protections when they're applying for a job. 00:12:17:20 - 00:12:58:19 Leah Stiegler They don't realize that anti-discrimination laws apply to them. And so, you know, in one sense, you've got this situation where, you know, companies, especially if you're a startup and you're growing, you really may be so focused on the product and looking to get to a stable point where you've got stable profit and all that. But if you don't really look at the people aspect from the entire life cycle, from recruiting and what happens in recruiting to the onboarding process, making sure people feel welcomed and have a mentor and understand they can, they know who to report to if they feel uncomfortable or, you know, harassed at work all the way through termination, 00:12:58:19 - 00:13:12:12 Leah Stiegler like you want a healthy departure, you know, offer a severance, make sure you can sleep at night and not sit there thinking, not sleeping for the next, you know, two years, wondering if someone's going to file a lawsuit, the statute of limitations, time period. So. 00:13:12:14 - 00:14:02:16 Stephanie You know, I don't specifically talk about it in my book, but Termination Shadows, I maybe mention, like, I wish organizations would celebrate departures. You know, and like, really, you know, I know that there are times when obviously with hiring and especially from both of you, I'm curious, you know, a lot of organizations are really making poor strategic hiring decisions that lead to massive layoffs, that lead to rehiring, that lead to and this like, and, you know, like just incongruence of continuity and stability for society as a whole, you know, and it's like, how can organizations be more accountable to, you know, I mean, we've seen just even recently, like the whole slew 00:14:02:16 - 00:14:16:19 Stephanie of, you know, letters that come across, you know, it's like my first day of work and I just got my termination letter, you know, and things like that, you know, and that's that's pretty like it to me. That's like really shirking your responsibility as a company to do that to an individual. 00:14:16:23 - 00:14:48:14 Shaniqua I mean, I feel like, in my opinion at least, I feel that, companies view employees as, expendable and like an expendable resource versus, the most important aspect of their business. And I think it makes it a lot easier to lay people off versus looking at creative ways that we can save money. I'm curious, Leah, like, what do you see on your side as, being an attorney? 00:14:48:16 - 00:15:18:17 Leah Stiegler Oh, yeah. Well, I've never used as a defense. Oh, well, we just recruited a bad person. A bad employee. Like, that's the. It's never come up. And I think, you know, often times, companies that may not sort of whether they're disillusioned, as to the toxicity in the company or they're just not prioritizing their resources on the people that are actually working there. 00:15:18:18 - 00:15:37:01 Leah Stiegler Will often they they'll be too quick to terminate. Right? They won't do your progressive discipline. They won't do training. They won't actually give someone a chance to be successful. And, you know, they go they constantly want to go back to let somebody go hire somebody three months later. Oh, they're not a stellar performer. Let me let them go. 00:15:37:03 - 00:15:57:16 Leah Stiegler Go back to HR and say, hey, can you bring me more people? I need more people to fill this spot. And then that leaves HR to spend all this time recruiting versus actually management training and retaining talent. And in a lawsuit, if you terminate someone that quickly and they're blindsided by it, right? They've never been written up, never given a chance to succeed. 00:15:57:18 - 00:16:21:08 Leah Stiegler Oftentimes they're going to go find a plaintiff's lawyer or they're going to go file some sort of charge of discrimination or whatnot, because they're going to feel unheard and wrong and wronged and unseen. And I'm never going to sit there, talk to a client and say, well, maybe you just recruited the wrong person, you know? No, you didn't do the right thing when during the life cycle of the employee, when the employee was actually in the workforce. 00:16:21:10 - 00:16:43:06 Shaniqua Well, you brought up a great point, Leah, about the training. And in my line of work, a lot of my clients want the new hire to just hit the ground running. Stephanie, I can't tell you how many times I've heard that, they want someone with the experience. That is impossible because they don't work there. You must be able to hit the ground running. 00:16:43:06 - 00:17:07:19 Shaniqua Don't require much like hand-holding at all. We just need you to produce. But I remember my first job out of college. There was a full training and development program where I, I started in the onboarding process. You know, like everyone, you get on boarded. Then the first day I'm in a like three week training and and after the three weeks training, I'm on the floor doing my job. 00:17:08:00 - 00:17:28:05 Shaniqua But like, I guess I'm calling out, like, what ever happened to this training? Like, do companies not see that training? Like, after you onboard? I think companies just focus on onboarding and and after that it's like, good luck, sailor. Like what happened to the actual training and development of employees before they're entering their actual role? 00:17:28:07 - 00:18:01:20 Stephanie I would say profit center versus not profit center. And, and not tying the actions of an actual employee directly to the profit of the organization, because every single employee in the organization is supporting the purpose, mission, and profit of that company, regardless of how they're doing work and whether or not they're, you know, actively signing sales contracts or they're, you know, doing back office work that's critically important to the operational survival of the business and training falls into. 00:18:01:22 - 00:18:26:12 Stephanie It's it's it's anything that's hard to measure the direct impact of it's just a lot easier to throw people out there. And I one of my questions really is like when you work with somebody, do you notice any patterns around companies that tend to have more trouble with sort of shadows? You know, then in terms of like that, seem to run into these issues over and over again. 00:18:26:12 - 00:18:36:00 Stephanie Like, are there any particular industries or any type of a company that seems to be more challenged by this or any pattern that you could identify? 00:18:36:02 - 00:18:54:19 Leah Stiegler I would say, well, I tend to see a lot of it in manufacturing, and I can't say whether you know what the, the I mean, I could probably speculate. Perhaps it's because in manufacturing you come into it thinking, oh, it's it's just your job is just to make widgets. And so how you're doing the same thing every day making these widgets. 00:18:54:19 - 00:19:20:11 Leah Stiegler So if you're not making ten widgets a day, then you're just not performing and you're out the door, right? I think that's a little easier of a scenario. And the hardest part, you know, for a lot of companies is when, when they have, difficulties defining what's a good performer. And that may be because I oftentimes think performance can be subjective. 00:19:20:13 - 00:19:41:18 Leah Stiegler And clients would sometimes come to me and say, hey, we want to let this person go. This is really not performing. And I'll say, well, have you ever tried putting them on a performance improvement plan of some sort? And it may not be that this person is making widgets and you can really quantify how they're performing, but whether the way they're performing is very subjective. 00:19:41:20 - 00:20:04:09 Leah Stiegler And everyone has their own unique style too. And so if it's a position, whether it's like a marketing director or, you know, some sort of, designer or something, you can even a lawyer, right? Lawyers in my office that we all do things different ways. And so, you know, some of us are maybe more creative innovators, big picture thinkers, and other ones are a little more technical. 00:20:04:09 - 00:20:30:05 Leah Stiegler They like to get into the weeds on things. It doesn't necessarily mean that one of us is a better performer than the other. And it's a lot of times it is subjective. And I think I think, to your question earlier, Shaniqua, you know, it's sometimes I think companies have a hard time taking time to say, how do we train people where their, their assets can be a beneficial use to the company? 00:20:30:07 - 00:20:39:12 Leah Stiegler Based on their qualities. And how could we use this person or repurpose them if maybe they're not fitting in this function? Bring them over here. 00:20:39:14 - 00:20:47:19 Stephanie How much? I'm curious. Do you see neurodivergent challenges come up in situations like this? 00:20:47:19 - 00:20:48:06 Leah Stiegler That's a great. 00:20:48:06 - 00:20:49:08 Shaniqua Question. 00:20:49:10 - 00:21:13:15 Leah Stiegler Yeah, that's a really good question. I guess sometimes it's hard, right? Because even I'm talking sometimes to a client behind a wall. Right. It might be I'm not as a you guys would probably be better suited to answer that in the sense of you're a lot more on the ground with the workers, right? With the employees, where it's often times I will be talking to the problem. 00:21:13:17 - 00:21:19:08 Leah Stiegler And I hope my clients don't. And I want my clients to listen to this because I'll probably tell you to your face, you are the problem sometimes. 00:21:19:10 - 00:21:23:00 Stephanie But it's all of my clients are the problem too. So it's okay. 00:21:23:05 - 00:21:25:09 Leah Stiegler Yeah, okay. 00:21:25:11 - 00:21:26:19 Stephanie I love you, I love y'all. 00:21:26:21 - 00:22:04:06 Leah Stiegler I mean, yeah, love you guys. That's why I'm. So I have job security because you're such a problem. But, but, you know, they'll be complaining about something or they'll be, you know, kind of dealing with something. And I'm like, you know, I think they're the disconnected one. And I'm thinking about a simple example of talking to a CEO who's, you know, out there and was sort of, was on a made a social media post complaining about, you know, how she has multiple nannies and housekeepers and, her like, something, you know, she was just, hey, hated, when someone canceled on her. 00:22:04:06 - 00:22:25:15 Leah Stiegler And it was just dramatic and hard to find a replacement and all this. And she's kind of venting and victim mentality out there on her social media posts, but is totally disconnected from the fact that, she has people making minimum wage in her company who are going to see that and say, wow, I wish I could afford a nanny right? 00:22:25:17 - 00:22:44:03 Leah Stiegler Yeah. So it's that conversation of like, you know, whether, you know, then I have to sit there and say, okay, sometimes I have to educate my own client about how do I make this a priority for you to see what you're doing, what you're saying as a leader could really be the problem or could have that impact on other employees. 00:22:44:05 - 00:22:49:15 Leah Stiegler Well, but I don't know, what's your guys take on that? Because, you probably answer could answer it better than I could. 00:22:49:17 - 00:23:19:01 Stephanie That's and, you know, from my perspective, and I actually have worked with quite a few neurodivergent people and I see that there's a lot of times there is a corporate norm. And it's pretty limited. And if you fit into that corporate norm then, you know, you can sort of I guess more easily play that game. But that has been shifting so much over the last few years. 00:23:19:01 - 00:23:48:06 Stephanie And we've, we've sort of really expanded our talent pool and we've recognized the incredible value that all different types of people have to bring into our environments for whatever reason. You know, to your point about people thinking differently, like, you know, that difference of perspective can just be like, if everybody's thinking the same, you know, I mean, you're just sort of like, I think very like not allowing yourself to expand and create possibilities. 00:23:48:06 - 00:24:14:11 Stephanie But when you bring in people who think differently and somebody might just look at a process in a different way and it can have such a huge profit impact. But it's being open to that and it's being willing to sort of hear that and doing so, you know, without bias. And I think that that's another big challenge, you know, is that there's a lot of bias that gets brought into these environments and especially, you know, like a cycle of I, I compare it to dysfunctional families. 00:24:14:11 - 00:24:29:07 Stephanie I think, you know, we've created sort of a dysfunctional leadership cycle and a lot of that just gets carried over. And so we have bad leaders training bad leaders. You know, we have, you know, like, and and it just gets elevated in our organizations as a whole. 00:24:29:09 - 00:25:06:05 Shaniqua In my role hiring, we have since been focusing on inclusion, and I think it's been very difficult for my hiring managers. I have a lot of empathy for them because they may desire inclusion. But they're not equipped to create, like to manage inclusion, meaning if we were to hire someone that's neuro spicy, it would be very challenging on that manager who would need someone that in their mind, right in their mind, it's easier to just have someone that's similar to them. 00:25:06:07 - 00:25:30:19 Shaniqua So then they feel confident in delegating to them because they know what they would do versus like having someone that could like hiring new people into their organization that would be more holistic in, different ways of thinking or viewing problems or even being, having like different neural capacities. So I think on the hiring side is a bit more challenging with the neuro, divergent, I. 00:25:30:19 - 00:25:53:01 Stephanie Only want to respond really quickly and say that this is where my core leadership coaching skills come in, because as you develop your own emotional intelligence and you learn to understand people better and to meet them where they're at, you become less triggered by their things, things that are different, you know, that might make you feel uncomfortable or might make you feel awkward. 00:25:53:03 - 00:25:59:21 Stephanie That starts to dissipate more because you become more consciously aware of the actual energetic connections you're making with. 00:25:59:21 - 00:26:04:06 Shaniqua I agree, and the point I was making that the organizations move so quickly. 00:26:04:06 - 00:26:04:17 Stephanie They don't take. 00:26:04:18 - 00:26:29:22 Shaniqua That it's difficult for the manager in the sense that the the manager could not be triggered and take the time, but that would put that manager at a disadvantage because the organization is moving so fast. You're right. So I to your point, I think if the leaders at the top could create an environment where we could slow down and make decisions, I think that would be helpful for us to add in more inclusion. 00:26:30:00 - 00:26:34:21 Shaniqua But I do know that we have to take a quick break and then we'll transition to the second segment. 00:26:34:21 - 00:26:49:04 Stephanie Yeah. So we will take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to look at some real world examples of corporate toxicity in action. Simple. We'll see you in just a second. 00:26:49:06 - 00:26:52:05 Stephanie Shaniqua. Why don't we illuminate.? 00:26:52:07 - 00:26:57:16 Shaniqua Stephanie so we can innovate. But what are we Illuminating? 00:26:57:16 - 00:27:00:00 Stephanie Brand Shadows. 00:27:00:02 - 00:27:01:22 Shaniqua Provocative perspectives. 00:27:02:03 - 00:27:03:16 Stephanie Innovative ideas. 00:27:03:17 - 00:27:05:16 Shaniqua Courageous storytelling. 00:27:05:18 - 00:27:09:17 Stephanie We are illuminating the way we think about business. 00:27:09:20 - 00:27:18:17 Shaniqua And in the process, innovating how we do business. Find us on YouTube and subscribe today. 00:27:18:18 - 00:27:49:06 Stephanie And we are back for the second half of the second show of our Brand Shadow series, and we have our amazing guest, Leah Stiegler, with us. She is an employment attorney and she is helping us examine operation. I'm sorry, organizational shadows. And during this segment, we're going to talk a little bit about some real time shadows in the news. 00:27:49:08 - 00:28:00:10 Stephanie Things that are just, you know, kind of happening right now that a lot of us might be familiar with. I, I'll briefly, you know, in my book I do I wrote about a couple of organizations, 00:28:00:12 - 00:28:01:14 Shaniqua Which ones did you write about? 00:28:01:14 - 00:28:11:21 Stephanie I wrote about my favorite one to complain about is Boeing. I, you know, I have a natural fear of flying. Anyway, I just want to say this. Okay, so I'm not going to lie, Boeing has seriously pissed me off. Okay. 00:28:11:23 - 00:28:13:19 Well, like. 00:28:13:21 - 00:28:34:13 Stephanie You know, I talk about and they and they continue, by the way, to show up in the news. Okay. So it's not like it's even and it's I think it's going to be topical for maybe ever. Who knows. But, definitely elevating the shadow aspect of them, you know, retaining the value of engineering excellence on their website front and center on their website. 00:28:34:13 - 00:28:36:22 Stephanie And then clearly, clearly not living up to. 00:28:36:22 - 00:28:38:03 Shaniqua That is rich. 00:28:38:05 - 00:28:57:17 Stephanie And just drives me absolutely insane. And not we're not you know, I know they're now being investigated by the DOJ, and I know that all of their key leaders have, you know, bailed and probably and no pun intended here with golden parachutes flying out of their planes. And so, you know, it's like, well, well. 00:28:57:17 - 00:29:00:10 Leah Stiegler That's just the door. Yeah, but it's true. 00:29:00:10 - 00:29:20:14 Stephanie I mean, they see that's just the thing. The executives of Boeing, they knew to wear their golden parachutes on the plane. Okay. Nobody else was aware of that. Okay. And so it's just, you know, again, transparency matters, right? Transparency in business and living up to and actioning the values. And it's not just, you know, again, like they have what they've done to the entire general public. 00:29:20:14 - 00:29:33:05 Stephanie And, you know, the, the the psychological and safety they've created. But honestly, they're just they've been atrocious to their employees, like just completely atrocious to them. And so there's so much there. 00:29:33:07 - 00:30:00:20 Leah Stiegler Yeah. And I from the employment side, one trend that I'm seeing, just across the nation for all companies are whistleblower claims. And most states. So you have federal whistleblower claims. But most states have enacted their own sort of anti retaliation protections. And, you know, all an employee has to do is report what they believe is in good faith, some sort of violation of state, federal local law or some sort of regulation or, you know, even the engineering guidelines. 00:30:00:20 - 00:30:31:06 Leah Stiegler Right. Say that comes under safety. And if they're terminated for that, you know, they have a whistleblower claim. And so there are those whistleblower protections. And I think, you know, maybe Boeing just being sort of this huge giant, didn't think and maybe they were disillusioned to thinking that, everybody that worked there was on board with what they were doing and versus actually someone, someone on the ground working on the plane saying, hey, we're this is really unsafe. 00:30:31:06 - 00:30:33:21 Leah Stiegler Like, people could die. We. And blowing the whistle. 00:30:34:00 - 00:30:54:15 Stephanie Yeah. You know, it's interesting because, John Oliver actually did a report on Boeing is a it was a few months ago that he did it, but one of the pieces of his report was an actual employee wearing an undercover camera and going around to other engineers, actively working on planes on the floor and saying, would you fly on a Boeing? 00:30:54:15 - 00:31:12:04 Stephanie And them saying, no, no, I wouldn't fly on this plane. And like he's and so, I mean the level of toxicity and that going and you bring up the size, which is a really big deal because you know it's the Titanic. Right? It's going to hit the iceberg like they're not going to. People ask me all the time when I'm talking about healing corporate culture. 00:31:12:04 - 00:31:32:19 Stephanie It's like, you know, what do you do about the really big companies? I'm like pray I mean, like, they're not going to they're not going to change, you know, and really there's an opportunity to either, in my mind, prevent toxic culture or up to a certain size organization. You can go in and work with leadership and really make that shift. 00:31:32:21 - 00:31:42:20 Stephanie But when it gets too big, you know, that culture is so embedded and so complex and complicated that I think, you know, maybe departmental, you might be able to have an impact. 00:31:42:22 - 00:32:17:17 Shaniqua Well, I think that brings like a larger question that we could all like, I don't have an answer, but I think it's more rhetorical, like how big is too big? You know, when we talk about organizations as it pertains to capitalism, because capitalism is about that profit. So how big is too big? And Leah, I'm curious, could you share your thoughts on how leadership style and transparency or the lack thereof, can cast shadows that impact an entire company's reputation? 00:32:17:19 - 00:32:42:13 Leah Stiegler Oh, yeah. Well, I think people expect transparency today, and I think that's probably different than, you know, 30, 40 years ago where, it was sort of the norm that people in a boardroom made decisions, and then that those decisions were directed out to the rest of the organization. And I think now, even in our own, in my own law firm, you know, people expect transparency. 00:32:42:13 - 00:33:02:04 Leah Stiegler They want to know why decisions are made. They want to know if they're going to be affected by a top down decision. They also want to feel heard and feel a part of that. I don't know if you guys are seeing that trend as well. I think corporations can't, they can't they can no longer hide behind a closed door boardroom. 00:33:02:04 - 00:33:06:05 Leah Stiegler They have to come out. They have to make make public statements. 00:33:06:07 - 00:33:12:04 Stephanie Well, what about the ones that are making public statements that are actively toxic? 00:33:12:06 - 00:33:16:19 Like, you. 00:33:16:21 - 00:33:18:21 Shaniqua Oh, do we think we're all talking about. 00:33:18:23 - 00:33:19:19 Leah Stiegler Yes. 00:33:19:21 - 00:33:23:20 Stephanie Maybe maybe the last doesn't us. 00:33:23:22 - 00:33:25:13 Oh, we'll see. 00:33:25:18 - 00:33:41:15 Leah Stiegler See, that's one where the shadow is, I think I think that the shadow there is a shiny things shadow. Right. It's like so cool. I by the way, I saw a Tesla truck on the highway the other day. What's it like? Never. Ugliest thing I've ever seen. 00:33:41:18 - 00:33:44:18 Stephanie In my life. They're very not attractive. 00:33:44:20 - 00:33:45:11 Yeah. 00:33:45:13 - 00:34:14:21 Leah Stiegler But. But like, between Space-x and Tesla and, you know, these ideas like drive cars underground, that's also cool and shiny. And I think there's this, this kind of the shadow of, like, I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of this innovation, this trend. But really that is so it's it's so far so far fetched in a sense, and that they're ignoring, it's not really actually looking at the people that are working there. 00:34:14:22 - 00:34:26:12 Leah Stiegler And what's actually happening to get from that, this little idea to this huge big picture, actual infrastructure that we'd like to see or that that the company what Musk wants to see out there. 00:34:26:14 - 00:35:04:14 Stephanie So, I the, the town I live in, it was just reported yesterday has been selected by Mr. Musk as his new headquarters. And so and for me, I am surrounded by Tesla, one side Boring Company on the other. And I, you know, we're gonna we're becoming, you know, Musk land. And, it's it's really interesting to see how, you know, he expresses leadership and how the people respond to that, you know, and there are there's certainly a lot of people that respond to, and, and negative ways, and they don't appreciate what he's doing. 00:35:04:14 - 00:35:38:21 Stephanie But, you know, he definitely has. And to your point of like that shiny thing, shadow, you know, he definitely has a, a base of people who just really deeply aspire to, to sort of the persona that he projects and I and I and I see like when I look at so many of the, you know, even what just happened with, X recently with Brazil, where, you know, he he typically does just sort of do what he wants to do and he doesn't really care. 00:35:38:23 - 00:36:18:21 Stephanie I think a lot of times what that impact is, you know, he doesn't really care what the impact on shareholders is, what the impact on his employee. You know, he's he's being very kind of driven by his own reactions, his own, you know, kind of emotional triggers. But it's interesting, like with Brazil, where they actually had to acquiesce and, you know, make a business change, you know, based on another country's laws and so I just think it's interesting, like what we're willing to tolerate, you know, and looking at how other countries kind of deal with these same types of organizations, you know, I know in Europe there's a lot less tolerance for sort of 00:36:18:21 - 00:36:28:05 Stephanie certain types of corporate malfeasance and things like that. So that to me feel sort of like a US corporate shadow that we have. 00:36:28:07 - 00:36:50:12 Leah Stiegler Well, you know, that's that's interesting because in a lot of places in Europe, you know, there is no such thing as termination here. I mean, employment at will. So you really have to have cause for termination. And a lot of countries even require certain amounts of severance. And so I think that that forces companies to go through the, whether, you know, you could it's one thing to have a policy. 00:36:50:12 - 00:37:08:07 Leah Stiegler A company could a company could take Europe's laws and make those into a handbook. And that's your workplace policy. And we're going to have to progressive discipline and performance improvement plans before we terminate. And everyone's going to be guaranteed a severance based on how long you've worked here or whatnot. And so maybe that's a way that a company could do it. 00:37:08:13 - 00:37:34:05 Leah Stiegler But I do think there are those protections that are legally that almost force companies to, in Europe to go through those processes that do allow employees more opportunities to be successful. And I think in a situation I going to I'm going to put a wager out there. I bet you both, 100 bucks, actually, I'll say 20 bucks because because I know I'm not I'm not really ready to bet that much. 00:37:34:05 - 00:37:43:10 Leah Stiegler Okay. That that, the the Musk facilities by you. Stephanie, in a few years, they're all going to be unionized. And I think that's right. 00:37:43:11 - 00:37:45:08 Stephanie That's curious about that. 00:37:45:10 - 00:38:14:02 Leah Stiegler Yeah. We're seeing trends where more and more, workforces are unionizing over the last 2 or 3 years. And a lot of that is I think it's the employees kind of a grassroots effort to say, you know what? If our culture top down isn't going to be our top down culture or leadership isn't going to fix the culture from a top down standpoint, then we're going to band together and dictate what the culture culture is, at least in terms of safety and wages and benefits. 00:38:14:02 - 00:38:27:22 Stephanie It'll be really interesting to see how your bet turns out, being that I would consider Texas to be one of the strongest, at will states for termination. And he, you know, he really picked Texas for a lot of reasons. 00:38:27:23 - 00:39:07:18 Shaniqua 100%. And. Yeah, and I think it's also highlights how, little like of our rights that employees that we as employees understand. We I'm no longer an employee, but I feel like that it's really important to not only understand our rights as citizens, but then also understand our rights as employees, because it is, in our best interest to ensure that we're when working with companies that are aligned with our like, our mission and vision, our principles, and then also that at least at the bare minimum, have our safety like top of mind. 00:39:07:20 - 00:39:13:12 Shaniqua Yeah, that. So I'm curious if there will be some unions in the future. I hope so, or at least there will be. 00:39:13:13 - 00:39:25:03 Leah Stiegler Oh yeah. At least there will at least be, good substance. Stephanie, for your second book, Memoirs of Memoirs of the former Musks. Oh, my. 00:39:25:03 - 00:39:26:01 Stephanie God, thank you for that. 00:39:26:01 - 00:39:27:03 Shaniqua It's really on the ground. 00:39:27:05 - 00:39:29:03 Stephanie Making it a note right now. 00:39:29:05 - 00:39:35:00 Leah Stiegler Yeah, and an interview. Every former employee of their experience that's. 00:39:35:02 - 00:39:37:16 Stephanie They're all around me, I can tell. Okay. Call out. 00:39:37:16 - 00:39:41:00 You'll get a hold of. 00:39:41:02 - 00:39:44:16 Leah Stiegler After you call her. Probably call a plaintiff's lawyer. Right? Yeah, right. 00:39:44:18 - 00:39:48:22 Stephanie Call me. Then call. Yeah. Then the calls. 00:39:49:00 - 00:39:51:07 Oh, that's right, that's right. 00:39:51:09 - 00:40:07:07 Shaniqua I'm curious. As companies grow, especially startups, what advice would you give leaders on how to proactively prevent these shadows from forming, particularly in terms of people management and culture? 00:40:07:09 - 00:40:28:23 Leah Stiegler That's a great question. And I think what I've noticed because I work with industries of all sizes, right. It could be a huge hospital system or a small startup with 1 or 2 employees. And I think see, I've seen a lot of companies over the last ten years that I've worked with, you know, go from being a one person job with an idea to now having 50 employees or 80 employees. 00:40:29:00 - 00:40:49:18 Leah Stiegler And I, as an employment lawyer, have to take stock and say, you know, and I can give you the law all day long and tell you this is how you legally pay someone to do this particular job. And the these are, the types of tasks that you can have them do them. And here's how you can have them do these tasks safely in accordance with OSHA. 00:40:49:18 - 00:41:09:04 Leah Stiegler So I can set these parameters right. But oftentimes as a startup, I think I've noticed a lot of startups, either one, they don't have stable funding to pay people according to our wage and our laws. Right. So they're trying to make them contractors and, and pay them easily and say, oh, here, I'll just pay you per task or something like that, or not, I won't pay you at all. 00:41:09:04 - 00:41:36:21 Leah Stiegler Maybe I just convince you that our mission and our sweat equity. So incredible. Yeah, you'll put in your sweat equity and I'll promise you orally some ownership that one day, and then things fall apart, and that doesn't happen. They're facing legal liability, whether it's wage and hour laws, or, you know, breaches of contract and stuff. And so I think I sometimes like I'll set that box those parameters and say, hey, here's if you want to do things perfectly legal, here's how you can operate within them. 00:41:36:23 - 00:41:57:16 Leah Stiegler But I know is from from a startup standpoint, they can't always fit exactly in that box. If I can find them so much and get get off the ground and get the investing the investor funding they need. And so I think that's okay if you've got to take that risk because really just, I mean, all I do, what I do all day is just analyze the risks. 00:41:57:18 - 00:42:32:01 Leah Stiegler I could tell you, hey, that employee, it's it's unlawful to terminate that employee right now. You want to terminate her for reporting sexual harassment? Well, that's unlawful retaliation, but they can do whatever they want. They're just taking a bigger and bigger risk, right? So all I do is tell people the risks. So if a smaller company has to take that risk to ultimately be successful and get to a position where they can later focus, at some point, I think they've got to sit down and say, okay, let's go back to making sure we are in compliance with these things, because otherwise those things just continue out. 00:42:32:03 - 00:42:38:13 Leah Stiegler And just to fester and grow and those problems become bigger and bigger and the legal liability can be substantial. 00:42:38:19 - 00:42:42:12 Stephanie It's like building bad habits on top of bad habits, basically. 00:42:42:14 - 00:43:01:17 Leah Stiegler Right? Yeah. Or if you have a small company right where you have a couple of individuals who start that and there's, like, I have a client who went from starting a business in the in their dining room, and they started with two friends. They were all stay at home moms, and they kind of started this business, part time or whatever. 00:43:01:17 - 00:43:29:11 Leah Stiegler And as they grow, they were all very close. Right? Just walk into each other's houses, their doors, watch each other's kids, all that super close, go on vacations together. And that culture, that that intimate culture could be okay for a small setting. But as they grew and gained more employees and bought and actually, you know, leased office space and brought more people into that then that culture doesn't, those types of boundaries or lack thereof, don't really work for every person and every type of healthy workplace. 00:43:29:11 - 00:43:55:18 Stephanie Yeah, not only that, but I in situations like that, it's like that small culture, they become adapted to each other, sort of if they have some subtle toxic behaviors that are maybe not necessarily so toxic in that space, but when you add 50 more people, it amplifies it, so to speak, you know? And so it's yeah, I think that that's a real hard transition for. 00:43:55:20 - 00:44:20:03 Leah Stiegler The I think about, Blizzard. You guys know, I think it's called the Blizzard game, a gaming company. Absolutely. Another very, very large corporation. But, they have a predominantly male workforce, that, you know, a lot of gamer, the gamer mentality is now I'm stereotyping. So don't cancel me because I'm doing it. I'm just it's my perception of the facts. 00:44:20:03 - 00:44:42:19 Leah Stiegler Right? Yeah. But they, they've been hit because of that sort of, locker room kind of frat boy culture that that fits that stereotype, right? Unfortunately, and I think a lot of that is, you know, you've got people who oftentimes do work and then at Blizzard, you know, you've got people working from home during the pandemic. 00:44:42:19 - 00:45:09:08 Leah Stiegler Developing video games are in a smaller community. There may be often used to sitting at home with a headset on and saying, you know, secretly, you know, behind a computer wall in gaming and saying really rude, crass things because they're in the safety of their own home where no one's going to come at them for anything, and then you put them in those people in a work environment, almost doing the exact same thing, and they had that same sort of crass video game discussion culture in the workplace. 00:45:09:08 - 00:45:13:10 Leah Stiegler Or at least those were that's what the allegations were. And they faced a huge class action. 00:45:13:12 - 00:45:39:03 Stephanie You know, it's interesting because, particular industry and I, I read several things about I'm very interested in that industry as a whole from a cultural perspective in technology in general. But women, there is, a real serious gender bias in that industry that's very real. And even to the degree I was reading about, a female gamer influencer that was, you know, receiving death threats and, like, literally had to go into hiding. 00:45:39:03 - 00:46:09:00 Stephanie And then another really interesting story was a male gamer who created a female persona just to go out and and like, just the amount of misogyny and hostility that was put upon him and he was able to witness sort of, you know, this is the environment, this is the culture of this environment. And so, and that gets even really serious when you get into, like, the actual coders and the profession of it, you know, like not getting beyond the gamers and like getting into the actual people who are creating the games. 00:46:09:00 - 00:46:31:00 Stephanie And so it it's interesting that you brought that up. I'm curious. We're coming to our wrap on this and we like to do quick takeaways. And so if you don't mind Leah, like what takeaways would you like to offer our audience. And also how can our audience, learn more about you or find you if they need you? 00:46:31:02 - 00:46:51:02 Leah Stiegler Sir, is there my take, my main takeaway is, while I potentially am a really fun friend, I'm not the cheapest friend. Right. And so I think companies need to understand that, you know, maybe whether they've been doing something for so long the way they've always done it. I hate that phrase, by the way. Oh, we've always done it this way. 00:46:51:02 - 00:47:10:14 Leah Stiegler Right. Or they're just not willing to take stock of what their actual culture is, or they're not willing to be people centric in any way. At some point, those are the companies that are going to face legal claims from an employment, employment sense. And it may not just be one employee suing them. It could be an entire class action of employees. 00:47:10:16 - 00:47:30:23 Leah Stiegler And so I think you know, if you really care so much about profit, if you don't write, if you don't really care enough about people, there are actually legal claims that, you know, could result in hitting your bottom line so much that you no longer become profitable. So focus on the people. That part of the Ps the three Ps. 00:47:31:01 - 00:47:52:00 Leah Stiegler And, you can find me, LinkedIn, Leah Stiegler, my firm's website. Website. Woods Rogers? And we have a great employment law team, and we work all over the country. And then, we have a little YouTube series called What's the T in L&E? Which law stands for Labor and Employment? It's a little 2 to 4 minute series every two weeks, on different hot topics. 00:47:52:00 - 00:47:52:10 Leah Stiegler So. 00:47:52:10 - 00:48:00:17 Stephanie Excellent. We'll make sure that we link to all of that in our, program. So, what about you, Shaniqua? What take away do you have for us. 00:48:00:19 - 00:48:32:16 Shaniqua Similar to Leah’s is it's, focusing on I like the people. The people are the, the heartbeat of the organization. And if you're too focused on profits, you're missing out on the opportunity to actually make more money, in my opinion. And I think it all starts with sharing the vision and the mission, getting people bought in, because you do it as an entrepreneur, I feel like that's what we're doing on the ground floor to get people to get clients to, share. 00:48:32:19 - 00:48:51:18 Shaniqua And there's like some disconnect where the organization grows to, you know, hitting $100 million, you know, and all of a sudden there's like, yeah, the priorities shift to just profit. So I think really focusing on the people, focus on evangelizing the mission of the company will. 00:48:51:18 - 00:48:52:08 Stephanie Help. 00:48:52:10 - 00:48:57:15 Shaniqua You see more profits. I'm going to guess tenfold. 00:48:57:17 - 00:49:31:00 Stephanie You know, the takeaway I want to leave with the audience is, brand shadow. Absolutely is about all of us. And whether you're an individual and you're bringing your shadow to work, or you need to find a way to empower yourself and your own professional environment, or I want to share the stat at the end, because I found this doing some research before this show, recent study, 52% of CEOs say their workplace culture sucks. 00:49:31:02 - 00:49:33:09 Stephanie Oh. Your CEOs. 00:49:33:09 - 00:49:33:20 Leah Stiegler Wow. 00:49:33:21 - 00:49:56:23 Stephanie That's unacceptable. So leaders, you have a lot of work to do. And I really you know, we all need to be taking honest looks at ourself how we show up as leaders, how we show up as people and in our organizations. And we all can contribute to solving this problem. 00:49:57:01 - 00:50:10:04 Shaniqua So thank you so much, Leah, for joining us. It's been a pleasure getting to know you and to our audience. Please be sure to get your copy of Stephanie's, book brand shadow. 00:50:10:06 - 00:50:13:22 Stephanie Thank you everybody. Thanks, Lee. 00:50:14:00 - 00:50:23:22 Shaniqua Thanks for listening to our show. Show us your support by following us on your favorite podcast platform, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. 00:50:24:00 - 00:50:42:15 Stephanie You can also find us on Castos at FromIlluminationtoInnovation/castos.com. If you love our show, share it with your friends and coworkers too. Let's all work together to help businesses vibrate higher.