Culture Over Coffee
Culture Over Coffee
Building a People-First Culture with Amy Bloxom
In this episode, we’re exploring how company leaders can go about building a people-first culture.
And joining Beth to break it all down is someone who truly does put people-first: Amy Bloxom, Regional Vice President at Townsquare Media.
Amy makes a ton of great points, such as:
- Why it’s not only important for employees to understand the vision of the company, but also, equally, that their opinions matter
- How assuming positive intent can go a long way toward establishing trust, even when conflicts arise
- And, finally, why understanding each of your team members at an individual level is invaluable when building a culture that is truly people-first.
Links:
A Company Leader's Checklist for Company Culture
Amy Bloxom
Beth Sunshine
Up Your Culture
Hello and welcome to Culture Over Coffee, a podcast focused on improving company culture and fostering employee engagement. Every week, we chat with experts and thought leaders about the latest information and proven practices you can use to reduce regrettable turnover, increase productivity on your team and retain key customers. So pour a cup of your favorite brew and join us. I'm your host, beth Sunshine, SVP at up your culture and the Center for Sales Strategy. In this episode, we're exploring how company leaders can go about building a people-first culture, and joining me to break it all down is someone who truly does put people first Amy Bloxom, Regional Vice President at Town Square Media. Amy shares a ton of great insights, like why it's important for employees to clearly understand expectations, how assuming positive intent can go a long way towards establishing trust, even when conflicts arise, and, finally, why understanding each of your team members at an individual level is invaluable when building a culture that is truly people-first. All right, well, welcome, amy, and thank you so much for joining me today for Culture Over Coffee.
Beth Sunshine:Now, I've had the opportunity to work with you for a while now, but I do remember very clearly the first time we met in person at the Talent Focus Management Workshop in Dallas, and you were very focused on hiring top talent, developing your people. I even had the opportunity to sit by you during one of the dinners where we got deep into the conversation on that. It was clear even back then that you naturally create a people-first culture and, as a matter of fact, now most people will be listening to this, but a couple of people might be viewing this. So I don't know if you have that bobblehead handy, but you are awarded our prestigious Talent Superhero Award for your focus. There we go, that's right. It looks just like you do for hiring and developing and retaining your people. So I'm just super excited to talk to you about all of these things today. Are you ready to get started?
Amy Bloxom:I am. I am. Thank you for the invite, Beth. I appreciate it.
Beth Sunshine:And I do remember that group with Dallas and you get really good friends. Yeah, good dinner and a great conversation. So let's begin with a quick brain jolt. I just want you to envision the very best company culture you can think of and tell me what three to five words would you use to describe that ideal culture?
Amy Bloxom:To me it is the way I try to run the markets that I oversee for town square media is. I try to create that culture of mutual respect for one another communication with each other, trust, encouragement, collaborations within the departments and just really being fair to all the employees across the board.
Beth Sunshine:That defines a very, very much what I would consider a people first culture. So, yeah, I think, just organically, that's probably what you create, that's what you prefer, that's what you envision. So thank you for sharing that. So, moving specifically into that topic today, how would you define I'm calling it a people first culture? It's been called a number of things, but how would you define that concept of a people first culture, and why is it so important for an organization success?
Amy Bloxom:One of the things that town square media does an amazing job at is on our wallet card.
Amy Bloxom:The number one thing on our wallet card is you matter.
Amy Bloxom:So you matter as an employee, and so we do have to understand that everybody has that work, personal life outside of work, but you matter. What they also mean and I try to carry that mantra on is that you want to make sure that, whatever job they're tasked with, that they clearly understand what that job duty is and what that expectation is, so that there's no gray area to what is expected each day. And then you also want to go beyond that too and you want to provide them with the tools and the resources that are available for them to be able to do their job and succeed at their job. And then listening to them often, I mean, I really try to encourage collaboration, brainstorming it's not just my ideas, it's our ideas, and sometimes there are the boots on the ground, in the AEs, for example, so they're able to bring out and see things that I might not see anymore. And doing the leadership role I do, but I also don't ask any of my people to do anything that I'm not willing to do myself.
Beth Sunshine:So really good description. I like that. You matter I've seen that before on those wallet cards and it really does speak to me and then defining it more clear expectations, arming them for success, listening and gosh, I love the way you added the word often Listen often, like all the time it's great collaboration. So what specific strategies or initiatives have you implemented that? You shared a lot of good things that make up this people first culture. What strategies or initiatives can you think of that you've implemented or you've seen implemented to foster all of those great things that you just described within your company?
Amy Bloxom:Well, me personally, I'm a very transparent leader, down to it all I mean my sales management team or my department heads they know exactly what's going on. We're the company and visionist and we pass that down to everybody. We want to make sure everybody understands the vision, whether it's our short term goals or whether it's the long term goals, and so there's always a strategy and we're not afraid to pivot because, as we know, in the media industry, it has been very fluid and so many things are being thrown at us. So I just want to make sure that the team knows at all times that their opinions do matter.
Amy Bloxom:Once a month, me, the managers and I, we go on what we call our Mexico trip, and all it is is we lock ourselves in my little conference room, but that lets them know, hey, we're in Mexico. There's no Wi-Fi, there's no social service, and it's for two hours. Strategize months ahead, so that we have everything lined out and ready for it to provide the team with all their arrows and their quiver of what's going to be coming up and what we've got to look for, where we've got to work towards. So they always know where we're going with short term, long term, they know the path, they know the strategy, thank you. And now we've got the roadmap, and so, and we encourage them to bring us new ideas, we encourage them to share when we're presenting to them what we kind of came up with. Well, what if you thought about this, because we're not perfect and we're all a team here in the building and in the region, right?
Beth Sunshine:right, gosh. Transparency is so important. I was actually talking with a market manager another company just yesterday about the concept of vision that you're describing, and we were saying how important it is for every employee, no matter what their job is, what role they play, to understand the larger vision of the company, to understand what is it gonna look like here next month, next year, in three years, and it's. I think that's one of the things that's lacking so many times in an organization. Leaders are so in the weeds they forget to share that vision. So it's ironic that you're talking about this just the next day after I was talking about how difficult it is.
Beth Sunshine:I love the strategy of the Mexico trip, that, the two hour planning session. I like the way you described it as a path, because that's exactly what it is. We're all on this journey. If you have the roadmap, if you know where you're going, man, it's just so much better along the way. So, and the more you tell people what it's going to look like, what is it gonna feel like, what is it gonna be like, what changes can we expect, even if you're just doing your very best envisioning right now? Oh, it's just so powerful, very cool. Well, building a people first culture often involves addressing and resolving conflicts and challenges too. So sharing the vision certainly important, collaboration, listening. But how do you approach and navigate difficult situations, the ones that you know, where there's pushback, people are unhappy, negative feelings, and still maintain a positive and supportive work environment? Any tips there?
Beth Sunshine:So how do you approach and navigate difficult situations to maintain a positive and supportive work environment? Any tips on that?
Amy Bloxom:I think anytime you're working as hard as we are, we're gonna run into some conflicts. A lot of times what I have discovered are the conflicts the bigger ones are generally a misunderstanding and whether it's from another manager, with a coworker or between departments, it's just a complete misunderstanding. And because we tend to email or text or instead of those face-to-face conversations sometimes those could is where the misunderstanding kind of comes into play. So what I take I look at the whole situation first and determine is this something that needs to be addressed now? Is it that important? If it's between two people, I try to address it quickly and a lot of times, matter of fact, I had a conflict within the last two weeks. I just called both employees in and let them tell me from both sides of what they heard, what they heard was said or what happened, and I let each person speak and I listened to them.
Amy Bloxom:And a lot of times through those conversations of having that person tell me and then the other person tell me they do realize it was a misunderstanding and it kind of resolves itself and if it doesn't, then again I look at the incident and if someone was in the wrong we go ahead and address it. But they know that about me. That's how I'm gonna be. I don't look at your role, I look at the event and of what happened and what God is there, and then by the time they generally leave all as well and they're even working better together. But we also get them to on the same page of how to communicate, cause one may not be communicating the right way, and so they get to tell each other how do you communicate better with me?
Beth Sunshine:So I love that, love that approach. My daughter's a kindergarten teacher and I know a term they use in education, at least at her school, is assuming positive intent, and that's what I'm hearing from you is the first thing you're doing is assuming positive intent. It's probably misunderstanding. I'm hearing in everything you're describing your transparent nature. Let's bring everybody in, let's put it on the table, let's talk about it. Of course, I heard back. You're listening, like, really listen and address the wrong. So it's.
Beth Sunshine:There's also the need to hold people accountable. We often in our company we use a tool called the user guide. We teach other people how to do this too, and a big part of that user guide is what you talked about at the end telling people how to communicate with you. You know some. I know if you really want me to hear you, you probably need to interact with me a little differently than someone else that I might work with. So I like that you're having them share with each other. Is that something you've ever done in a large group, or is it better in a smaller conversation?
Amy Bloxom:If it's between two people, I hand. You know it's kind of that, we handle it that way. If it's a bigger conflict and maybe they don't agree with maybe the steps we're taking towards something, well, I'll have a conversation with everybody to see if you know, maybe I did make the wrong decision. I'm not afraid to admit when I make a mistake. I'm not perfect and I will pivot if I need to. But if I know that that's the path and this is what we're gonna have to do, then I just try to get them to understand the reasoning behind the decision that is being made.
Amy Bloxom:I can't say it always fixes a situation. They may walk away going. Well, I just disagree with that, and that's okay too. You know, you can disagree, it's all right with that. So you know, and I try to tell people and the people most people that know me know that I'm very strong in my faith and so a lot of times I'll give them an example. So there's a reason. God gave us two ears in one mouth. I said he wants us to listen twice and then speak.
Beth Sunshine:So yeah, yeah, good, Empowering employees is another key aspect of people first culture right, Giving them the strength, the ability to work autonomously. So how do you encourage autonomy and ownership among your team members while at the same time maintaining a sense of direction where everyone's on the same page, everyone's aligned with the company goals and that vision that you talked about earlier?
Amy Bloxom:Doing what we do every day.
Amy Bloxom:Whether you're in the sales aspect of the company or if you're in the programming aspect of the company, we provide them with all the tools that they need, and so with that comes training and development.
Amy Bloxom:And what most of the employees will see me do in this building is when we introduce a new platform for data pulling, they'll see me learning that data.
Amy Bloxom:They'll see me going there and finding ways to make their jobs easier, and then I'll either pass that down through my management team or I'll actually go join a sales meeting and go oh my gosh, let me show you what I just found, and I'm always looking for ways because we ask them to do it.
Amy Bloxom:There's a lot they have to do, and so I'm looking for ways that makes their job easier. And when they see the excitement in you and then you show them, they want to learn more and so giving them they have access to every platform, whether it's center for sales strategy, whether it's town square analytics, whether it's Simplify, whether it's Placer data Distillery and then I make sure that they're trained up and they understand those platforms so they can go out there and be those true marketing consultants or, on the other end of the building, the contributor, the digital content creator here the support and the tools and the resources that are at our fingertips to run our own business. It's provided and Townsport is a really great job of providing us with everything we need. It's my job to make sure that we're continually training and developing on the playbook.
Beth Sunshine:I love that. So you and I know that about you and about Town Square you arm everybody, you give them everything you need, but then you teach them how to do it and you expect them to do things the Town Square way or, you know that, your stations way. I love that. So how do you measure the effectiveness of your People First Culture initiative? So how do you, how do you know if you're doing a good job with it? What outcomes or metrics can someone look for to gauge success there?
Amy Bloxom:On the local market. I look at us a retention. I've got people that have been in this building for 30 something years. I think the youngest person in the building now is about a year, about a year into it. So retention is one thing. Most of us have been together for many years operating under one team, so I look at that. The other thing I look at that is measurable is just how the team collaborates. I look I mean you look at well performance. You look at do they come into your office and still communicate with you on a regular basis?
Amy Bloxom:Trust is a big thing and that goes both ways. You know I look for opportunities where I see that there's a need for someone or them, and then I, if I know that something I can win on, I go and get it for them and I make sure I do it Through blueprint. You know we know our expectations are. Blueprint, which is our CRM tool, because we're big on inspecting what we expect, and so I can look inside this tool and go are they accomplishing? It tells me how many appointments are running on, how many CNAs are doing. I can.
Amy Bloxom:There's another dashboard I can look at as far as are the contributors doing their post every day. So it's all measurable. And then then, when you see the engagement of all departments working together, you know what it's working. And as a company they were big on. We do because it's. We do the Gallup surveys once a year to one, or we've done those a couple of times because we want. Sometimes employees may not say something. Yeah, they will. On a survey I also have, which I brought with me from the regional roundup that Matt spoke at. It's called a real life social media board where they can actually call it like a physical board.
Amy Bloxom:Yes, so you know, everybody gets on social media and makes comments and likes and all that stuff. So I took a poster, a court board and made a real life social media board with little cars where they can pin up their comments, suggestions, feedbacks, what do you like, what don't you like? You can sign it. You don't have to sign it. Is it a motivational thing you want to write up there for your team? And that's down there where they can just post their notes and then I'll go by them and I'll pull them off and if there's something they're not going to fix, I'm going to fix it.
Beth Sunshine:Okay, that's really fun.
Amy Bloxom:It's cute, they like it. I've got a little couple of notes up there. And then, as a town square media also does whenever if we do have an employee labor across the company, they do exit interviews, you know, because they even want to know, because that having a culture in all of our markets is super important to them as well. A great culture because it impacts your performance.
Beth Sunshine:It does. That's right. If you have a thriving culture, your people will be engaged, they'll show up, sleep, dole up and they'll perform better. That's exactly right. Exit interviews are pretty powerful if they're done well, which I know yours are, so you can get a sense for more behind it. Really really good ways to measure those things Retention performance, your annual engagement survey, just the appearance of collaboration metrics in the CRM Love it Alright. Last question, and this is either going to be really easy or really hard I noticed people go one way or the other but kind of thinking about a people first culture, if you could recommend just one thing, because a lot of listeners will be listening to you and they'll be thinking, gosh, that's a lot of good stuff and I really want to get better and try all these things. So if you could help them think through what is one thing that you think they could leave this podcast with today, start doing right away to really make a difference in fostering a people first culture, what would that one thing be?
Amy Bloxom:If I was new coming into a building, or even if I've been there two to three years and I come from sales into the media company, I would sit every employee down and do a CNA or what we now call discovery meeting, and I would find out what everything I needed to know that they're willing to share about that employee. What motivates them, what do they love about their job, what are their struggles, what is their pain point, what's keeping you up at night and what are your five-year goals? I would have a personal CNA discovery meeting with each employee in the company and knowing what their goals are do they want to grow? I try to ask everybody I even interview before they ever come into the building what are your personal goals? Do you want to grow? Do you want to grow the company professionally? Do you just want to come in and do what is expected?
Amy Bloxom:Go home at the end of the day? Are you looking for growth? Because you can grow in this company and I try to know that because everybody's motivated differently and one may be motivated by cash incentives, one may be motivated by just giving me a day off, but you've got to learn those things about their people and I try not to cookie cut for the team for the whole when individuals are motivated separately and differently. So I try to match all of them. But it starts by getting to know your people. You've got to know them and what drives them.
Beth Sunshine:Fantastic strategy, great suggestion. I can't imagine a better way to build a relationship with someone and also grow them, and grow your entire team or division or organization by understanding what makes them tick. I'm glad you shared that. So grateful for the time you spent with me today talking about culture over coffee. You have shared a lot of great information and ideas. Like I said, I think people will walk away with a lot and I think it's just so important to create that people-first culture. So thank you for sharing so many valuable tips.
Beth Sunshine:Now for those listening, I'm going to drop Amy's LinkedIn information in the show notes so you can connect with her if you'd like and I recommend that you do and then I'm also going to add a link to the leaders checklist for company culture, because a lot of our listeners, a lot of you, are going to be planning for 2024. Right now. You're thinking about your culture, how to drive engagement. You may want to spend a minute or two reviewing the checklist and just setting yourself up for success. So thank you, amy, for your time today and thank you everyone for listening. Thanks so much for spending time with us on culture over coffee. If you've enjoyed the conversation, be sure to subscribe and join us for every episode. For more helpful information on the topics of company culture and employee engagement, visit us at upyourculturecom.
Beth Sunshine:Enjoy the journey as you increase engagement and up your culture.
