Shaping Culture in Your Business with Chip Parker

In today's episode of The Gateway Connection Podcast, Joey O'Hern is joined by Chip Pastor, Lead Pastor of The Orchard Community Church. Listen in as they talk about the importance of leading a team well and how you can shape a great team culture starting today.

Thank you for listening today, and thank you to Security Safe for their support of the Gateway Connection Podcast! For more ways to connect with us, visit lnk.bio/gatewaychamber.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There's a difference between healthy conflict, productive conflict, and just being a jerk. But when people are willing in a room, in a meeting, to say, I'm not sure I agree with that, that to me is not unhealth. Leaders who are willing to engage in conflict are showing we have a high level of trust in each other. We have a high level of respect for each other. And we're not whispering this in the hallway. We're getting it out in the meeting. For sure. So I think healthy conflict is a good sign of a strong and healthy culture.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Welcome to the Gateway Connection Podcast, where we connect you with the movers, shakers, and leaders shaping our region. I'm Joey O'Hearn, Executive Director of the Chamber, and your host. Let's get started. Well, welcome Chip Parker to the podcast. Chip, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me, man. So tell us all about yourself, what you do, your real full-time job, all your side hustles.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Well, my real full-time job is I'm the lead pastor at the Orchard Community Church. It's a multi-site church here in North Central Florida, locations in Lake City, Live Oak, and in Brantford. And my side hustles are various and depending on exactly what rabbit hole I'm down this time of my life. But it usually revolves around coaching something, whether it be baseball or as it happens now, golf or you know, sometimes even pickleball. It just it just depends.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

It's a good rabbit hole to be down. It's fun. So the reason Chip's here today is actually Chip has his own podcast called the Impact Leadership Podcast. And I just started listening to I mean just its series, series, I guess. Um culture. So Chip, when we talk about culture, how do you define that word?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Well, I think there's a lot of ways to define culture, but maybe a simple, sticky definition for culture is that culture are shared values and shared behaviors, those things that we organizationally agree that this is what's important, and then what it looks like to operate day to day in light of those things. So, you know, for me, there's a lot of ways you can go with it. But I think simply just thinking of okay, what are your shared values, what are your shared behaviors, that's probably a good way to understand your culture.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

You said something on one of the recent episodes that I actually wrote down that said culture is what is not said aloud but whispered in the hallways.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Yeah. But well, I think that if you go into any business and you know, offices at the church are no different, you're gonna find motivational posters with sayings from your vision statement, mission statement, whatever. And it's easy sometimes as leaders to fool ourselves into thinking that those are the values, but those aren't really the values. The values are, you know, what happens when you're not there making sure it's happening, right? You know, as the point leader, I think culture is what exists when you're not in the room, right? Because when you're not in the room, you see what you really value, you see what the real behaviors of the organization are. And so those are the things that get whispered, you know, in the hallways that you may not hear, but really go a long way into defining what your culture is.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, if the culture has shifted, how does a business owner get that back in line?

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Well, I think that it's important to realize as a leader, and you don't even have to be the leader, but as a leader, you do impact culture more than anything else in your organization. The way I talk about it is, you know, that leaders are thermostats, not thermometers, right? Like you don't just get to feel what the culture is, you get to set it. And I think there's two ways that we really set culture. I think we set culture positively by modeling it consistently, right? By living it out by saying, okay, this is what we value, this is how we act in light of it, and I'm gonna do that. So being very clear, very upfront, consistent, and then living it out, I think is how we shape it positively. But I think more often than shaping it positively, leaders shape culture negatively. And I think the primary way that we do that is by avoiding conflict.

SPEAKER_00 4:01

I was gonna ask you to talk about that. How one of your episodes you said, I'm paraphrasing, so feel free to correct me. That conflict is you voting for the culture, carrying for your office culture.

SPEAKER_01 4:10

Yeah. So I think what we've said is when you avoid conflict, what you're doing is you're voting for the culture to stay as it is, right? And I think as leaders, we have to understand that conflict is a part of the job. Right. If you are a leader and you love conflict, I'm not so certain you're fit to be a good leader, right? Because you have to care for the people you're leading. I think Pat Lincioni, his book, The Motive, goes a long way into really hammering that idea out. And yet it's because we care for the people that we have to embrace conflict, because conflict is how we protect the culture that we have. You know, I've said it like this is that your culture is always going to sink to the lowest level of behavior that you tolerate. Agreed. Right. So whatever it is that you're not willing to address, whatever it is that you're willing to tolerate, that's where your culture is gonna sink to. And so I think that's why we shape culture maybe more negatively than we do positively, because we're afraid of conflict in times.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

And specifically, I mean, a majority of our chamber members, we've got about 500 members, about 350 of those are an actual small business. I would say less than five employees. When you're a small team, one person can have a huge impact on the culture.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Absolutely. For better or for worse. Absolutely. And I think that a healthy culture will drive out unhealthy employees. Absolutely. And an unhealthy culture will drive away healthy employees. And so, especially in a small business where everybody works with everybody, like this isn't isolated to a department that's three floors up, you know, hey, we're all together, we see each other, we're in the same group text, right? That one unhealthy person is either going to create your culture, shape your culture to be unhealthy, and then you lose your healthy employees, or your culture is gonna be so strong and you protect it through conflict, and ultimately the unhealthy will either get on board or get gone.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

Right. What are some signs that a business culture is healthy and what are some red flags that it's not?

SPEAKER_01 6:14

I think that again, not to keep beating that drum, but conflict is probably a way that I've seen a culture being healthy. And there's a difference between like healthy conflict, productive conflict, and just being a jerk, you know, just being argumentative. But when people are willing in a room, in a meeting to say, I'm not sure I agree with that, you know, that to me is not unhealth. Leaders who are willing to engage in conflict are showing we have a high level of trust in each other, we have a high level of respect for each other, and we're not whispering this in the hallway. We're getting it out in the meeting. For sure. So I think healthy conflict is a good sign of a strong and healthy culture. I think that, you know, follow through and consistency are good signs of a healthy culture. You don't want to not know what you're walking into when you walk into the office or into work. Like it's, you know, not that we don't have up and down days, but consistency is we're not walking on eggshells around here. I think when you want to see some red flags for culture, one of the things is that you're gonna see a lot of meetings after the meetings, right? You know, meetings after the meetings in church world, we call that parking lot committees, right? Like that, let's meet in the parking lot by the truck before we go home. Those meeting after the meetings, that's probably not really healthy. If you have a high employee turnover, it's probably not your salary package, it's probably your culture, you know. So that's another one. And I think that as a leader, how people react to you, I think is going to tell you a lot about your culture. If you are untouchable, nobody can ever correct you, nobody can ever question you. The culture is probably not as healthy as you think it is. They're just doing it when you're not in the room. But if they're willing to maybe push back on you or challenge you as a leader, chances are you got a pretty healthy culture because you know that's not happening in the hallways. They're willing to come and sit down and talk with you about it.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

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SPEAKER_01 9:01

As in what do generations feel about the importance of culture?

SPEAKER_00 9:05

So we're currently interviewing for an open position at the chamber, and it's interesting some of the older applicants, for lack of better wording, didn't really ask me about anything culture related. I would say every applicant under the age of 30 asked me what is the culture of the chamber.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Yeah, I I do think that younger generations really do care about culture. And I think studies show that they care about it more than they care about the salary package. Right, absolutely. And that has become really important for us at the orchard because, you know, and this is church world. I'm sure as a business owner, you could probably relate to it. But, you know, there are a lot of churches out there that have been around for 150 years and have had massive donors. And man, if you're looking to be in church and get paid top dollar, you go to one of these downtown, you know, 100-year-old churches and they'll pay you top dollar. As a church that's 18, going on 19 years old, the orchard has never been able to be the, you know, highest paying church employer in the area. But we try to offset that with a culture that our employees love and flexibility, you know, and so what we have found is we have had younger staff who are willing to take a pay cut to come on board with us because they value the culture that we've created and the flexibility that we offer. And so absolutely, if you're, you know, looking to hire younger, it's not about paying them as much as you can pay them. It's about making a place they actually want to work.

SPEAKER_00 10:34

So, as somebody who leads a large, diverse team, whether that's paid or volunteers, how do you emphasize the importance of culture among different generations, different backgrounds, et cetera?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

I'm not sure that different generations hear culture differently. Like I think they hear it the same. I think that what you have to do, no matter who you're leading, where you're leading, is you've just got to be very clear. You know, clarity is something that every leader feels they have, and almost all of their employees would say, I'm not sure you do, you know, because they think we wrote it down once. Everybody knows that. That's right. You know, a leader told me this one time. They said, as leader, when you're getting sick of saying it, your people are hearing it for the first time, you know. And uh so I think being very clear is what's going to help you do that across generations, and then actually keeping to those, right? Like holding to what you've said, the values you share, the behaviors you share, being willing to lean into conflict whenever it's, you know, uncomfortable. I think that's something that speaks across generations. Now, what's funny is when you have that and you do foster a healthy culture that creates trust and conversation, the dynamic between some older, you know, employees in the room and younger employees in the room, it actually gets really fun. Right. You know, uh, in an unhealthy culture, I think it's very painful. In a healthy culture, just seeing some of the back and forth, it gets to be a lot of fun.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

So, last question as we wrap up, we ask all of our guests this um, what is one business or leadership tip you've lived by or had to learn the hard way?

SPEAKER_01 12:15

That's a really, really good question. I think that for me, I've had to learn as a leader that what you are seeing, maybe for the first time, has been obvious to everybody else for a while. And so as leaders, we have to be willing to call out those elephants in the room. And a lot of times, those are places where we've dropped the ball. Those are places where we have said, well, you know, I'm boss, that doesn't apply to me, you know, or or whatever. And I think that there's uh a stigmatism uh around leaders that say, I can't show weakness, I can't show faults, because if I do, that's gonna undermine my credibility. Absolutely. And I do think that there is a level of that. Like if you're wrong nine out of 10 times, your credibility probably should take a hit, you know. However, what I have learned and experienced is that when I'm willing to call out the elephants in the room, and then when they're my issues, on up to them, apologize to the staff for, hey, I'm sorry that I did not follow through in this area. I'm sorry that I've been operating outside of what I expect for you. That doesn't undermine my credibility, that actually strengthens my credibility. And people connect a vulnerability. Absolutely, absolutely. Craig Rochelle, who's a pastor in Oklahoma, one of the best leaders out there that I know of, says that people would rather follow a leader who's always real than one who's always right.

SPEAKER_00 13:43

Completely.

SPEAKER_01 13:44

And so when we are willing to own up to that and then do better on the backside, we shape culture in a healthy way and we gain credibility with the people that we lead. So I would say, you know, if you're leading in your organization, a hundred percent there's an elephant in the room that you know of, you're thinking of right now when we're having this conversation. And what you need to understand is your people are not blind to that, and you will gain credibility and confidence as a leader when you acknowledge what they're already thinking.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Absolutely. Chip, all great content. Before we go, tell people how they can find your podcast.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Well, you can find my podcast, Impact Leadership Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, all over the place. You can also find links to that and our other podcasts that we have at the church on our church website, theorchardcc.org. It's kind of cool. We've been able to find a little podcast network. So there's something for everybody on there. And, you know, as always, I end my podcast by saying I love leaders. I'm passionate about leadership. And if there's anything that I can do for you, your organization, we just want to make North Central Florida the best place it can be. And so I'm here to help however that is.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Absolutely. Thanks, Chip. Yes, sir. Thank you again to Security Safe for their support of the Gateway Connection podcast. And until next time, don't forget to subscribe, leave us a review, and share it with a friend. For ways to stay connected, be sure to visit the links in the show notes, and we'll catch you here next time on the Gateway Connection Podcast.