Episode 195: Cultural Building Blocks Part 1

In this episode of Leading & Learning Through Safety, Dr. Mark French dives deep into one of his favorite topics—organizational culture—and how emotional intelligence shapes the environment where people truly thrive. Drawing from research published in the Consulting Psychology Journal, Mark explores the concept of an EI-supportive organizational culture and unpacks what it really means to live out corporate values instead of merely displaying them on paper.

Through his signature “garden analogy,” Mark illustrates how culture, like a plant, flourishes only when the environment provides nourishment, care, and room to grow. He breaks down the research that defines culture as both abstract values and observable practices, challenging leaders to ensure their teams experience those values in action—not just in orientation binders.

Mark also examines how real behaviors—what gets rewarded, promoted, or tolerated—ultimately become the building blocks of culture. He connects this to safety and HR, emphasizing that professionals in these fields often lead through influence, not authority. Their courage to challenge leadership and uphold values defines whether an organization practices damage control or genuine continuous improvement.

This episode is a thoughtful reminder that culture doesn’t happen by accident—it’s created every day by what leaders choose to value, model, and reinforce.

Transcript

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This week on the podcast, I want to talk about one of my favorite topics, and that's culture. How do we build it? How do we maintain it, and how do we continually drive improvement to what we want as a culture? This week on the podcast, you welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode and now here is Dr Mark French. You Matt, welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So happy you joined me. Thank you for allowing me to be part of your podcast playlist. So this week I came across a journal article from the American Psychological Association that some of the research that they did leading up to the work they did caught my attention very clearly, because they concisely put together a series of pieces to define a little bit more about culture and organizational culture, most importantly, because we bring as a human, and I say this frequently, but I can't, I don't think I can over emphasize enough what it means to be human. And I It amazes me, and it's easy to do. I'm pointing a finger right back at myself when I say this, too. It's easy to think about coming into work and just being the job of being the person that does the job, or being the embodiment of the job or the title that came with the job, rather than the total human. And that is culture that is organizational, because each of us bring something with us, good, bad, in between. And I honestly, I'm a glass half full kind of person. When it comes to that, I think that most of the time, people are bringing more. You look for people who can bring more, bring ideas, bring enthusiasm, bring the things you need, that you want, in your culture, you build from there that. That's my belief. But I believe people bring that with them when you allow them to there also has to be. It's the garden. Analogy is a really good one. You can plant the seed. You can find the right plant that you need. You can find that you can plant it. You can transplant it. You can do things. But if the soil, the environment is not right for that plant to grow, it will not it might survive. It might die, it may never thrive. But then, in the right environment, you move that item to the right environment, it thrives. You get rid of what's getting in the way of it. You nourish it, you take care of it, it grows. So let's take a look at this. Let's move on. If not, I'll keep going with analogies for the entire thing. But this comes from the consulting psychology journal. Now, when it says consulting psychology, it's really more about getting in the workplace and looking at leadership. And how do you help build leadership? And so I subscribe to that, because in my role, I should be helping empower the organization even outside of it. So it's a really interesting read in this one here is basically talking about that. The title of the article is emotionally intelligent behavior at work. And one of the sections is titled ei supportive organizational culture. And there's three pieces of research that they have put together to open this state. Statement on what is an EI supportive organizational culture. And I want to read those number because it's it's really nice how they found these, these three pieces of research, put them together, and it really speaks to what we're trying to do with culture. So let me read it. Organizational culture is composed of relatively abstract values and observable practices. Values are primary building blocks of culture. They are the principles that define an organization and serve as guides about what behavior is desirable and acceptable. Practices, on the other hand, are tangible, visible actions and procedures that pose demands and provide resources for individual behavior. So I want to break this down that was basically each statement was a different piece of research, that when you put those three together, really profound to what we're trying to build in leadership. And I will specifically say that if we we start with the base of safety, the foundation of safety, with what we're talking about there, we start to build a really powerful a really people driven culture. So let's, let's start at the beginning. I know this feels very luxury to me, but I found it absolutely enthralling, and I just keep rereading it, and I can't help but share it. That's kind of why I have the podcast, is share my passion. So I'm going to share my passion here, organizational culture is composed of relatively abstract values and observable practices. So what does that mean? It means that most of the time, the values of the organization are a piece of paper that say something. These are our values. Now let me take it from the from the stance of you are brand new. You have just been hired into an organization. You walk in the door, let's call it the blank slate. I know that there's a lot of influence outside. You can do your glass door reviews LinkedIn. You can learn more before you show up, but you've showed up first day you sat down, and you're going through your orientation, and they bring up the page that says, These are our corporate values, 1234, whatever, these are the corporate values. Now, during your first 3060, 90 days, you are going to observe in real time, real life, those values in action, either in action or inaction or absence. Of you're going to see it the new hire. You, in this case, are going to be able to tangibly observe those practices. So the abstract value should be the guide to what you see. So if I say safety is number one around here. We are going to do things safely. We believe in safety. It we hear this frequently. I see it unfortunately. We've talked, I've talked about that. Say we like we've been in a room to go. Maybe we are, we're very friendly now the we so we've talked about a little bit about, you know, reading articles and seeing where there's been a fatality or a serious event, and the first thing they say is, safety is a top priority for us. We're going to support the family, etc, etc, etc. Was safety? Did you just say it because it was there, did you mean it? Because, based on the results, what you're saying really doesn't match up. So when you walk into a company, you see the abstract values, and then you observe those values in action. It sets the tone like, what? What are we really about? So with the safety example, when you start going around and seeing it, is it real? Do you see people doing the right things, following the policy, talking about the policy, helping watch out for each other? Do you see the values in action? That's really important right there. That first statement, which came from 2009 piece of research that they found to support what they were looking at with emotional intelligence, is a lot of companies have those abstract values. And as a human being, we're looking for the practice in action. We need to see the practice in action that determines how we practice going forward and how well it aligned with what we thought we were coming to and what we actually have have arrived to. Sometimes you can see it during the interviews very clearly that you you hear about their values, you hear about what they're wanting. Then you visually see, you visually encounter. You get that feeling, that energy that tells you, oh yeah, they're they really mean it. Or you get it that says maybe not. So let's talk more. We got more to dissect here. Let's keep going talking about emotional intelligence and organization and values on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, humanizing the workplace it is the leading and learning through safety podcast, dsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building, stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at TS da consulting.com Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So this week from the consulting psychology journal, September 2025 quarterly, an article called emotionally intelligent behavior at work, reading through in some of their base research on supportive organizational culture for emotional intelligence. So the second statement that comes from that they did research that builds well is values are primary building blocks of culture. So all of this gets so muddy. We hear these words interchangeably, value, culture, priorities. Take your buzz words, put them together. But there's real psychological definitions out there of what it really means in a company or in a culture or an organization. I mean, to have these things even I just used it wrong even, even I just threw out the wrong word too much jargon. Caught myself doing it. Organizational culture is so what we're looking at the culture is, what is it? The values are the building blocks. So we state our values in an abstract way. We observe those practices, and then we look at how those practices become the building blocks. Now the question that I know you know the answer to, but I'm I'm going to just say it because it makes it feel more interesting to me to pose it as a question, if I look at the written values of a company, or if I observe the real values of the company, which could be the same? Nothing. I'm not assuming they're not. I'm just saying what you read and what you observe. Which one becomes the inherent building block? Well, of course, it's what you see. It's the observable pieces, because that's real. It's tangible. It's no longer abstract, it's no longer a theory, it's a real practice. So the real practice becomes the absolute foundational building blocks of culture. And so back to what I love the most, and that safety is if we're going to build a foundation, why are we not if we truly value our people, why are we not building in on safety first, build it there. Can't go wrong with building it there. There doesn't seem to be a wrong way to do that when you truly mean it. So moving on. So now we know that this, basically the tangible, is going to become the real building blocks, not the abstract. They are principles that define an organization and serve as guides for what behavior is desirable and acceptable. Now, ideally, the piece of paper, the the abstract, should be, what's desirable, not necessarily true. Should be, should be. In some cases, we see that the behaviors are those tangible, observable behaviors actually become what really is desired, in what is acceptable. I love Simon Sinek, and I love a lot of what he writes in researches, and he talks about the companies that continually promote the super high performers who could care less if they burn everyone else in the world. They could hurt everyone they can step on backs. They can crawl. Up to the top, and they don't care about others, but they're really good at what they do, and by leveraging those people, the organization speaks volumes of what becomes acceptable and what becomes desirable. It sets the tone, not only that we accept it, but in some ways we want it. That struck me as I had always this like it, just saying it so simply opened up my mind a little bit, because I always thought of it as being okay. You accept it, it's there, but it actually, when you read it as being a piece of like that, and it says it's actually what becomes desirable. The company now has said it's desirable to be this way by accepting this value, this tangible practice, as that. And so practices, on the other hand, are tangible. So it actually references the word tangible in a separate piece of research. And this is from 1998 so it's not dating myself, but yeah, that's a little ways I go that this has been known to be true, or at least theoretically, in publication, the visible actions and procedures that pose demand and provide resources for individual behavior. So what are we doing to put demand on living into the culture? What is the demand? What are the resources? Have we made it easier to do the right thing, or we have made it easier to just do what we want, and this is very much a philosophical exercise and what you want to build as an organization. What is the real tangible point? I'm going to use the word tangible. What is the real point that I want to say about all of this is that one, when we see it in action, we have a choices, usually middle management, safety people with not a lot of direct influence. We influence through what we do and how we act and how we interact with everything around us. We truly work through influence, not through authoritative means. And I think that's a really interesting situation that the safety professional is in, and a lot of times the HR professional too. We're in that situation all the time. So we have a choice. We have a choice on whether or not we follow the easy path of what the company is choosing to go down, or do we stand up and actually do the things that should be the right thing to do with a company that we've been asked to do, to be the conscience, to be those items, and to be somewhat of a Trying to be what the company needs us to be for their people, rather than just following the path and embodying and in becoming the resource to enable what on paper shouldn't be there. So I came across a LinkedIn post and it said, if HR can't challenge leadership, it's not HR anymore. It's just damage control. I feel the same way about safety, and that's sad when it comes to damage control and safety, because that means Someone got hurt. That means something bad really happened. And so here we have the option to how do we build our resources, how do we build and how do we become and that's a hard road and not an easy solution, but I think we're going to talk more about this. I don't feel like I've dropped this topic yet. I feel like I've just hit the cusp of like, let's take what the abstract says here, let's take the research. Let's build something more. I'm looking forward to our next conversation, because we're going to continue this one. We're going to keep driving it on the next episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Thanks for joining me, and until next time we chat, stay safe. You. I thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast, more content is available online at www dot tsda consulting.com all the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity you. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. You This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast.