Culture Isn't a Department

Ask anyone who owns company culture and watch the finger point straight up. Leadership. The manager. HR. Anybody but me. So we brought in Hanan Harb, L&D consultant and author of Everybody, Be Cool!, to settle it. Her answer is the uncomfortable one: culture is everybody's job, because it's just the sum of what everybody does and what everybody lets slide.

Hanan wrote the book she wishes she'd had starting out. She calls herself the English major who fumbled into the workplace, later spent close to a decade at DPR Construction in marketing and on the learning and development team, and watched one difficult person bum out a whole team, then their families, then their communities. Her fix starts with looking inward. Her pitch for empathy is the best thing anyone's said about it in years: it's become a buzzword, but it's “a pretty good concept. Look into it.”

Ashley makes the case for who really holds the power. Because no one claims culture, no one owns it (“fifty cooks in the kitchen and nobody's the chef”). She describes culture as a nightclub: TA is the promoter and bouncer, HR is inside security, and the C-suite is up on the balcony deciding who gets kicked out. Desiree adds what she sees with founders: your culture was shaped by three people in a basement, and by employee 250 nobody ever stopped to decide what it should be.

From there the three get into generations at work. Ashley explains why changing a Baby Boomer's mind feels like asking them to correct their granddad, while Gen Z just figures they misgoogled it. Hanan answers with curiosity, and remembers the manager who told her “you're a baby” at 23. Desiree asks who's actually coaching the middle managers everyone hands culture to, and Hanan makes the case for a shared communication language across the whole company. Desiree connects it to marriage counseling (it works, she's been twice).

The second half gets personal. Hanan's chapter on asking for what you need starts with a myth she used to believe: put your head down and the work will speak for itself. It won't. Nobody is going to pluck you from obscurity and put you on a rocket ship to the moon. Desiree and Ashley open up about confidence, personal power, and why titles never meant much. They close on how companies rebuild trust after they've broken it, including how not to run a layoff.

In Talent Outside the Box, Ashley shares what she learned partnering with L&D as a recruiting manager: every training needs a needs assessment and has to match its audience's level, or people tune out. Hanan's addition: when leadership says “build this training,” ask why, why, why before you build anything.

In this episode:

• Why everyone thinks culture is somebody else's job
• "You point a finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you"
• Culture as a nightclub: TA at the door, HR inside, C-suite on the balcony
• Why startup culture gets set by three founders and lost by employee 250
• Changing minds across generations, and the "you're a baby" manager
• Who's coaching the middle managers we hand culture to
• Why a shared communication language beats a million rules
• Setting team norms: what goes in Slack, what goes in email
• Why the work will never speak for itself
• Asking for what you need without becoming "the difficult one"
• Personal power that has nothing to do with your title
• Rebuilding trust, and running a layoff like a human
• Talent Outside the Box: how to build training people won't tune out

Resources & Links:

• Hanan Harb on LinkedIn
• Everybody, Be Cool! (book and consulting): everybody-be-cool.com
• Desiree's book, Leadership is a Practice, Not a Personality (out now)
• Watch Talentless on The HR Channel on Roku and Fire TV
• Join the T-Hive newsletter

This episode's sponsor: HIDIZS ST2 PRO Nebula earbuds. Use code TALENTLESS8 for 8% off at hidizs.net or on Amazon. We earn a commission when you buy with our code.

Segment note: Talent Outside the Box ran this episode (about 47:29 to 51:28), with Ashley leading and Hanan adding on.