Ann Rhoades joins the show to discuss her extremely important and successful careers at Southwest Airlines and JetBlue, and shares more about the extraordinary service she and her team at Peopleink provide for leaders looking to shape and define their culture. A highly sought-after speaker and author behind the book Built on Values, she provides inspiration and strategic direction for many companies around the world. Ann talks about why core values are integral to the success of the culture, how we define and determine a great culture, interviewing tips for hiring players aligned with the company value systems, and the qualities of good leadership.
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Here Are the Key Takeaways From This Episode:
- Ann speaks about the development of her interest in working with people and leadership. She noticed the consistencies around organizations that were successful in creating a productive and accountable culture and sought to help others create and execute sustainable well-defined core values.
- Ann lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and loves being in the mountain air. She loves to travel herself and is extremely excited to announce a new model to bring the cost of travel back to basics with values from the onset.
- We can determine if our culture is working by talking openly with our existing employees, looking at the data, turnover, and customer satisfaction.
- When building a culture from scratch, it’s imperative to get the right people in the room. We define the behaviors, and look at how the A players behave as a model for all to emulate.
- Values and language that a company chooses to align with may change over time due to growth and global expansion.
- Ann’s advice for interviewing is to ask more about past behaviors as they relate to values than about why someone wants to work for your particular company.
- If you are the CEO and leader, you have to be visible and engaged.
- One of Ann’s future goals is to learn more languages and immerse herself in other cultures.
- Ann defines a leadership rockstar as someone that leads by example and is very confident but not arrogant.
- Ann wrote her book Built on Values as a prescriptive to help people understand the science and methodology of building a culture. This is a great resource for smaller companies who also may not be able to afford someone to come in and has practical action items that make a measured difference.
- Core value shout outs are great for highlighting employees that live and breathe a particular value.
