Building Trust at Work Starts With Leadership | Ep. 98

Episode Summary

What happens when workplace culture becomes a hidden leadership risk?

In this episode, Coach Mo sits down with employment lawyer and workplace culture strategist Natalie Holder to explore the connection between leadership behavior, trust, employee retention, and organizational performance.

They discuss why many workplace issues start long before formal complaints appear, how leaders unintentionally erode trust, and why creating an inclusive culture is ultimately about helping people feel valued. Natalie shares practical insights from working with founders, executives, and organizations navigating culture challenges, leadership blind spots, and workplace transformation.

If you're focused on leadership development, building trust, improving culture, and leading people more effectively, this conversation offers valuable perspective on what healthy leadership looks like in practice.

Key Takeaways

• Trust Is the Real Goal
  •  Inclusion and culture efforts succeed when leaders focus on creating trust across the organization. 
• Complaints Are Often Symptoms
  •  Workplace issues rarely appear overnight. Most are the result of patterns that leaders failed to address early. 
• Culture Shows Up in Retention
  •  The way employees feel inside the organization often determines how customers experience the organization. 
• Leaders Must Hold Up the Mirror
  •  Organizational growth requires honest reflection about behaviors, blind spots, and leadership impact. 
• What You Ignore Today Returns Tomorrow
  •  Unaddressed leadership patterns tend to follow individuals and organizations until they are intentionally confronted.

Transcript

Welcome And The SWAG Framework

SPEAKER_01 0:13

Welcome to the Let's Think About It podcast, where high achievers stop performing and start transforming. I'm Coach Mo, certified core energy leadership coach, founder of the Inner Arena, and creator of the SWAG framework. Self-awareness, why power, aligned action, and grit. Around here, we train your mindset, challenge your limits, and turn pressure into purpose. Subscribe now and join me on YouTube at Swag Coaching. So let's get your reps in.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

We're going big, going big.

SPEAKER_01 0:55

Welcome to another episode of the Let's Think About It podcast. I'm your host, Coach Mo. And I'm here with another amazing guest. And her name is Natalie

Meet Employment Lawyer Natalie Holder

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Holder. Natalie, how are you doing? I am well. How are you, Coach Moe? I'm doing great. I want to read your intro, though, and let my audience know about you and please elaborate. Natalie Holder is an employment lawyer who coaches professionals through workplace trauma to reinvention. Whether you have concerns about job security or are fatigued by being passed over, ignored, and underestimated at work, Natal helps to reveal the unseen path to a more fulfilling and impactful future. Natalie, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Thank you for having me as your guest.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Absolutely. Where are you checking in from?

SPEAKER_02 1:56

I am in sunny Maryland, Western Maryland, to be exact.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Oh, that is great. Born and raised there?

SPEAKER_02 2:04

No, not at all. So I am originally from New York. So I'm a good old northerner who decided to move south for things that Maryland offers.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

Absolutely. So tell us who you are, what you do, and the type of value that you bring.

SPEAKER_02 2:25

As you introduced me, I'm an employment lawyer. However, let's dig down a little bit more into that. So I am someone who always enjoyed helping people to craft better workplace environments, whether it was the employee or the employer. If it was the employer helping them to really get to a space where they were developing better policies, better practices, providing the training that created the expectation of really solid leadership for their people, for the employee. It was being smart about understanding who and where you can find your mentors and your sponsors. Why are these people important in the framework of how you're building your career and getting to a space of success? Because once again, when you know where the path is and you can find it, you get there much faster and you can traverse it much easily, much more easily. Beyond

Why Work Impacts Health Outcomes

SPEAKER_02 3:18

that, I am someone who enjoys nature. As I mentioned, I now live in Maryland and I am looking out my window right now, my office window, surrounded by beautiful berry trees, apple trees, and just once again, the breathtake, the breathtaking silence in essence of nature. So interestingly enough, I'm someone who enjoys watching gardening, but not so much a very successful gardener.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

That's great. So, but why? Why employment law? Why that?

SPEAKER_02 3:55

Yeah, that's a great question. I think it all stems from, you know, it's interesting. Recently I learned that employment, like your employment, that is a social determinant of health. And that kind of makes sense because if you are gainfully employed in this country, you most likely have access to better health care, better hospital systems, better healthcare systems. And I come from a family that is very much entrenched in the healthcare system. My mom was a registered nurse, but my uncle was a neurologist. And so being in a space of caring for people has been something I grew up with. Now, medicine wasn't exactly my path. However, still feeling that there was a way to help people, to get better outcomes and to live a better life, that is something I looked for within a career. And I'll admit I stumbled into employment law and really enjoyed it. It really resonated with me. And I think it's for all the reasons I just explained.

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Yeah, so you went the lawyer route, right? And you your focus in that segment of being a lawyer is employment law, right? What propelled you to take a deeper dive into it by coaching professionals in that space instead of do you work for a particular firm

Coaching Skills For Workplace Conflict

SPEAKER_01 5:20

that you work for, or do you own your own business, or are you independent and you're doing coaching for help? Give us some more insight. Absolutely how the picture of a lawyer coaches professionals.

SPEAKER_02 5:34

Absolutely. I must admit, I am someone who became a fan favorite of an organization called Coach Diversity. They've now rebranded for obvious reasons, and they are now named the Institute for Coaching Innovation. But they came out with this really big splashy presentation about maybe seven or eight years ago, in where I was enamored because it was the very first time that someone had actually looked at the gap in coaching and the whole idea that someone was even introducing this whole concept of coaching to me. So I'll admit, even though I was an employment lawyer, I was always that person who was either there to clean up the mess because an employee had unfortunately been laid off, terminated, or was being performance managed, or I was that person who was setting up the structures that would ensure that the workplace moves smoothly. However, there is that missing piece for me around how some people have access to coaching. I didn't realize that there were some people in the workplace who are given coaches because they're high performers, but these are people who might lack the ability to communicate with other people respectfully. These are people who might lack the ability to collaborate. These are people who might have some element of their capability to work with others that was missing. And so when Coach Diversity came out as this, as the first and only organization to coach people through workplace issues that looked at diversity as a skill set and really as a function of being able to do great work in the workplace, that really appealed to me. And so I reached out to the owner and I said, hey, I want to actually just audit your course. I don't know exactly what I'm getting into, but I just want to audit this and see what this is all about. And I sat in on one session, and that one session was about coaching the shadow is all about really listening to what's not being said, really listening to someone and hearing what they might not hear what they've been saying all these years to themselves, but you as the coach, and you're not supposed to go shadow hunting. However, I'll admit, it was something that really intrigued me. The whole idea that you're sitting there and you're hearing a story that someone may not realize that they've been telling themselves over and over again for years, that may be limiting how they see themselves, how they're performing, and how they're interacting with others. And so it was a perfect fit that as an employment lawyer, being able to add this coaching element to my work, because if I'm working with senior level professionals, I need to be hearing what's not being said in the meeting. I need to be hearing what people are concerned about, but they're not saying it. And most importantly, I need to be able to communicate that to other groups and to my team members at times. By some time, sometimes I understand what's happening because I'm listening to what's not being said out loud. And I'm able to ask the questions that get maybe two parties to get a little bit closer to an agreement, to some sort of collaboration, or in some way being able to work much more effectively. And so that's where I landed. So my coaching practice, I must admit, was really something I did for professional purposes. But it was something that I was enamored with and said, if this is something that can help me, I want to see how it would really impact our high performers who I know were at risk of losing. Our high performers who've been here for a number of years and might not feel as though they're advancing as quickly as they should. People who may one day be leading other people, making sure that they have the skill set to not just hear what's not being said, but to also know what to do with it. And so I put a cohort of people through the Coach Diversity seminars, and I got a few people certified as coaches in the organization for which I was working. Fast forward, where am I now? So, Coach Mo, you asked, okay, so where is Natalie now? I am now

Building Culture Through Compliance Systems

SPEAKER_02 9:35

the president and founder of Quest Employment Initiatives. It is my own organization. And we look at the compliance element of the workplace where it traverses with culture. So, as someone who worked as a chief diversity officer and as an employment lawyer, there is this great expanse in where if you are able to understand and foresee what are the employment law risks of an organization, you're much better able to help the organization to figure out how and where they should be patching the holes and more importantly, really creating and building up their infrastructure so that they're not harming their people. What does that look like? It's making sure that people managers have proper training, development, making sure that when people have workplace complaints, that they know where to go to with those complaints. Making sure that people understand that, look, when you file a complaint, the issue is not just simply going up into thin air. People create their own stories and fill in the gaps themselves when they feel as though, oh, I filed this complaint and I don't know what happened to it. It's making sure that the organizations I work with, the startups I'm working with, the startups that were founded by passion and desire, but now getting to a space where they're scaling up and they're hiring people, making sure that they are not landing on their people the wrong way.

SPEAKER_01 10:56

That's great. I love that. I love how there's the legal element, the compliance element meshing with the coaching element. And there's so many patterns that high performers carry that they're unaware of, and they consistently stay in their own way. And you being able to connect and bring both elements into the picture and help these leaders to start to shift. And particularly when you talk about culture and DEIB and these organizations, yeah, they want it, but their behaviors implement something differently. And they speak it, but their patterns are differently, right? So help me understand this. An organization, they reach out to you, right? And they want to be highly successful in the area of shifting their culture, DIB, blah blah blah, right? They want this because it's good for their ROI, looks good for the investors, blah, blah, blah, right? But their behaviors are actually different, right? And you come in and you can see it. How do you help those leaders at the top of the food chain shift their paradigm?

SPEAKER_02 12:25

I always said that being a chief diversity officer, and for those who are still in those roles, whether it's now the chief culture and inclusion and belonging officer, whether it's the chief, the chief outreach officer, those are some very difficult roles. Why? Because just what you said, Coach Mo, these are the roles where you are hired to create an outcome that no one really wants. I must admit, you're being hired for an outcome. And when I say the outcome, I'm not saying that people don't want an environment that's diverse and that is inclusive. But what I'm saying is it's the work that's required to get to those outcomes. It's the honesty that it takes to get to those outcomes, it's the vulnerability and being able to say that you don't know what you don't know about how you're impacting different pockets of your organization. And so when organizational leaders do have that schism in where they're not moving forward with the kind of inclusiveness, with the kind of listening and understanding, and with the ability to really move across their organization in such a way that they're creating trust. Because at the end of the day, that's all inclusion, equity, and diversity work is all about. It's really about creating that trust with your people. That's the conversation, that's the hard conversation I have with founders, with startup leaders, to help them create what I call the mirror, to hold a mirror up to them and to identify this is the organization and this is how I'm seeing it. And this is the reason why I'm the kind of person

Holding Up The Mirror With Data

SPEAKER_02 13:55

that you want to bring in if you are a chief diversity officer, because you can't have this conversation with your founders. It's someone like me who, yes, I'm going to tell them and have the hard conversations with them. I'm going to create the assessments and the diagnostics to show how and where they're showing up for their people. I'm creating the and I'm hosting the focus groups. That's one great thing about tech startups, they love data. And I give them data the way that they can read it and appreciate it and understand it. When I present them with qualitative and quantitative data to show how they are showing up for their people, that then helps them to create more of an objective shift. It's not just simply person A or B having this concern. If they collectively can see as an organization that they have certain areas of room for improvement or opportunities for growth, that's where you're really able to have the meaningful conversations around the data.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Okay, that's great. I'm gonna I want to go a little deeper though. And here's what I'm gonna ask you. You have a chief officer, a chief diversity officer, for example. Maybe they're a nonprofit and they don't exactly have the budget right now to reach out for your services. But they're struggling with trust issues because maybe the founder, maybe the board of governors, whatever, they brought them in just for outward facing. That's why they brought them in for outward facing to show society, hey, look, we have a chief diversity officer and we're doing diversity work, but internally they're not doing that. The person that's a chief officer is really struggling because they can't get their peers, founder, people above their head, the board members on in alignment with what they're trying to do to create more diversity, inclusion, equitability, excuse me, but inclusion within the organization. But they don't have a budget to really necessarily reach out to you for that support. What's one step that you would advise them to take if they're in that situation to start to formulate trust?

SPEAKER_02 16:25

I actually want to give two pieces of advice. So for that person who is finding that they might be sidelined, as you said, the intentions of the organization might not have been true and pure as to why this person was truly brought on board. This is where it's really important that when you're in any role, that you understand how you impact the organization. But most importantly, how you could advance the organization's mission and ultimately what the organization values. So if you're a for-profit, obviously you're looking at PL. You're looking at how do you create more sales, profits, and opportunity. With a nonprofit, the question is, how are you also able to help with generating interest from donors? How are you able to show that you that your work can help generate interest in grants? When I sat in the chief diversity officer role, I was helpful in bringing in over $61 million to an organization by way of creating the work that many of my scientists could then lean on and promote when they were filing for their own grants. My office alone had a half million dollar grant given to us. Why? Because we were very much enmeshed in the work of the mission of the organization, but ultimately what granters saw as valuable. So I would say to that CDO who is feeling in some way sidelined, it's to really do a deep dive and do your own work to understand how do you impact this organization? How does this organization function such that you could be that interruption piece to show the value that you bring? There's this debate as to whether or not the business case for diversity is something that is legitimate, whether it's something that even needs to be made. I

When DEI Is Only For Show

SPEAKER_02 18:12

do feel that in any organization, that any time that they're expending any sort of resources, you do have to make a case for why your initiative is something that requires attention. And so it does behoove you to, once again, make a case or to really align yourself with what the organization values and to really set it up as a story as to where you're that crucial piece for making it happen. As I mentioned, there's another piece of advice that I would highly recommend. I'd also do some scoping work. I would take a look at how are other organizations that are similarly situated, how are they structured? Because if you're saying you don't have the money for it, look, that which we pay for is that which we value. If you don't have money for something, then you really have to dig deep and say, is this something that you truly have valued? When we need that new support, we find the money for it. When we need that new software program, we find the money for it. The question is, if you're talking about values and culture work, what is it that you can really position by way of scoping and doing some benchmarking with other organizations to show this is what it takes in order to launch this initiative? When I was in law enforcement, I was an office of one and a budget of none initially. And I went out there and I did the benchmarking. I looked at other agencies and I brought the data together to show this is what we should look like based on who we have, based on the number of officers that we have, and based on who we serve. And ultimately, this is how we impact the organization if we're able to have more resources in this space. By the time I left, I had a budget of over half a million dollars and I had four people reporting into me. So it's once again, how do you set up the framework to really show that this is something that the organization should value? I would say one of the unintended consequences of the DEI backlash that we're seeing today, it's that a lot of these organizations have already really dug deep to understand, all right, so how does this role really help us? And the really smart culture and inclusion officers, they did the homework and they really showed: look, I can help you make money, I can help you gain customers, I can help you keep customers, I can help you appeal to grantors, I can also help you appeal to your base. And so that's how and why you'll see that some of these roles didn't disappear. They really were morphed into something that is so much more entrenched in the organization. It's like the die was cast. So it was no longer the standalone, oh, we have a chief diversity officer. No, it is now this person is like the die that is in the water, that is inseparable from our organization.

SPEAKER_01 21:03

Yeah, let's help me help our audience understand what is the true value in bringing diversity into organizations and having an officer chief overseeing that. What's the true value of doing that and why should more organizations, in your opinion, invest more into diversity that way?

SPEAKER_02 21:27

So when I think about diversity, I really mean it from a very pure sense of the word diversity. So there are some people who use the word diverse to indicate race or gender, or people who are historically underrepresented. I step away from that. I really look at the word diversity in

Funding Trust Work With Business Value

SPEAKER_02 21:46

its true Merriam-Webster's definition, which really means a compilation of differences that you are bringing to an organization. And in any organization today that is working on a global scale, even organizations that are Local, you want to make sure that you have people in your organization who can work well together, people who understand the clients that you're working with. I recently decided to do a little bit of a rebrand with one of my websites, and I really pushed in on the whole idea of if you are losing people, you are most likely losing customers too. Because the way you treat your people oftentimes translates into how your people are treating your customers. And so if you're in an environment in where inclusion, in where respect, and where civility, and where collegiality are not in any way of value, it shows up in terms of the language that people use, in terms of people feeling checked out of the organization. I'm sure, Coach Mo, I can ask you the question: have you ever worked in an organization in where you did not feel valued?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

That is the essence of diversity, equity, and inclusion work, making sure that everyone feels valued in the organization.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

Absolutely. And that's where I talk a lot about my swag framework, self-awareness, white power, aligned action, and grit. And when I say self-awareness, you feel the triggers when your values are off, when something isn't really meshing right within the organization. And what causes our swag to be off, we feel it, but we ignore it and we don't take action to it. And so we become distracted by the inner critic. And the inner critic is always loud because doubt is present, maybe fear, maybe hesitancy, all of these types of draining emotions is present and it becomes a distraction, indulged into that distraction, and you forget about your purpose. And so without purpose, your value alignment is off and you feel it within the organization, and then you try to ignore it and just to push through and grind harder, but something is always off. And so I can imagine the work that you do now is you help create that alignment. And when you come to these organizations to help create that alignment, what's that process? What's your, and I don't want to, you don't have to give all your secrets, but what in general, what's that process to help these leaders get back in alignment?

SPEAKER_02 24:35

So my process normally starts, and I have to admit, when the house is on fire. So when you're a founder, when you're a startup, you're often not thinking about culture and inclusion work. You're thinking about, oh my gosh, we just got hit with some kind of complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the government agency that will investigate as well as file a complaint of discrimination, harassment, and retaliation against your company on your employees' behalf. And organizations that are startups that are really just trying to be quick and nimble oftentimes don't have in-house counsel or even external counsel. So that's where they reach out to me as an employment lawyer who's able to help them with these issues under privilege. That's really the opening gate in where we say, hey, if we've had this complaint, this just might be the canary in the coal mine to letting us know what else is happening in the culture. As you mentioned with your swag framework, swag doesn't just get lost overnight, and swag doesn't just get developed overnight. It is a period of time. It's like beach erosion, in where there might be that manager, that supervisor, that coworker who is saying or doing something that over time is chipping away at the confidence and the capability and the interest of members of that team. And when I come in through the compliance lens where I'm investigating an issue, where I am coming up with the remedial actions, that's really where I'm able to start the

EEOC Risks And Preventing Public Fallout

SPEAKER_02 26:05

conversation now. Okay, this is where we started, but let's also make sure that this doesn't happen in the future. Let's protect your company, what you've built, what you've invested in over time to make sure that you've got something that is valuable that no one can attack again. And I'm not in any way saying that you're never going to get another complaint, but at least you're going to find that the complaints will most likely be internal as opposed to external. Why is that a big difference? The moment a complaint becomes external, you as the startup founder, you as the employer, you've lost control over the ability to investigate it yourself and to resolve the issue internally and to keep it quiet. Once a matter is filed with the EEOC, it's a part of the public record. You can now show up in press releases. You can now show up in all parts of public media, not in the way you expected or wanted. And so that's why I say to really smart founders, let's do the compliance work on the front end and build out your processes. You've got the employee handbook, you've got your NDAs, your non-disclosure agreements, you've got your complaint mechanism. But let's go a step further now and start looking at the culture and inclusion work and the belonging work to make sure that we don't have any actors in the organization that don't understand the expectations that you have for ensuring that your organization is innovative and profitable.

SPEAKER_01 27:32

I love that. Your company is doing amazing work. Thank you. I really do thank you for being present here and just sharing this wealth of knowledge and nuggets. How can my audience find you?

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Thank you so much, Coach Mo. It's been a pleasure being on your show and thank you for asking so many great questions. People can find me at so if you are a startup or founder and you are looking to even find out whether or not you have any risks right now in your organization, I say, take my assessment. It's free. It's it takes less than 10 minutes, sorry, less than two minutes. It's at quest EI.org. So Q-U-E-S-T-E-I.org. For organizations that are really looking for something that will stoke the fires of being able to have the bigger conversation around how and where culture impacts how your people are feeling in the organization and how your customers are experiencing your organization, really making sure that you keep the right people in your organization and looking at retention. I speak on this issue, and I'd be happy to be a keynote speaker or workshop leader. And you can find me at Natalie HolderSpeaks.com.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Nice. Tell us a little bit more about the assessment.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

So the assessment to understand what are your risks around employment issues asks you questions around do you have an internal complaint mechanism? Do you have a lot of people who are minors in your organization? What kind of training are you offering to your people? These are some of the bright line areas that unfortunately founders sometimes miss because they're building it fast. They're building the plane fast while they're they're getting in the plane as they're building it. And unfortunately, these nitty-gritty issues, unfortunately, sometimes go missed. However, it's really easy, in my opinion, to start setting up the structure once you know about it. And once you're working with someone who's really good at being able to not just identify it for you, but to help you understand why this is a good investment of your time and your effort.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

That's awesome. I appreciate you sharing. I also do an assessment. I do the burnout mirror assessment, and that kind

Free Risk Assessment And Closing Advice

SPEAKER_01 29:45

of spits out an archetype of the types of burnout that you may potentially be carrying. So I like to promote that as well. But thank you for coming on this show. Any lasting thoughts that you would like to share before we sign off?

SPEAKER_02 30:02

So important to be kind to each other. That's the one thing I would just share. And as you mentioned, the importance of just recognizing the patterns. Understand what patterns you have been ignoring that are going to show up in the next organization if you don't handle them right now.

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Absolutely. There it is. Thank you, Natalie. I really do appreciate you. Thank you, Coach Will. That's another rep in the inner arena. You didn't just listen, you leveled up your swag. Self-awareness, why power, aligned action, and grit. If this hit home, share it, subscribe to the Let's Think About It podcast, and lock in with me on YouTube at Swag Coaching. Until next time, stay aware, lead with your why, act in alignment, and keep your grid strong.