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Rethink Culture is the podcast that shines the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. Virtually all of the business leaders who make headlines today do so because of their company performance. Yet, the people and the culture of a company is at least as important as its performance. It's time that we shine the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture and are putting people and culture at the forefront.
Andreas: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening. Welcome to another episode of Rethink Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on leaders of businesses that people love to work for. My name is Andreas Konstantinou. I'm your host and I see myself as a micromanager who turned servant leader and, in the process, developed a personal passion for workplace culture. At Rethink Culture we're on a mission to help 1 million businesses create a healthier, more fulfilling culture at work. And we do that by helping you measure your culture so you can manage it. Today, I have the pleasure of welcoming a friend and a colleague and someone who is very accomplished on the area of culture, who is Natacha Neumann. Natacha is based in Berlin, and she is the founder and manager of Erdbär, a company dedicated to marketing healthy snacks for kids under the brand Freche Freunde. If I pronounce this correctly, which means cheeky friends in German. Her personal goal, when founding the company, is to improve the eating habits of children. And she has transformed the culture of the organization using a self-managed structure inspired by Holacracy, which will tell us more about. She has since sold this business, and she's now working on a few projects which are a labour of love, as she tells me. So getting leaders to become more conscious about their leadership style and the organizations they're building. She's working on a coaching company. She's working in a private equity vehicle to transform company culture. And she's also helping improve the educational system in Germany. So fingers in many pies. Plus, she's also the proud mother of three beautiful children. She has lived in ten countries, and she has also graduated from the Cordon Bleu School of Cuisine. So she's also a chef. So we can get to talk about leadership and cooking. So very welcome to the Rethink Culture podcast, Natacha.
Natacha: Thank you so much, Andreas. Lovely to be here.
Andreas: So, so many questions and I don't know where to start, but I guess we should start from, telling us a little bit about the company you founded, Erdbär, and more importantly, help us understand a little bit about yourself and the journey you took, where you grew up. And what were your childhood influences that helped you become who you are today?
Natacha: Okay, so I'll, I'll start at the beginning. I grew up, as you just said, in a lot of different countries. So I was moving, pretty much every few years. Which for me showed me different perspectives, showed me, taught me to, to adapt very fast. So I'm very, very thankful for, for, for that experience. My parents, my father was in corporate finance, and eventually also founded his own company. So he taught me a lot of values of hard work, responsibility, achievement. And to balance that out my mother was a stay-at-home mum that had the biggest heart. And, you know, taught me, taught me the power of unconditional love. So that's a little bit of the environment in which I grew. And, so I went, I went to study, and I did most of my education in English despite the fact that I'm French, I'm originally French. And I started in business. I had a master's in business, in the UK, and then in Spain, worked in the corporate world for, for a while. Because that was the thing that you did after doing an MBA. You got a job at a multinational company and a graduate program, and I did that for a while and eventually realized it's all fine. There's nothing too bad with. It's all fine. But I'm not fulfilling my needs and my values of having an impact. Nah, I mean, I felt like just a pawn in a very, very big game, and I was implementing other people's ideas. I wasn't having true impact. I didn't feel a sense of autonomy, or of freedom that I could, really, do what I wanted to do. So, based on these two things, I quit the day job and, and went in a bit of a soul searching, which after, a bit of a process and trying different things, including cooking school, I ended up by, by founding my own company, Freche Freunde in Germany. I was, at the time of quitting my job, I was still living in Mexico, so I found my way back to Europe via Switzerland and then landed here in, in Berlin, and founded, founded Freche Freunde with a purpose. Yeah. For me, it was. I never founded to get rich or successful. I founded to have this impact and this purpose of getting kids to have healthy eating habits for, for life seemed to be the most worthwhile purpose I could follow. And it was a simple rationale of, you know, what's the most important thing in the world? The most important thing is, was for me, at the time, health. What's the most important thing in health? It's nutrition. And what's the best way to impact intuition? Let's start with the children.
Andreas: Were you a mother at that time?
Natacha: I was not a mother yet, so this was really just a thinking process. Yeah? I was cognitively thinking, where can I have the greatest impact in this world? And that took me to, took me, to children's nutrition.
Andreas: And how did that purpose change as you became a mother? Or how did your focus change as you became a mother?
Natacha: I'm not sure my focus changed. I mean, obviously it broadened. I was looking at it very much on just nutrition and I think good habits. I would probably take out the word, habits. Developing the good, the right, you know, good mindset as a child for lifelong habits of, you know, being happy and being, fulfilled in life. I think that's changed over the time. But the focus for the company stayed, you know, stayed nutrition because obviously a company purpose needs to stay very, very focused. And, and exactly and grew that within Germany. And it was, you know, I was also very lucky I came and founded the company when the market was very, very, ripe for it. I started a new category. So I had first mover advantage in a new category where the market was ripe. So, you know, success was almost, almost guaranteed. Even if I had messed up and I did a lot of mistakes along the way, as I'm sure a lot of entrepreneurs also do. But I, I, I learned a lot and, you know, step by step and, and thanks to a very thankful market, the company grew and grew and grew and grew.
Andreas: How fast did it grow? And I think you also started the business with your husband, right? Which is also interesting.
Natacha: Exactly. Yeah. So I started with my, my, my husband because we... he had a similar feeling. So he started having similar feelings after me. I quit my job about a year before him. But he also started to have, I think that's been a secret of our relationship. We go through similar phases very much because we have very open conversations and we philosophize a lot about life and where, where things are going. So he ended up by a very similar position by me, feeling the frustration of, of lack of impact and, and autonomy. So, yeah. So it was it seems like a logical thing to, to found this company together, which has been also one of the, you know, one of the greatest decision in in my life to, to have my, my partner, my, my better half also, my business partner, that's been a secret to, to part of our success as well. And the company grew. Yeah. You see how fast it grew? It grew very... I mean, in the first couple years, we were just the two of us. I mean, we were bootstrapped. I mean, we've got angel investors, but still, considering how fast we were growing, you know, we had less than a million in funding in the first years. And for that, you know, getting into 3000 markets and developing multiple products and, and then, quickly, quickly the team having to build a team around that. So, quickly, we were six, seven, eight, and then we were on television, the equivalent to a shark tank, here in Germany. And then business doubled again overnight. And, and then, you know, doubled again the next year. And it was basically, continuous, continuous reinventing ourselves as a company, reinventing myself, my role as a founder and leader, and a very steep learning curve.
Andreas: Something I appreciate in you, Natacha, is your very balanced leadership style, which is you balance female energy with male energy. You're very understanding and compassionate, but you are also very firm and focused and demanding. How, like, do you consciously see these two leadership styles in yourself?
Natacha: I, I changed over the time. So I told you earlier about my parents, which embody probably the typical, I'd say, male and female energy. And my father being very, very, old generation, male type of leadership. And, and my mother, on the other extreme of the spectrum, having a lot of empathy, and, but I was not always this way, so I, I think, also growing up in, in a world of, of men. Yeah. I mean, I have an older brother and most of my friends in school were, were, were men. I went to business school. So I was surrounded, probably male, more by what we traditionally know by the, the, the male energy or what's recognized as, the, the old way of leadership. That's what I had turned into. Yeah. I mean, I had to prove myself as a woman in a business world. So I was tough. Yeah, I was tough because it was expected of me to be tough because weakness and emotions were not allowed. And I've only actually got in touch with my female energy through the transformation of my company. I realized getting in touch with that part of me that somehow, I had, I had lost touch with, and I often say I'm thankful for that. I'm thankful that I started as a woman more from the male energy, because maybe that made it more easy for me to get back in touch with the things that make me a woman. Probably more so than men. I don't know, I'd put it out there as a hypothesis, but this is something. Yeah. This is something I learned over, over the time. Being able to, I mean, I used to split very much, and this sounds crazy because I've found it with my husband, but I used to very much split my personal life from my work life, my emotional life, from my functional life. And it's the moment that I discovered that I can't be split. Otherwise, you're splitting yourself. You are cutting yourself in two. That I realized that the power of actually doing that, the power actually, being, having emotion at work and the power that it creates and human connections through being, being open, being emotional, not putting up walls. But this is. Yeah, this is something I had to learn.
Andreas: So you found the benefits, you saw the benefits in integrating the female style of leadership with a male style of leadership, or female energy and male emerging leadership. Right? This is what I'm hearing.
Natacha: But. And it took a lot of courage. It took a lot of courage because, probably several things society doesn't, doesn't necessarily, hasn't shown to reward that, firstly. And secondly, well, the male form of leadership had served me well. And it got me to where I was, you know, I was at that point, I was already, yeah, I founded a very successful company. So, yeah, going back on these old, old habits and changing definitely took a lot of courage.
Andreas: How important is this balance of male and female energy in leadership when it comes to conscious leaders? That is a topic you're passionate about.
Natacha: I think it's, I think is super important. And I, I try and not talk about it necessarily in male and female because I think it gets, yeah, it gets, it's that it gets stigmatized. It's. Yeah. Women should be female, and men should be males. So I think that's super important to say. I completely understand what you mean by it. I use those terms as well. I try not to always use them because I feel as there's a stigma there. It's for me, what we're now talking about for the female, energy, it's very much this being in touch with other people. Being in touch with oneself first, first of all, I mean, it's the source of consciousness. It's firstly being able to reflect and, and get to those emotions, being able to recognize my own needs behind those emotions. And then through that, really being able to, to connect with other people. And that connecting can only happen once I've connected to myself. And I can only lead other people once I've managed to lead myself. And I can only do that if I have firstly, understand who am I, what am I thinking, what am I feeling and what am I wanting. And it sounds very I mean, it sounds very basic. It is actually very basic. I, I do think it's, it's how we were born and it's going back to somehow our natural, natural way of being, but because of everything that happens in the growing up process, and I'm, I'm seeing it now incredibly with my, with my children, I've got, I've got a... one of my children is currently becoming a teenager. And this switch that happens between childhood, where everything is possible, there's no limits to imagination. There was a natural self-confidence. There's a deep-rooted goodness. Yeah? And, feeling for other people, this somehow gets a little bit destroyed as we turn to adults and it's, I experience it, I say, with my own children so I don't think as we as parents have the sole responsibility. I mean, it's the environment in which they're growing up. It's the schools in which they're growing up. It's,
Andreas: You know, we have in society I think we have created the conditions inadvertently for, us to become, functional and high performance individuals, and focus on output and outcome rather than, knowing ourselves and being in touch with ourselves and being reflective of or reflecting on who we are and how we are showing up, how we're, what impact we're making, everyday into the world. And for some, some reason, this has all been, down, down-prioritized for performance and output, which actually, is very close to the calling of the podcast. And, like most leaders, the vast majority of leaders, if not all the all the all the leaders that are praised in mainstream media, as I was, describing to you before we started recording. They're praised because they are achieving, exits, building technology, creating things that other people admire for the output of their company. This is what they're, admired for that very, very rarely, if at all for, the empathy, the culture they're building, the org in their organizations, for, the conditions that create for their staff to love the work that they do and to make sure that they bring their best selves to work. And that work gives them meaning, inspiration. And they return home to it with a smile, and they make a positive impact to their families and their communities. So again, it's a very similar parallel between performance and connection.
Natacha: Yeah, yeah. That's the. You know, at some point in the Industrial Revolution, it made sense that we create humans that conform and just produce. In our day and age we need to go back to what makes us human, especially with the AI taking over all those manual processes. We need to relearn to be the children now. To be, to be creative, to be, to be human, to have human connections. And I love the fact that you say leaders are recognized for the wrong things. And I want to share with you a very personal story. When I sold a large part of the shares of my company, before my transformational, before transforming the culture, a lot of people congratulated me, said, that's amazing. You know, you've reached what a lot of entrepreneurs try and reach. You've got that gold, you know, achieved. And I felt so terrible, you know, the more people were congratulating me, the worse I was feeling, the more I felt like I haven't achieved anything. Yeah, I've got now a few euros in my bank account. Who cares? Yeah? This is not what I set off to do. And this is not what has a real impact. And it was one of the triggers of really going for, really going for a cultural change within the company because I said, I want to leave this, this company with my head up high, that I've done something good in this world, that I've done something good for the people here. And I left the company years later with the head up high, feeling so proud. Nobody congratulating me anymore. Yeah. It was. Who cares? Yeah, this was the. I had an... the important things I had achieved before. Yeah. High growth and, professional success. But I was, I was I, I went out with my head high saying now I've done good. Now I can go.
Andreas: And a view, this as a view we rarely hear. Right? Because I also congratulated you earlier on selling your company. And at the same time I was thinking, you know, okay, how meaningful is that? And, how much less meaningful to actually making an impact to the lives of people. So talking about making an impact to the lives of people, what was the eureka moment if there was one or inflection point that led you to change the culture at Erdbär?
Natacha: So it was a process. Yeah. I'm not sure there was one magical moment or there were probably several magical moments. I went through, through a couple of years of feeling that something is not something's not right. Yeah? I couldn't really put my finger on it. Yeah. I, I often voice that as, you know, as traditional managers would voice it. The team is not doing what I want them to do. Yeah. Which now sounds ridiculous, even saying things like that. But I hear it a lot from leaders. Yeah, I'm not the problem. It's the team that's not, not doing what they need to be doing. That we weren't. Yeah, we were something. Something wasn't feeling right. Yeah, it wasn't working like I had envisaged. And it wasn't fulfilling. Not what I truly wanted. I mean, I had founded for, for, for more impact and for more autonomy and the company was super dependent on me, firstly, I mean, if I had left then, surely a lot of things would have crumbled down. So yeah, this is not a sustainable impact that I was having with this company. Plus I didn't have any autonomy. I mean, I was, you know, all the big decisions were coming back to me or my husband. We were rarely going on holiday and if at all, obviously with a laptop in one hand and the iPhone in the other, you know, I hardly, hardly had time to take time off when I gave birth to my three children. So this is. Yeah, this. I founded for other things. I had got something else. I got actually the opposite. So I tried a lot of different things and a lot of different things I tried, they were, they were putting just a plaster on it. Yeah? I tried different management structures and, leading my management team in another way. And I implemented things like EOS, all these kinds of things. Yeah, I was just trying and none of it was really working. And one day I went to a talk and somebody was talking about, I think was Holacracy already, or somebody was talking about Holacracy, and I was like, what, this exists? You know, I mean, I'm, I'm a management book junkie. Yeah. And I hadn't heard about Holacracy. I've got two business master’s, and I hadn't heard about self-managed structures, which I find ridiculous today. So I got interested by it, and I read Laloux' Reinventing Organizations. I think from that point onwards, there was no turning back. There was no turning back. As I, you know, it's like when you, you, you see, you see the trick in an illusion. And once you see that, you understand the trick behind it, you can't see the illusion anymore. That's, that's how it felt. So there was no turning back. And then I went for a time of reading as much as I could. Yeah, there were obviously books, a lot of books already out there. So I read a lot, and I, exchanged with a lot of peers through the Entrepreneurs' Organization, found individuals that had tried implementing self-managed structures. I talked to a lot of people that thought they had self-managed structures and actually didn't. It was also fascinating to see how, how, different people understood, yeah, all these buzzwords of new work and, and human culture and self-leadership and Holacracy. But anyway. And that was for me the point I was like, okay, things need to I need to this is how I need to change things in my company.
Andreas: And how much trial and error did it take?
Natacha: It was, so at first, I didn't know how we would get there. Yeah. And that's also part of the process. You don't know how you're going to get there. So at the beginning, I said to everybody, hey, guys, team, you know, we were about 80 people. We are from tomorrow onwards, there's no more, there's no more management. There's no more hierarchy. There's no more boss. There's a redistribution of power. And you know, you are getting it back and you can make decisions and you are running this company as much as I am, as much as management team is and, you know, explaining all the, you know, the beautiful things behind it. And what that did is, everybody broke down into panic because they didn't, they didn't understand, you know, they didn't understand what does, what does that mean? Or what does that mean for me? And what is actually going to change? And how do we, you know, even if they did understand cognitively and emotionally what that meant, which a few did, but not many, it was still unclear what that would mean for a way of working. So this was the trial and error of the first phase of setting up change agents’ groups. And I wanted to, you know, empower people to, to figure out how are we going to be, how are we going to be different, how are we going to be doing things differently? But they weren't there yet. They weren't they weren't able to take those decisions because they hadn't learned how to take decisions, and they didn't know. Yeah, okay. But we're talking about things. But who's fundamentally saying this is the way it's going to be? How do we make collective decisions? So yeah, there was a big phase of trial and error, I'd say, of chaos, at the beginning, until we found, until we found Holacracy, then implemented. And that's why I often say we are not a Holacracy because a Holacracy is a process. It's a structure. And we implemented that structure, which is great, especially if you have you know, we were getting a lot of frustrations from the chaos as this trial and error had, had generated. So Holacracy gave us a very clear, you know, this is how things are structured and how rules are defined, and this is how meetings are done. And this is how we make decisions. But Holacracy is just, it's just a process. Yeah. It's really just a structure. So we implemented that, but it still things, the magic was still not happening. This is where a lot of people I see, and I've talked to a lot of people that have tried, implemented, implementing self-management and have given back, given up. They go back to old ways because it doesn't work. And this is the point where a lot of people give up because they say, well, we've done we've done the ten steps of implementation and it still doesn't work, because the fundamental thing to change is how we how we are, how we see each other, how we see ourselves, how we, how we dare to take initiative, how we dare to say, you know what, I don't know, or I can't do this, or I don't trust to take this decision. I don't trust myself right now, or, I have a conflict with you, and I can't work with you. And we need before this and this is sorted out. And that's the important work. And that happened afterwards. And that's. Yeah, that was obviously a process. Yeah. Because we're talking about personal development. We're talking about fundamentally changing the way we see ourselves, see others and, and interact. But this is where the magic started happening. And by magic, I mean, yeah.
Andreas: Yeah. So do, tell us what the magic is, and I have a question in mind. But please
Natacha: For me the magic is, and I'll give you an example, is seeing somebody that's, you know, been sitting on their desk for years doing their, the processes as they've been described and just doing that quietly and clocking in and clocking out. And you know, they're doing their work and they're doing good work seeing that from going from there to speaking up to changing things to starting new initiatives to, to voicing, you know, the elephant in the room to creating long term, yeah, long term change for interpersonal relationships, but also for, you know, the way we move forward as a company, that's the magic. Yeah. That's the magic. Seeing those people really get out of there. You know, I put my head down to work and no, I look up and see and be and change things around me so that they fit to how I need, how I need to work. And that's, that's amazing.
Andreas: What I hear is seeing people change from followers to leaders, from culture fits to culture adds.
Natacha: Exactly. And it's funny because people think, okay, in Holacracy you don't have leaders or in self-manage, you don't have leaders. And I say, no, we don't have a few. We have absolutely everybody in the company as a leader. Yeah. I mean, if we have leadership training, then the whole company's taking place because everybody's a leader, a leader of themselves and a leader of their peers.
Andreas: So for those who are not familiar with holacracy and are listening, how would you describe how the company's different to a traditional business?
Natacha: So we don't have a hierarchy, we're structured in, it's a rule-based structure. So, as opposed to having a position or a job description, there are rules which are described according to their accountabilities or their responsibilities and their purpose. Everything is purpose based. And, in a self-loved company. And these roles are then formed into circles where combined roles help to meet the same purpose, so. And you can have many roles. Yeah. I, I'm, I'm passionate about a lot of different topics. So I loved having, you know, a creative role, and a finance role. I love numbers, and I love, I love, I love branding and creativity. So it allows for me, one of the biggest magic of it is allows people to really have roles that fit their strength. It has really strength based self-leadership, strength-based leadership, where I can, but I need the safety to do that and say, you know what? I'm not good at the numbers, so I'd rather not do the part of, I shouldn't be doing the part of analysis, financial analysis, for example. Somebody else should do that, that loves that, that really thrives on that. And I should be spending more of my time, maybe on a more, yeah, communicative or creative thing because this is where I thrive. And yeah, everybody has the chance to pick roles where they can, they are really working within their strengths. And as a result, there's none of this like, you know, what we see in and in most jobs, this pain of having to do half your job because half of it is, is not fitting to what you like or who you are as a person.
Andreas: And if you don't have managers, how do you deal with making decisions doing performance reviews and coaching?
Natacha: Yeah. So we have a very clear decision-making process. So it is so that if it's my responsibility and it doesn't affect anybody else, then I make the decision. So it doesn't, doesn't matter what it is. You know I am not saying as a leader to the company, as just a person within my role, as a leader, as a person within my role I can make the decisions. It's my accountability. If I see that as a conflict because of it? I don't know. It would be good for me as a salesperson to give a discount to a customer, but this discount might negatively affect my colleague who's also a salesperson because their customer is going to get wind of it. How do I deal with that? We have a very, very clear, integrative decision process where, where conflicts get forth and in order to be able to do that, we need to have the psychological safety that everybody can speak, speak their mind, speak their needs, speak their feelings. And then we come to a decision based on consent. And consent means, we worked out something that works out well without anybody having a, yeah, I, I'm looking for the word. I've got it in German in my head and nobody, nobody having something against this decision. So you have the... if you have a good reason against the decision, then we still need to work on it. And if you don't have a good reason against, then, it's safe, and it's safe enough to try. And we, we work very much on the principle of good enough for now, safe enough to try. So we don't need to figure things out to 100%. It's okay if it's a, it's if it's a work in progress. And as long as it's safe, let's try it. And if worst case we fail and we try again and, and we adapt through that, we managed to make so, so many decisions. And I mean our, you know, our tactical meetings, had on average like 20 decisions being made. Yeah. And with everybody coming out of it saying, I feel good about every single one of these decisions, I can stand behind every single one of these decisions. And if something doesn't work out, yeah, it'll get voiced again and we'll look at what we need to tweak. So it allows us to be very, very adaptable, very fast. I say the decisions are made in the role themselves. Very often it doesn't even need to go to meetings because I'm making decisions, because I'm empowered in my role to make a decision. And these are the things that are being discussed. It might have a negative impact on somebody else or to make sure that we come to even a better solution, because maybe in my expertise, I can only come to… I can’t come to a fully, defined decision. And I think that's the magic of it as well, getting this collective intelligence into the decision process.
Andreas: Which we often miss. And yeah, I have this example of a president in our organization that had made a wrong staffing decision because they didn't fully understand the role. And as a result, you know, they didn't consult basically, everyone involved. And as a result, they essentially, trying to be careful not to name the person, or not to be obvious about who it is. But as a result, I think it was a very poor staffing decision that will be cancelled next year. And that's, that's because, you know, they didn't really understand, they didn't consult and, they thought they assumed they knew.
Natacha: Yeah. That often happens. Yeah. Because. And, I mean, I was a long time a leader like that. I thought I know better. Yeah, I've been here the longest. I've gained experience that I know better. And the moment I started realizing I don't. Yeah. I mean, everybody else in this room knows better as well. Yeah? And once you're open to that, that's where, you know, this is, this is where really this collective intelligence can play a role and, and better decisions get made.
Andreas: Yeah. I think, one of my favourite quotes is, the problem with communication, is the illusion that's already taking place, I think it is by George Bernard Shaw. I was listening today to a podcast that was saying communication is what happens between people, between things, between organizations. It's that in between that's the key. It's not one person starts talking, another person starts listening. It's a joint activity. And it requires two people for listening to take place, not just one. Moving on to other topics, what were some of the mistakes you made along the way, and you learned from? And what did you learn from those mistakes?
Natacha: How long do you have? I made a lot of mistakes. I mean, you know, especially this transformational journey, it was a self-transformational journey as well as transforming the company. So, you know, I was making a mistake and then learning a lot from it. Whether it's. Yeah, we just talked about communication. I was in communica... I spent a long time not communicating enough, because I thought, well, should be obvious or even in the transformation period. I was thinking our culture is based on trust. Yeah. Just trust me. Yeah. You don't. You don't need to know everything. Just trust me. Obviously. Very... How can they trust me if they're not hearing what I truly, feel and think? So that was, yeah, that was one of the many, I think often trying to be and when we talked earlier about the male and female energy, often trying to be too tough yeah, too tough on myself very often more so than too tough on other people. Yeah. And being able to say, hey, I don't, I don't know, I can't solve this. I don't know where this is going to go. And for me, that was that we were reaching an inflection point of our, our, cultural change when Covid hit, for example. And for me that was one of my bravest moments there, you know, we were in a, in a food company. So logistics was a huge issue. We couldn't go into supermarkets anymore. Our supply chain was really struggling. And yeah, I'm basically telling the company, I don't know, I'm also scared. I'm scared. The only thing I do know is that we are together, and we will find a solution, because we always do. But what exactly the solution is and how we'll get over it, I don't know, I just know that we'll get over it. And that was a very, you know, that was, that for me it shows a lot of like what I had done. Yeah? What I had learned before, not able to show that vulnerability or that weakness. Yeah. And, and also a lot of mistakes in, in, in operational stuff. I mean, that's, that it seems like it's not so important, you know, when you're saying, okay, it's more important to be emotional and to be able to talk and communicate to people. But if you're what you're doing in the operations is not reflecting that, if there's a contradiction then that's why I always say it needs a good balance of, of the mindset and the way of being and also how the company is either structured or your processes or how your operations are, because otherwise they clash and otherwise you're sending the wrong message.
Andreas: Natacha, there's so much to talk about. But as usual there's only this much time we can, we can have the pleasure of discussing here and talking about culture. So, as we wrap, I have a couple of questions for you. Firstly, you've been on this journey of transforming yourself and transforming the culture in your company. If you look at leaders today who are less intentional about their culture, what would you say to them? What would they have to rethink?
Natacha: They'd have to rethink their own importance. I think that the moment that I realized that I'm not all important in my company. Yeah, that it's not my baby. And I think that's also very much. I see a lot of parallels with parenting, yeah? I think maybe a few leaders could, you know, that our parents, could see that as well, through their role as parents. You know, you have a whole different way of being if you think you are my child, and I will control what you become. Rather than, I'm just going to give you the room to become your best self. And this is, I think, our role as leaders. Yeah. Not to force into something that it might not become. Yeah. To give it that room and the room to our team and to be able to do that. So I think that maybe it helps. It helps me. I know, I know, I learned a lot from my children. Maybe it helps to see that as an almost a parenting of a, of a company rather than having to be the tough, tough leader that needs to know always the answers and needs to be the sole responsible, the I, I learned that people will not take responsibility as long as I don't let it go. Yeah? That frustrates me so much seeing leaders saying people in my team don't take responsibility and they're hoarding it. And of course they're not going to take it unless they let go of it. And it takes a lot of bravery. It takes a lot, a lot of bravery to trust in others and trust and not trust in that process.
Andreas: There's a benefit to being a parent which leaders do not have, which is when your kids become teenagers as you know from personal experience the authoritarian leadership style which is "I'm more experienced, I'm more responsible, I'm going to tell you what to do" fails because the child stops listening. Employees would not do that because they still depend on their job, and they fear losing their job. But kids, they don't fear retaliation. They have all the energy and all the courage to stand up to you and say, no, I'm not going to, I'm going to do my own thing, thank you very much. And suddenly you realize that you need to either, continue despairing as a, as an authoritarian parent, or you need to find new ways of, discussing as peers and listening to each other's needs and finding a way that works with you both, and not one that is intuitive to you because that's how you've always done things. So we don't get this advantage as leaders, but we get this, you know, shock as parents,
Natacha: Yeah, but maybe we can learn from that experience. And I've learned from one of my peers, through his children, the strategy of whatever happens, deal with it with love. That's... I deal with it with love. And I think it's not much different in a company. And although we never nobody dares to talk about love in a company context. But that's what it... That's what it is. You can't lead anybody that you don't. You don't, can't lead anybody until you love yourself. And you can't lead anybody that you don't love.
Andreas: Right. Which also reminds me of this love not fear, which our, probably common acquaintance David Henzel has been championing, which is that at work we should be, making decisions and working with people and, seeing ourselves and others through love and not fear, by understanding, deeply understanding, connecting with each other rather than putting up a shield, protecting ourselves and, fearing of, repercussions of our decisions. So, with that and again with, a little sadness on my part because, I'd like to keep this podcast short, but maybe we should do another one as well. So, Natacha, where can people find out more about you? And what are some thoughts you'd like to leave us with that we can go and reflect on or maybe go and look up?
Natacha: So people can find me on my LinkedIn profile. Happy to get email and to always share ideas when it comes to self-management. I mean, it's my biggest topic of passion. So I'm always happy to share my experience and spare. Yeah. I'm still learning on this journey as well. Resources. I mean, I mentioned Reinventing Organizations. I know some people that read it, and it didn't, didn't rock their world. But I know also a lot of people in this bubble of ours that it was the it was the start of this, interestingly enough, just reading through all the books of, Erich Fromm at the moment, that wrote in the 30s and the 40s about, being and love and freedom and it's so relevant to our times what he was writing already back then. It's mainly defined better by, you know, understand better why, why there's this, this habit of people sacrificing their autonomy and their freedom within companies, whether they're ready to do that. Yeah. And maybe last thoughts. Yeah, I think and then maybe it's a good follow up to mentioning Fromm's work, if we create environments where people feel like they belong. Where there is this, yeah, belonging or love if we use that word and where there is safety, then, then they can start satisfying those other means of, of freedom or of autonomy, of doing their own thing, of daring, of, of really being adventurous and trying new things and, and being innovative. And I see that that's our role as leaders to create that space. So that they go... they lean into, they have a space to lean into those, those other needs that they can fulfil in the workplace, that they should fulfil in the workplace.
Andreas: Natacha, thank you so much for your time and, nuggets of wisdom and inspiration for us to think how we lead our businesses in, counterintuitive ways and, self-managed ways and how this can help people shine, turn people from followers into leaders in every single part, every single corner of the organization. And, to everyone that's been listening to us, thank you for giving us your undivided attention. If you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did here, talking with Natacha, then do give us a five-star rating on your favourite podcast platform. Tell your friends about it, because that's how more people get to find out about the podcast and get to learn about how to lead more conscious cultures and businesses. And, if you want to measure your culture so you can manage it, you can go to rethinkculture.co. And, like I love saying at the end of every podcast, keep leading and creating more conscious, I would say this time, and more fulfilling, happier organizations for you, but especially for those around you. Take care.