Transcript: How to Make a Culture Comeback: Leadership Lessons in Moving from Toxic to Healthy Culture // Jon T. Locklear, Lumbee River EMC

Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast

“How to Make a Culture Comeback: Leadership Lessons in Moving from Toxic to Healthy Culture“

September 2, 2024

Jon T. Locklear

Intro: How do you turn around an organization after a period of leadership instability? And what are the key practices that you can focus on to build trust and engagement? Well, today on the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, we'll look at how to implement change when a workplace had a toxic culture and how it rapidly improved as the new leader turned onto the road to flourishing.

Welcome: Welcome to the Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast, your home for open, honest, and insightful conversations to help develop your leadership, your team, and build a flourishing workplace culture.

Al Lopus: Hello, I'm Al Lopus, the co-founder of the Best Christian Workplaces and author of the book Road to Flourishing. And I'm passionate about helping Christian leaders like you create engaged, flourishing workplaces.

I’m delighted to welcome Jon Locklear to the podcast today. Jon's the CEO of Lumbee River Electric and a $150 million electric co-op in North Carolina.

Throughout our conversation, you’ll hear Jon and I talk about how he began by building leadership cohesion about workplace culture by reading my book Road to Flourishing together as a leadership team; also, his key steps to building trust with employees; how he shows Christian compassion by caring for people; his own growth path as a leader; and keys to developing emerging leaders with character and competence. I think you're going to love this interview with Jon Locklear.

And also, hello to our new listeners, and thanks for joining us as we honor your investment of time by creating valuable episodes like this.

Let me tell you a little bit more about Jon Locklear. Jon's the CEO of Lumbee River Electric Member Cooperative since January 2023. Previously, he was with HealthKeeperz for 15 years, spending at least eight years serving on the leadership team. And he's also served as an associate pastor at Clinton Family Worship Center. Jon earned his BA in business administration with the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and then he went on to earn his MBA in organizational leadership from Liberty University.

Here’s my conversation with Jon T. Locklear.

Jon, it’s great to have you on the podcast. I’m really looking forward to this conversation of early-stage transformation.

Jon T. Locklear: Oh, thank you, Al. Thanks for having me.

Al: So, Jon, you've been the CEO of Lumbee River Electric for less than two years. And prior to that, you were with a health-care organization that we happened to work with for a number of years. So, share with us some of the challenges and opportunities that you've seen in the last 18 months as you stepped in as the CEO of this $150-million member-cooperative utility.

Jon: Challenges, obviously, you know, I have 13 board members that every single one of them are my bosses, so that was new for me. But so far, the board has not been very difficult to work with at all. But I knew just being a part of the community, just what you hear, some of the things I've heard about the organization, I knew coming into the organization, there was a lot of dysfunction as far as culture, the way the board ran, the way the board was involved with the organization versus operational leadership, seemed like there were some lines that had gotten blurred. So there was some dysfunction I knew coming in. In fact, when I was asked to apply for the position, my wife said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Hon, if it's the good Lord's will, I'll be ready. I'll be up for the challenge.”

So I saw an opportunity to come into an organization that desperately needed guidance, desperately needed leadership, and I felt like I could come in and make an impact on not only to the employees, but to the membership. We have almost 70,000 members, and we serve four and a half counties in the southeastern part of North Carolina. I really felt like I could make a difference with the employee base and with our membership, and bring some unity and some calm to the organization. And so I put my name in the hat, and the door was open, and so I've been here ever since.

Al: Well, and you've made a tremendous impact, and we'll talk about this, just the transformation of your culture in a very short period of time. But you've now completed two Employee Engagement Surveys with Best Christian Workplaces. Tell us, Jon, why did you decide to do an Employee Engagement Survey right away when you stepped in at Lumbee River?

Jon: Coming from the health-care arena, I’d been a part of surveys before, and I knew how important surveys were as far as employee engagement and giving employees an opportunity for a voice. So, I had the opportunity to work with you guys in the past. So I knew day one coming in with the dysfunction that I had heard and just the turmoil that I had heard within the organization, a survey was something that was desperately needed. I didn't know how well the employees would participate because they said they'd done surveys in the past and nothing changed. Nobody, you know, upper-level leadership did not listen.

So, I met with my executive team, and I said, “Look, this is something I want to do. I need to hear what the employees are going to say. I need to get a feel for them from the very beginning.” So I knew, working with you guys, the type of questions that you would ask and the fact that you would help tailor the Survey to meet the needs of Lumbee River EMC. I felt like I could get that information from day one. I really wanted to know, Al, what I was coming into, from the employees’ perspective.

Al: And what a great thing to do is to find out right away. I mean, you've got over, like, 125 employees, so you were able to find out, without individual interviews or even dozens of small-group interviews, exactly where things were. Yeah. What a great way to start.

Well, I know the culture of your organization is still a work in progress—I mean, it's been 18 months or so—but you've made tremendous gains in the engagement of employees just in that first year. In fact, it went from you had only 19% of your employees engaged initially, to a year later, jumping up to 61.5%, in one year, from the second percentile in our database to the 44th percentile. You know, those are unprecedented gains. So, what are a couple of the key changes or key practices that you can point to that helped turn things around as they are at this point? And how have you and your leadership implemented changes to create a more positive work environment?

Jon: Well, Al, I would say first and foremost, all the glory and honor goes to God because before I took the position, you know, I sought wisdom from God. Each and every day I seek wisdom from God. But I came in with the senior leadership team, and there was a lot of dysfunction in the team. And the first book we read was your book on a flourishing culture. So, it's one thing to do the Survey, but it's another thing for the senior leadership team to understand what a healthy culture and flourishing culture should look like.

So, we sat down together, and we read the book, and I had the opportunity to just get to know them on a personal level, understand the dysfunction I had at that level, because if you can't resolve dysfunction at the highest level of leadership, you're not going to resolve it within the organization. So we were able to work through that process, work through the book, get our initial Survey out.

And then from the Survey, we realized that we had two core areas that were just overarching themes for us. One was trust, and the other was communication. So what we did was we decided to put some things in place just to create trust and to have better communication within the organization.

And another thing, Al, that I realized early on, it was a very dull organization. It was quiet. People kind of kept to themselves, in silos. And I told my wife, I said, “It's almost like going into a church that no one ever says, ‘Amen.’” It was extremely quiet.

I told my folks, I said, “Listen, we're going to create a fun committee,” I said, “And that's all that committee’s going to do is create ways to have fun within the organization,” which they later renamed themselves the Too Fun Crew. And so we just came up with ideas, that we polled the employees. Like, “Give us some ideas of what you'd like to do.” And through those activities, we were able to bring people together. Like, the way our organization’s designed, we have internal employees, and we have external employees. And a lot of times they don't really get to have the opportunity to come together. So, with those engagement opportunities, we were able to get people together. We were able to get them in positions where they mingled. We communicated. We had linemen having conversations with our CFO having conversations with our member-service ladies. So that kind of kickstarted it for us after the Survey.

And we formed a communication committee, too, where we have members from all the different departments in the organization that sit on that, and they create ideas in how we could communicate so we're not siloed.

And then, we began building trust amongst my executive team. It was a lot of dysfunction there, so we began breaking down those barriers. And we used your book as a tool, really, to help us kind of guide through what does a healthy culture look like? Most people really don't have an idea when you start talking about culture. They know they have a culture, but they don't really know how to define it.

So those are some of the things we did from the very beginning.

Al: Well, and again, I'll just say I looked at your reports, and the number one item that went up the most was you conduct activities openly and honestly, one of our inspirational-leadership questions. Right behind that was, things have changed for the better. Then, number three, what you were really looking for is, there's a high level of trust between leaders and employees, up over 1.3. I mean, those are magnificent changes. And then, you know, the communication, healthy communication, questions about acting on suggestions, involving employees, explaining reasons behind major decisions, I mean, those were significant changes in just a 12-month period of time. So again, Jon, congratulations.

One of the key factors that we see in healthy workplaces is a high level of trust, and you're moving in that direction very quickly. And Lumbee River had a quick succession of CEOs over the five years before you started. And that’s a tough season to go through from an employee standpoint. But what would you say to another leader who might be facing this kind of situation in their own organization, how have you worked to show employees that things are different now? How did you break that cycle of instability and build on a foundation of trust? Or even, you said it earlier, you know, you weren't sure that employees would even participate in an Employee Engagement Survey just because there have been surveys in the past, and they had this cynical attitude of nothing's ever going to change. Well, how do you break that?

Jon: The first thing I would tell any new leader coming into an organization is to listen. Listen first and foremost. Not listen to respond immediately or listen to be heard, but you want to listen so that they feel that they've been heard and listened to.

And the Engagement Survey really helped with that, especially with the open-ended questions. What did they say? Where were there deficits? Where were there areas in the organization where there was mistrust? So I spent a lot of time early on listening.

Secondly, Al, just being present. Open-door policy; going around, meeting new employees, introducing myself, shaking their hands, sitting in their offices; not always calling people to my office, but going to their office to meet them where they're at; going to meet with my guys outside in the field; going to the other locations that we have; and just being present. Sometimes people just need to know that the leadership cares enough to come see them, speak to them, and spend time with them.

One of the things that I got in this last Survey that we did, one of the employees said that out of all the CEOs that they've had at Lumbee River EMC—the employee had been here eight years—the employee said I was the first CEO to ever call him by name. Just as simple as knowing what someone's name is and addressing them by their name. And I didn't know that that made that much impact. That's just what I naturally do.

But I would also say creating synergy with your senior leadership team, making sure that you're able to set a course to set a direction with them, and get the buy in from them and the trust and set expectations and standards from the very beginning. I call it ACT, but that’s just kind of an acronym that came with my style, but it's accountability, consistency, and trust. Those are the three things that I drive home on every level of the organization, whether we're talking about financials, can we hold it accountable, can we be consistent, and can we create trust?

So, I think if you're coming into an organization, they're not trying to rewrite the wheel, because I've got a lot of people here that have been doing this, working in this industry for a lot longer than I am, and they're experts, I let them do what they do well. I just give guidance and parameters, but I don't try to micromanage them. I let them have the freedom and the space to get the job done until they can't get the job done, and then we address it differently.

But I would say the biggest thing in developing trust is just it's one thing to take a survey, but it's another thing to take the information you get from that survey and create change with that.

Al: So listen, be present, manage by walking around—that really does make a difference—create synergy with leaders. I like the ACT, okay, accountability, consistency, and trust. And trust is just built through consistency, for sure, and accountability. Yeah, that’s right.

Well, so, Jon, you're a person of faith leading in a marketplace environment. What are some foundational faith principles that you hold to in your everyday life that equip you to lead so well? Is there any difference in how you model this in your current role, or when you were serving as a pastor?

Jon: You know, Al, I'm blessed to be able to lead with my faith within this organization and from the organization that I came from. So that, first and foremost, is just an honor and a blessing, just to be able to share my faith and share the principles that I believe in truly.

You know, and King Solomon prayed for wisdom to lead the people. You know, he said, “I need wisdom to lead.” And so I have that verse written down in my office, because each and every day, I seek wisdom from God as I'm coming in to work. Like, “God, how can I impact somebody's life today? How can I lead someone in a way that they will see the love of Jesus Christ on the inside of me?” And that starts with caring for people, genuinely caring for them, listening to them. We created the one on ones when I got here, just something we did at my previous employer, and it helps tremendously just to bring people in at an appointed time and just listen to them, get to know about their family. How's their family doing? Because we all have our why as to why we come to work, and most of the time it's our family. So, I created this repetition of meetings not only with my staff, but I expected that they do it with their staff. And so that has really helped us in those one-on-one settings to get to know one another and to care for one another. And that allows my faith to really come forward and shine, because Christ asked us to love one another. That's one of His expectations is that we show love and compassion. I tell my folks, “You can have love and compassion, and you can still write somebody up and fire them if they need to be.” So it's sometimes loving someone is parting ways with them because it's not working out, and not losing sight of that.

But I would say those are some of the things, the principles that I apply.

Al: Yeah, yeah. To realize you've been blessed and to care for people and one on ones. And I just, to our listeners, I'll just say, there's an example of the importance of one on ones. It's a way to get to know one another, as Jon said, but also to show your care and concern for them. Yeah, absolutely.

So, as I talk with leaders who are committed to growing in their leadership and shepherding their staff well, I'm interested in learning how they have grown through their season of leadership. So, can you share a few reflections on what's influenced your own growth as a leader, Jon? What are some of the catalysts that have experienced that spur you on in your own growth as a leader?

Jon: Al, I would take you back to my days in the military. I had the opportunity to serve with some great leaders in the military. I've had the honor to serve and work under some great CEOs and leaders, some not so great. But you learn from the ones that are not great, and you learn from the ones that are great.

Also, I got my undergrad in business from UNC Pembroke, and then I went on to Liberty University, where I got my MBA, and I was just blessed to be able to get a graduate degree from there, where they incorporate faith and business. That was tremendously helpful for me. But I also like reading. I like to read leadership-style books. Like, Stephen Covey’s got a lot of good books that we've read and we've introduced here. But I think you take the good and you take the bad of the pieces of leadership that you've seen along the way to kind of form your identity as a leader, and then you craft it to a way that works for you. And so I think I've just taken bits and pieces along my careers and my experiences to come into an organization and make decisions based off—if it was bad experiences I had, you learn from that. You say, you know, “I don't want to lead people that way.” But if it was good things, you take those good things, you modify them to create an experience for your organization because every organization is different. But people are people. Anywhere you go, you're dealing with the human emotions, you're dealing with the heart, you're dealing with the mind, and caring for people is something that's universal if we do it from the right light.

Al: You just mentioned Liberty University and how they're able to incorporate faith and leadership in their MBA program. What a great background that is. And in ongoing reading. Yeah, we all have the privilege of serving with good and bad leaders as we grow, don't we? And I think your point of, yeah, even with bad leadership, you're learning in that process. So, that's great, Jon.

Al: I trust you’re enjoying our podcast today. We’ll be right back after an important word for leaders.

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Al: Welcome back to my conversation with Jon Locklear.

So, let's talk about developing emerging leaders. You know, you're in your role now. You've been there short of two years. You're looking around, I'm sure, for “Okay. Who's going to be the next generation of leaders in our organization?” So what do you look for as you're deciding whom to invest in and develop as an emerging leader? You know, what are some of the character qualities that are key for you as you look for new leaders, or are there competencies that you want to see in an upcoming leader?

Jon: I think the character issues or traits that I'm looking for in people are how do they treat people around them? How do they carry themselves? Do they speak? Do they hold the door when somebody needs you to hold the door? If they need to go outside and sweep, when they go outside to sweep, will they pick random trash up? Because it's one thing to say you're a leader; it’s another thing for people to want to follow you as a leader. But I look for character traits that say people care for someone. They're genuinely interested in people, but they also have an opportunity and a willingness to learn the organization. And just because you're really good at something, doesn't mean that you can lead other people to be good at that particular task. So we look for those things.

And one of the things I've done since I've been here is we've created a leadership curriculum because they didn't have any type of defined leadership curriculum or criteria. If you were a good employee, you knew the job well, you had the opportunity to be promoted, which are all great things. But if you have never been taught how to lead people, how to supervise people, how to understand emotional intelligence, just working with different employees, you may be great at a skill, but you just struggle to lead people.

So we've developed the leadership curriculum where anybody that's interested in becoming a leader, first of all, their supervisor has to fill out a form saying, “Hey, I think Al could be a great leader one day. So I'm recommending Al,” and then I sign off on it, right? And then we pay for them to go through these courses that give them certain certificates and set them in a direction where we feel like in the end, they're ready to lead. And it's all curriculum that the senior leadership team that we've aided, that we came together as a group and said, “Yeah, we think this would be good for future leaders to take these courses to become a leader one day.”

But I always look at the skill-will matrix, Al. You know, someone can have all the skill in the world, but they have low will. Or you can have somebody that has low will, low skill. Chances are that's not somebody that's ever going to be a leader. But if you give me someone that has high will, and maybe they have low skill, but we could train you in the skill portion, but you have high will, then chances are you can develop someone with high skill and high will, and then you have the character traits of someone that could be a really good leader one day.

Al: Jon, what are a couple of the courses that are included in this leadership curriculum?

Jon: One of the key courses that we have everyone to take is just operational management. You know, what does it mean to lead an operation, understanding operational management? Also, our employees take a course on emotional intelligence because as a leader, you need to understand emotions and why people act the way they do, how they let their hearts and their feelings really drive some of the decision makings that they do. And yet another course is just co-op 101, because we're a utility company, but we're part of a cooperative. So what does it mean to be part of a cooperative? What does it mean to be part of a nonprofit and have membership member owners and that relationship? Another course that I think is really important is just operations and how we function versus how the board functions and how employees should communicate with the board, the bylaws, how we're governed, because like I said previously, we had a lot of just cross-pollination of communication. It was either it wasn't quite positive in the past. So just really defining what those parameters are for the employees. And that's been really good. And then, there’s specific courses about the utility industry, renewables and things that are going on in our industry.

Al: Wow. Yeah, those are great ideas. So emotional intelligence, operational leadership, co-op 101—I love it—and then governance, the role of members, being clear as the different roles as part of the organization. Those are great, great leadership-development courses that help people, especially emerging leaders, understand the industry. That's great.

So, we've talked about the fact that you've been, you know, at Lumbee River for, you know, less than two years. But as you look ahead, what do you see as the next steps for your team? What are your hopes for the organization? What would you like to see God do and through you as you lead over the next few years?

Jon: I would love for us to create consistency, right? I don't want—the second Survey that we got where it showed that we'd transitioned from toxic into a healthy environment. You know, our goal is to be flourishing, but I want to be able to create consistency so that when we do have Surveys, and we get those Employee Engagement Surveys back, we can anticipate that our employees are going to say, “Yes, this is a great place to work. Our organization’s flourishing, and these are the reasons why.” So if we could create consistency moving forward, I would be tickled because it says that one Survey was not just a flash in the pan that we had great scores. You know what I mean?

Al: I know.

Jon: So if we could consistently create those things that drive our culture forward, I would look at the next five to 10 years and say, we've been successful. But we've also been able to create not just culture amongst our employees, but creating a culture with our board. What does the board say? How do they communicate? How do they work with each other? How do we work with the board and being able to create unity between the board and the employees here within the co-op, so that we're all rowing the boat in the same direction, and we're not spinning around in circles?

So, I've done a lot of work with the board, and we're doing some training with the board as well, some cultural training. And I basically want to get to the point where I have them, where they do a Survey, they get their own Survey results, and they're working through what it means to be a healthy board, not just a healthy organization. So those are some next steps I'd like to do with our board.

Al: So, here's a question out of the blue. You've seen an improvement with the culture of the employees. You're working with unity of the board. How has having a marked improvement in the health of your culture impacted your members? Have you seen any difference there?

Jon: Tremendous. Tremendous difference. Because one thing we've always done here at Lumbee River is we've surveyed the members. We've done a customer-engagement survey for years. But guess what, Al? We didn't do anything with the data. It was, like, we did the surveys; nobody really dug into the data. So being a person that believes in data—like, data is useless if you don't use it—we've been able to take that information back. And what we're seeing amongst our membership is that the membership engagement has improved with the organization. They feel as though we're communicating better with them. We're giving them information in advance, where before it was more of a reactive information we were giving our members. You know, there's a push that I've given to the leaders here to be more proactive so that the membership understands where we're going, why are we going there? Not just tell them, “Hey, this is where we're going,” but give them a deep explanation as to why it's important that the organization move in that direction. Because our industry’s rapidly changing. We have electric vehicles, battery storage, solar arrays, hydro-generated power. It's just changing, and it's a beautiful change, but we have to evolve as an organization as our industry changes and society changes. So the members, from what we're gathering with the Surveys that we get back, they feel that there's more communication. They feel that there's more stability. So the culture, from what they're seeing within the culture, is they're feeling more trust. They're feeling that the organization has some level of stability. And that's what we want to continue giving them, that we want to confirm and give them the reassurance that the organization’s not going anywhere and that we're making the right decisions for our membership.

Al: That's fantastic. Yeah. Well, that's great, Jon.

Well, we've learned so much from our conversation. I really do appreciate this. This is great for any of our listeners. You know, going back to your challenges, just starting off with this toxic, as you describe, workplace culture. And there was dysfunction. There was blurred board roles. There was a need for leadership. And then you really worked on changes, as you say, and glory to God for these changes. Starting with—I'm honored, let me just say, that you started with giving my book to your leadership team and working through the Road to Flourishing, how that helped build trust and communication, understanding, you know, what keys are to culture, to create a fun committee. What did you say? It’s the Too Fun Crew?

Jon: Too Fun Crew.

Al: Yeah, yeah. And then a communication committee. And how then you began and continue to work to build trust, and the keys to trust, to listen, to be present, to create synergy with leaders. Your ACT acronym of accountability, consistency, and trust, and how important that is. And yeah, to be able to lead with faith and to care for people and how one on ones is a good way to really show that you're caring for people. And the way you've grown as a leader, thanks for sharing those keys. The way you're helping to build emerging leaders there as well and the leadership curriculum that you've created. And that's just building into the competency and the character of your future leaders. That's fantastic. And of course, the link to how a flourishing workplace culture leads to flourishing membership, and how important that is to your organization.

Well, this has just been fantastic, Jon. Thanks so much. How about, is there anything you'd like to add that we’ve talked about? Kind of a bottom line?

Jon: I think in anything that we do, and the Bible tells us seek ye first the kingdom of God, right? if we seek Him first and listen, God will give guidance. And to me, that's the core of anything that I do or we do here at Lumbee River EMC. But I think culture is so important because if you can create a healthy and flourishing culture amongst your employee base and with your membership, guess what? I got employees that go home, and they're better husbands, they're better fathers, they're better mothers, because it's not just about helping you become the greatest employee in the world. Our greatest imprint is on our families and helping our families develop and that next generation grow. So culture just it penetrates the communities. It's so much more than just what we do here at the workplace.

But I would think, Al, I would add this as kind of the final nugget. One of the other things that we've added here at Lumbee Rivers, Corporate Chaplains of America. And we have a chaplain that's assigned to the organization, because we can only care to a certain level. And then, we have employees that are dealing with very difficult and challenging things. So the extension of that care and extension of that love towards them is having someone that's here solely dedicated to listening to their needs, whether those are physical needs, spiritual needs, emotional needs. We've applied that here, and it has been a tremendous help to our employee base. And they've been extremely grateful to have someone like a chaplain that comes by and really, genuinely wants to know them as human beings. So I would just kind of throw those in as final nuggets.

Al: Yep. Thank you so much, Jon.

Well, Jon, thanks so much for your contributions today. And most of all, I appreciate your commitment to excellence and integrity in leadership. So thanks for taking time out of your day to speak into the lives of so many listeners. Thanks.

Jon: Thank you, Al.

Al: Thank you so much for listening to my conversation with Jon Locklear. And I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.

You can find ways to connect with him and links to everything we discussed in the show notes and transcript at workplaces.org/podcast.

And if you have any suggestions for me about our podcast or have any questions on flourishing cultures, please email me, al@workplaces.org.

And finally, we’re excited about the content we're offering for the fall season in our podcast. And if you haven't subscribed, go ahead and subscribe through your favorite platform. And the back episodes will be always available at workplaces.org/podcast.

Outro: The Flourishing Culture Leadership Podcast is sponsored by Best Christian Workplaces. If you need support building a flourishing workplace culture, please visit workplaces.org for more information.

We'll see you again next week for more valuable content to help you develop strong leaders and build a flourishing workplace culture.