Jump Start Your Culture with Eric D. Stone

"Culture is this catalyst to execution and getting a group of people to achieve the uncommon, unleashing people's true potential," says Eric Stone.

In this episode of the Authentic Change Podcast, Mike Horne welcomes Eric Stone, a seasoned leader with a special track record for creating high-performance cultures. With a 26-year career at Enterprise Holdings, one of North America's largest privately held companies, Eric shares his insights on what it takes to connect with and motivate employees from all generations and demographics to create exceptional results.

In his new book, "Jumpstart Your Workplace Culture: A Roadmap for Igniting High Performance," Eric shares practical strategies for creating a strong and engaging culture. He emphasizes the importance of aligning personal and company values, selecting employees based on character, and providing clear goals and expectations. Eric also highlights the significance of employee training, development, recognition, and empowerment in avoiding burnout and fostering memorable customer experiences.

His experiences and insights inspire listeners to embrace their values, develop strong relationships with their teams, and create a culture that drives high performance and success.

• "I look at culture as this catalyst to execution and getting a group of people to achieve the uncommon, unleashing people's true potential." (9:05 | Eric Stone)
• "So how do you get people to avoid burnout? Well, if you create strong relationships with your team and build initiatives from the beginning through their journey, that's one real important thing. If you supply them with the training, the proper development, the information and equipment, and to get that desired outcome, that's going to be very helpful. If you truly get to develop them personally and professionally, that's important. If you're very clear in communicating your goals and expectations, that's important. And you want to be able to recognize and reward excellence. And when you package those together, the importance of the training one really overlaps a lot of them. And most people tend to get burnt out when they really are in an unknown. They get anxious, frustrated, disengaged when they don't know where they are, where they're standing, or they're getting no guidance. I truly believe people want to do really well. I don't think they show up in corporate America and want to be terrible." (15:02 | Eric Stone)
• "You know, whatever your grading is, whether it's a one to five, whether it's a 'meets/succeeds', thing is, what does it mean to 'meet'? What are those key things that would be consistent along the ranking system? What does it mean to 'exceed' or to be 'outstanding'? And what are some of those numbers that would lead to an outstanding performance? And so to me, it's just really getting defined. So you're having consistency." (27:04 | Eric Stone)