S6E18: How Your Leadership Can Build or Break Trust

Do you believe that having an unhealthy culture is creating roadblocks for your organization? Ezra Benjamin, Vice President of Global Ministry Affairs for Jewish Voice Ministries describes his experience with turning those roadblocks into pathways as their organization moved into a flourishing culture.

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In this episode:

• Insights and solutions for the transformation of workplace culture (01:51)
• Founding story, vision and mission of Jewish Voice Ministries (01:56)
• A story of a changed life (04:10)
• Why is a thriving, flourishing workplace culture so needed, so necessary if you want to increase your ministry impact? (8:39)
• "We have a mission to do should we be focusing so much time, energy and in some cases money, focusing on our culture? Can't our people just do their jobs?" (8:52)
• "An unhealthy culture puts a lot of barriers and roadblocks to a ministry or faith-based organization ever filling their mandate in the first place." (09:10)
• "A flourishing culture isn't necessarily what's present but what's absent. What's absent is the corporate dysfunction, the widespread mistrust of leaders to employees, employees to leaders, the unhealthy conflict, the territorialism, the silos, the posturing of politics." (09:19)
• When did your organization’s senior leadership really begin to see the truth and importance of what you've just talked about? Were there concerns and questions about your culture? What wasn't going well? What were some of the answers you were looking for? (10:10)
• CEO of Jewish Voice convened Jewish Voices Ministries' first culture meeting (10:32)
• "In terms of the enduring fruit and the effectiveness of what we were doing, we felt like we were hitting a ceiling." (11:16)
• In addition to surveying through BCWI, Jewish Voice Ministries also read The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni (13:54)
• "What we realized as we established the executive leadership team is because we occupy leadership positions we were actually blind to some of what was happening at the employee or grassroots level." (14:26)
• A story of what Jewish Voice did to strengthen and improve in one of the eight drivers of culture (17:03)
• Dealing with issues of trust in the ministry (17:32)
• Shaping the narrative of what's spoken at the water cooler with what is really true (19:02)
• Improving Inspirational Leadership after seven years of working on it (19:14)
• The true game-changer for Jewish Voices Ministries' culture (22:41)
• Transitioned 75% of their workforce to Work From Home in March and April of 2020. (23:19)
• Having a multi-year Sustainable Strategy (26:03)
• "The only way we can move the needle on culture is if we're creating margin to actually lead rather than do." (27:06)
• "Behavior matters more sometimes than just getting your job done." (29:32)
• Figuring out how to demonstrate openness and humility (30:43)

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