We recently connected with Jennifer Faulkner and have shared our conversation below.

Jennifer, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. The more we talk about good leadership the more we think good leadership practices will spread and so we’d love for you to tell us a story about the best boss you’ve had and what they were like or what they did that was so great?

The best boss I ever had was in my first job after college. I stopped by a weekly newspaper office to drop off my resume for an job opening as a reporter. A woman in a vibrant flowy blouse, large-framed glasses and heels overheard me, emerged from her office and ushered me in. She scanned through my writing portfolio and asked me a few questions including when I’d like to start. As a seasoned editor she had seen enough in my journalistic writing to convince her I could do the job.

In our four years together, she felt more like a mentor to me. Her self-confidence was remarkable as were her life’s stories. I received assignments from her that challenged my slight introversion. I covered a heated school budget scene, the federal court case of a car dealer accused of bilking millions of dollars, and a neighborhood polluted by soot from a local business. She always had my back. She left no mysteries in how she felt about a person or a subject. We laughed a lot and appreciated each other’s wit and word choices.

Together we earned awards from the New York Press Association for writing about the fragility of the aquifers providing the area’s drinking water. When she took a vacation she passed the mantle of editor to me. I got to sit in her office, spin in her chair and write that week’s editorial. It turns out one of those times I made a quite a splash, describing some nontraditional local places, such as the hardware store, to shop for uncommon holiday gifts. When she returned, she told me my column was building good will with the small business community and the newspaper’s advertising team was benefitting from it. A win-win!

When I was newly-minted she believed in me and stretched my abilities without fanfare. I learned so much, including how to approach someone with the assumption they want to give you the story. Those experiences grew my abilities and confidence, and paved the way for me to reach further and higher throughout my career. And, when I moved away to begin the journey to what would be a longtime career as a healthcare executive, I bequeathed my beloved job to a good friend who was moving to the area. She got to experience her panache, too.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

With so much volatility and uncertainty affecting workplaces, culture can be an afterthought. Even when identified as a priority, organizations don’t necessarily have the internal bandwidth to examine culture and strategically shape it on their own. This is where I can help. As founder and strategist of Innovate Culture Lab, LLC, I partner with leaders to build more intentional workplace cultures.

For Innovate Culture Lab, this can mean helping organizations better define mission, purpose and values; align their people with their strategy; develop conduits for listening and communications loops; and even partner to manage or leverage a change coming their way. Often it means assessing the current culture, defining the desired culture and developing a roadmap to the future state.

Recommendations from Innovate Culture Lab are highly customized and follow a change management model to ensure sustainability. The expertise I provide is rooted in communications and human resources practices, with particular focus on employee engagement, recognition, talent management and organization and leader development.

Having spent years in healthcare human resources leadership, I made the leap to start my own business. I call it “culture lab” because I believe in creating a learning environment in which people feel comfortable voicing their experiences and insights, with the idea that those closest to the work have an insider’s view of what can be done to improve things. Cultivating a learning mindset makes experimentation feel safer and encourages collaboration and new ways of thinking and doing. I like the word innovate because it means making tweaks to an existing approach to get different and better results. My mantra is that small shifts can lead to big change. I work hard to keep things simple. Simplicity can be an artform.

My time in healthcare, and especially working in healthcare through the pandemic, reinforced my mission driven nature. Now as an entrepreneur, I continue to be inspired by how my clients in a variety of industries make people’s lives better. I want to help them excel at their goals and gain fulfillment in the process.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

Switching gears from executive in a large organization to a solo entrepreneur over the last year has been a learning experience. I’m still building my reputation in the market in this new capacity, and have been encouraged by people I’ve worked with in the past who are seeking my services and referring potential clients to me. Like building blocks, one outreach leads to another and successful work with one client is the foundation for the next. I’ve said yes to invitations, from partnering on CEO roundtable discussions to speaking to a college business class. Joining the local Chamber of Commerce has provided me with a supportive community of colleagues and expanded networks.

When I was seriously considering starting my own consultancy, I reached out to several trusted colleagues as my sounding board. I gained invaluable insights from them all. As I formulated my business concept and brand, I sent them a survey and received feedback that helped me rethink and refine my approach. We remain connected and have regular check-ins, knowing we can shoot a text or make a call when we need a thinking partner. We help build each other’s reputations.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

One of my clients told me about a book called The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann. The title is a play on the term “go-getter” as the typical mentality of someone in business. The book, which is a series of fables, emphasizes benevolence and the giving of one’s time and talents to others as a “giver” without any expectation of getting something in return. As the fables goes, giving freely of oneself does eventually result in some form of abundance. Upon finishing the book, I was hoping for an opportunity to surface and like clockwork, a past colleague reached out on Linked In asking me to refer him to some business resources in an area of my expertise. Instead, I offered up a couple hours of my time to meet and then provide him with more detailed input. He was grateful for my gesture and the time spent reconnecting with him made my day. It felt good to give more than was asked of me simply because I wanted to.

This way of being is common in my community of entrepreneurs and because of this book I have become more conscious of recognizing when it happens.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.innovateculturelab.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/innovate-culture-lab-llc/

Image Credits

Ally Montemagni, Freetide Creative