🔥 5 Minutes of Leadership Fuel
✉️ This post is part of The 5-Minute Mentor — my weekly leadership newsletter. If you’d like to get it delivered straight to your inbox, click here to subscribe.
Welcome to The 5-Minute Mentor — your weekly dose of leadership inspiration, curated resources, and practical action. All in under 5 minutes.
Activating Your Genius in 5,4,3,2,1… 🤩
🫶 A Dose of Inspiration
“Leadership is about creating change that you believe in.”
— Seth Godin
Trying to create and lead something that doesn’t light a fire in your belly is a losing battle. You’ll run yourself into the ground, and others aren’t likely to be lining up to join your journey.
But go after something you believe in? Nothing can stop you.
📥 Download the quote graphic to use in your next staff email or meeting.
🤓 A Dose of Learning
I recently tuned into an episode of the new WorkLife with Molly Graham (formerly with Adam Grant) as she had a conversation with Mike Schroepfer, who built Facebook’s engineering culture over a decade.
They had my attention quickly, wrestling with the “black hole word,” culture… one everyone uses, yet no one defines. So it, in turn, quietly drains meaning from the room.
Schroepfer, aka “Schrep,” defines it as “the shared norms and values a group of people have when undertaking an endeavor.”
He references the well-worn truth that people can only hold onto three to five things… so here are the three that stayed with me.
1️⃣ Name your trade-offs: Every culture embodies trade-offs, and if you can’t name the cost you’re willing to bear, you don’t really understand the culture you have. His pet peeve is that describing a culture without its downsides means you haven’t exposed the trade-off. The famous “move fast and break things” was never about breakage. The goal was iteration speed, and breakage was the named cost.
2️⃣ Learning culture, not blame culture: When something breaks, the question is why the system allowed it, not who’s at fault. He said his engineering team’s culture was built around never repeating the same error. He shared a powerful story of the team member who owned a company-wide outage mid-crisis because he knew he wouldn’t be pounced on. Schrep names this as evidence of psychological safety and intellectual honesty.
This is the belief layer… people tell the truth when they trust it’s safe to. Blame-vs-learning is a daily fork for leaders, and it counts when it’s needed the most.
3️⃣ The culture mirrors the leader: What matters is what you do, not what you say. People are wired to detect dissonance between stated and lived values, and this will instantly erode culture. Most cultures are a direct reflection of the person “at the top,” and it’s very hard to build one that runs counter to what that leader actually believes. When you’re looking to shape your culture by naming your team’s core values, make sure they serve your mission and align with your personal values.
Here’s the thing… your culture isn’t something that happens to your team. It’s something you’re shaping whether you mean to or not. The only real question is whether you’re doing it on purpose, with purpose.
🎧Listen to the full episode here – WorkLife with Molly Graham: What is your company culture (and why does it matter)? with Mike Schroepfer
🌀 A Dose of Reflection
So… what are you building? Three questions to help with that answer:
- What is your culture quietly trading away… and has anyone named that cost out loud?
- Think back to the last thing that “broke” on your team. Did your response teach people it’s safe to tell the truth… or safer to go quiet?
- Where might your people feel a gap between what you say you value and what your behaviors actually reward?
🌟 And one bonus all-star move for the week: Pick the one message your team most needs to hear right now. Then say it three to five times. You’ll swear you already said it, but the people heads-down in their own work are still waiting to hear it. Clearly, consistently, often. That’s how a culture of belief gets communicated and created.
You got this. Let’s lead with belief.
In your corner,
Melody
Founder, Culture of Belief
PS: This kid has impeccable taste… 🍂👨🍳😂
Send them this link to join The 5-Minute Mentor.