When culture turns “cult-like”; plus three customer loyalty tips

Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:00:05] What happens when workplace culture crosses the line from connection to control? And how can business owners keep their customers loyal? In this week’s episode, leadership expert Marnie Brokenshire explores the hidden risks of cult like cultures and why psychological safety must be actively encouraged at work. Then Greg Nicolle from Thryv Australia reveals why customer experience can outweigh product quality and shares three practical ways businesses can stand out, build trust and keep customers coming back. From Sound Cartel, I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist and this is Business Essentials.

When does workplace culture become “cult-like”?

Our first guest is Marnie Brokenshire, co-founder of Untapped Potential. They’re experts on culture and emotionally intelligent leadership. Marnie says there’s a tipping point where workplace culture can start to feel more like a cult. And it’s a fine line that she says many organizations seem to be crossing. Marnie Brokenshire has growing concerns around culture being replaced by control. In these kind of workplaces, disagreement is reframed as negativity. And if you speak up, you’re not a team player. Marnie is urging leaders to confront the darker side of culture and build environments where psychological safety, diversity of thought and constructive challenge aren’t just accepted, they’re expected. Nicole Goodman interviewed Marnie. She started by asking, what’s driving this concerning trend within workplaces?

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:01:36] It’s something that we’re seeing across sectors, not just in one industry. And actually, Nicole, I wonder if it’s always been there, maybe not increasing, but we’re just talking about it now or we’re brave enough to talk about it now.

Nicole Goodman: [00:01:51] Yes.

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:01:52] The pressure is on organizations to stand out culturally and that that has increased this concept of needing to be able to play in the employer of choice space. And everyone wants a strong culture in inverted commas, but sometimes this morphs into control, disguised as cohesion, and we see it a lot. What drives it often is a mix of fear, ego, and performance pressure. Often leaders are poorly trained or not ready and in an environment that doesn’t embrace mistakes or doesn’t allow people to have a learning moment. And this is really a recipe for where power and control will dominate. So if a leader is trying hard to prove themselves and is not emotionally intelligent, therefore not inviting challenge or debate, you soon see cult like trends where followers conform and obey for survival.

Nicole Goodman: [00:02:54] Yeah. Oh yeah. But let’s talk about four of the main signs and risks. And the first that you’ve identified is emotional suppression dressed up as resilience. Give us an example of what you mean here.

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:03:10] So it often shows up in cultures where any display of emotion so frustration, fear, concern, worry, even healthy levels of doubt is labelled as a weakness. People are told to be resilient in inverted commas. But what’s really happening is suppression. We have many clients that come to us and say we need a program to build resilience. People just need to be more resilient. And what that is, is a statement of control. We just need people to do things the way we want them done, without any question or without any pushback, just willingly. And this is where I start to say, okay, this has a cult like feel. True resilience, as we know through emotional intelligence, is about processing emotion or reactions constructively, having a platform to express our views and opinions and our feelings. Because that’s okay. We’re human. We’re allowed to feel things. In fact, we are better humans when we do. And then being able to move forward and not pretending that nothing affects us.

Nicole Goodman: [00:04:26] There is that saying when you come to work, leave your emotions at the door or leave your problems at the door. Where are we at today with that? Because that sounds to me like it falls under emotional suppression dressed up as resilience. How far can we take our personal issues in a workplace environment?

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:04:46] So I think there’s two answers to that. One is if you’re a leader, You do need to leave your personal issues at the door. Your team don’t benefit from you burdening them with all the things that are troubling you of a personal nature. Your job is to guide, coach, mentor, inspire, and create learning opportunities for others. You need to find ways to deal with those issues elsewhere, and there’s lots of ways and places to help you manage that side. But I think as leaders, if we have people that we’re directly responsible for their overall health and wellbeing, we absolutely have to tap into what’s going on with their lives. Typically, in most circumstances, a leader won’t be a trained psychologist or a trained counselor, but if they recognize that something’s going on with somebody and they are empathetic, they’re going to want to know and understand and then help provide ways for that person to get what support they need. Because if we don’t tap in to someone at that level automatically, we’re going to assume that their inability to perform at their best has something to do with their inability to do the job. And that often is not the case. In fact, in the hundreds of performance management conversations I’ve been in over the years, quite often people’s inability to perform in the job has a lot to do with the leader or the environment, and not a lot to do with what’s going on with them.

Nicole Goodman: [00:06:20] Hmm. Well, let’s talk about the second sign that a workplace is becoming more cult like, and that is leader worship. And I’m sure most of us can picture what what that looks like. But tell us a little bit more about this one leader.

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:06:37] Worship often shows up when no one questions the leader, even when they’re clearly wrong or inappropriately behaved or off on some random tangent. And there are some classic examples of this around the world that we can look to. Uh, the recent WeWork documentary, the recent book, and other commentary about Facebook. There are lots of corporate examples of where this is the case. Decisions start being made based on what people think the leader wants to hear or do, not what the organization wants to hear or do. And that’s when risk, ethics and innovation begin to suffer. So in cult like environments, challenging the leader will be framed as a personal attack. There’s a climate of emotional obedience where people stay silent to stay safe. Emotionally intelligent leadership does the opposite. It invites challenge and separates disagreement from disrespect. That is a more evolved level of leadership mindset. And then there’s the concept of proximity. So you’ll know leadership is present when being in the leader’s inner circle becomes more valuable than delivering outcomes. People start to manage up instead of working across the culture shifts from being purpose driven to driven by managing what the leader thinks of me. And that’s always going to erode trust and dilute impact. A dangerous marker of leadership worship is when feedback stops reaching the top. So people will excuse or explain away harmful behavior or worse, reward it. And this is why we’re still dealing with the systemic problem of bullying and sexual harassment in Australian companies to this day. Because, you know, we don’t want to upset the leader or we certainly don’t want to be the messenger of bad news ever, because that just ends badly. So emotionally intelligent organizations have the right checks and balances in place to ensure that leaders are still accountable, still learning and still listening, and that any signs of leadership, worship, or that level of power and control is nipped in the bud really quickly.

Nicole Goodman: [00:09:05] And that ties really nicely into the third risk, which is success tied to pleasing not thinking. And the risk here also is that could dilute the integrity of the actual work product as well as the business. What more can you tell us about this one?

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:09:22] So this is when we go into organizations and we hear things like this we’re expected to do X or Y would not be well received or there’s no way we’re presenting that information. We will get shot down. So what we’ve got here is a whole bunch of people who are already preempting preplanning, tailoring, the way they’re going to go about something to meet what is a clearly defined expectation. Usually toxic of the leader. They are organizations where success is measured by how well you reflect the dominant narrative, not by how well you contribute independent thought. So people start learning what to say, not what to think. And over time, this erodes innovation and creates a culture of what I call safe sameness. So employees quickly notice that the people who get ahead aren’t necessarily the most capable. They’re the ones that say yes, the fastest. Praise the leader the loudest. And this creates a culture of emotional compliance, not excellence. And a lot of time is spent working out how to please the boss, not how to make a difference. Ultimately, what you’re left with is the most common thing. We see people learning how to play the safe game and they focus on what will get approved, not what will move the business forward. But interestingly, Nicole, often the irony here is that we will have the senior people in these organizations come to us and say, no one’s doing any thought leadership. There’s no thinking going on. You need to develop a program to fix that, because I’m the one with all the answers, and I’m the only one who’s doing any of the thinking. Um, when we get those requests, we typically pretty much work out quickly that that’s because there’s no room for anybody to do anything else.

Nicole Goodman: [00:11:21] Yeah. The thinking is being stifled. Right? And the cycle is is obviously closed then. And we see the fourth risk when people are not trying to please senior leadership, it becomes career suicide potentially because dissenting opinions are not going to be tolerated.

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:11:40] Yes. So again, we’ve seen this happen a lot in many of the stories that have been told of corporate disasters. This is where people become afraid to speak up because they’ve seen others punished or excluded for challenging the status quo. And it really becomes dangerous when no one’s telling the truth anymore. This is where organizations who find themselves in trouble put their head up and go, well, how did this happen? And I will often say, well, how much truth telling is going on? Because you really shouldn’t be surprised. The healthiest cultures inspire dissent. They actually invite it. As a leader in corporate for all those years, I would often say to my team, what’s wrong with this thinking? Challenge it. What could go wrong? What have I not thought of? You need to be able to value dissent as a form of engagement and treat resistance as important feedback. If people aren’t pushing back, it doesn’t mean they agree. It might just mean they are too scared to or they’ve checked out because there’s no point.

Nicole Goodman: [00:12:52] So Mani, as we wrap up, give us your three tips for business owners and organizational leaders to maintain a strong culture and avoid it becoming a cult.

Marnie Brokenshire: [00:13:04] So it starts with humility and emotional literacy. You need to make sure that you are rewarding the right things. People who are showing up, being honest, and being prepared to be part of the story. My three quick tips number one. Reflect on the types of rituals you have in your organization and separate your values from dogma. Promote people based on values and for having a voice, not just on loyalty and compliance. And really normalize feedback. Make it safe. And actually, if you are elevating into the space of high performing culture, make it expected. It is expected that you table your view and your opinion. And we’re really going to listen to what you have to say. We may even change the way we think about something based on the input of others. Strong cultures have edge, energy and empathy. And it’s not about just being nice. It’s about being honest, curious, and committed to collective growth.

Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:14:13] That was Marney Brokenshire, co-founder of Untapped Potential.

6 post-purchase actions your customers won’t forget

Now to customer loyalty. Greg Niolle is group manager of client success at Thryv Australia, which provides marketing services and data solutions. Greg says a whopping 91% of unhappy customers will not buy again from a company they’ve had a bad experience with. While product quality is important, without a positive customer experience, it quickly becomes irrelevant. Speaking to Nicole Goodman, Greg shares three things business owners can do to stand out and create engagement that keeps people coming back for more.

Greg Nicolle: [00:14:55] Look, in my 25 years of working with small business, the one thing that always amazes me is how little time and effort most businesses put into retaining existing clients and encouraging them to come back, versus what they’re prepared to pay on advertising to find new customers. And, you know, and it’s crazy because the reality is that it’s five times cheaper to sell something to an existing customer than to find a new one.

Nicole Goodman: [00:15:20] But okay, let’s just be honest. It feels like we’re more time poor than ever. When brands do reach out to us, sometimes it’s kind of too easy to ignore them.

Greg Nicolle: [00:15:31] Yeah. Look, I actually remember, um, right back when I started in this marketing game, I remember reading somewhere that we see between 5 and 10,000 ads a day. So absolutely, we’re ignoring the vast majority of them. I’m like, it’d drive us crazy if we weren’t. So even if you’d go back and you draw and remember off the top of your head the last three billboards that you drove past, or the last three Instagram ads that you actually scroll past like it’s impossible. However, if you are actually in the market for what was on that billboard or on that Instagram, you probably, you know, would notice it. So I think frequency is really important here, but it’s all about being in the right place at the right time with the right message. So when the client is looking for your product or service.

Nicole Goodman: [00:16:17] Well, you have six underrated ways that businesses can do all of that. Let’s start with the first way. It’s the post-purchase check in. Instead of just saying thank you. What do you mean by that?

Greg Nicolle: [00:16:30] Yeah, well, I think thank you is the absolute minimum. You know, everybody probably should. I mean, most a lot of businesses don’t, but everybody should as a minimum be saying, hey, thanks for your business. We really appreciate it. But but that’s expected now I think and I think a check in is just so much more memorable. So using your CRM or your engagement platform to track when the best time after the purchase. So it might be when you believe will be the first time they actually use this new product or experience this new service that you’ve sold them. But when that time is, and then giving them a message, then to ask them how they went with it, how they experienced it, how much do you love it? So you could take a local bike shop as an example, a few days after someone buys that new bike, they get sent a personalized check in asking how that first ride went and if there’s anything that we can help with, you know, around tyre pressures or gear adjustments or seat heights, anything that they might need. So it’s a simple message, but it sort of feeds into that ongoing relationship and opens the door for future tune ups, accessories, certainly referrals, because that great service is definitely going to make them talk to their friends and their family about the service that you’re providing.

Nicole Goodman: [00:17:43] Um, would you suggest also adding incentive to respond to the the thank you and the check in?

Greg Nicolle: [00:17:50] Yeah. Look, I think at that first time that they use your product or service and you give them a free tip or some advice or just that check in, that’s also a great time to actually just say, hey, and thanks for choosing us. You know, online word of mouth is really important to us these days. Would you mind taking 30s and writing us a quick review? I think that’s a really good time to sort of make that request. So yeah, great pick up.

Nicole Goodman: [00:18:16] Well, the second underrated way that you say businesses can retain new clients is to send a pro tips guide that adds value. And you’ve kind of hinted at this before, but can you give another example of what this might look like?

Greg Nicolle: [00:18:29] Yeah, this is a great one. It works for every industry. And yeah, I encourage every business out there sit down and work out what are the hints and tips that you could provide to customers that would improve the value a customer is getting out of your product or service? So again, after that purchase or appointment, sending a little pro tip guide to help your customer get the most out of their purchase is a great thing to do, and with a SaaS tool, it’s easy to do that as well without losing that personal touch. So again, a good example might be a beauty therapist. They could follow up a few days after a client’s treatment with some tailored tips, such as hydration habits. Post-care routines that personalize that service provide extra additional value over and above what they paid for, which is just going to build trust and subtly encourages rebooking and interest in complementary products that you may want to introduce to them later on down the track as well. So obviously we want to provide a great service, but we also want to set the customer up that if they’re receiving a great service from us, that they’re open to future purchases as well.

Nicole Goodman: [00:19:38] Well, third, you suggest turning the customer’s purchase into a moment of social proof. What do you mean by that?

Greg Nicolle: [00:19:45] Yeah, social proof is more important now than it’s ever been. So I think I mentioned earlier that just appearing when a customer is searching for you now is not enough. Over 90% of consumers, after finding you then, want to go on and see what others are saying about you, to see if they can build up that trust to take that next step to actually contact you. So social proof is all about that. Okay, so after they’ve found you, they’re jumping onto Facebook or they’re jumping onto Instagram and they want to be proven with the social proof as to why you’re a good business to deal with. So the question is always though, how do I get more of these social proof points? How do I get more reviews? How do I get more customers telling other new potential customers, you know how great I am? So one example of that, and you actually did pick up on it in the earlier question, but I’ll use a different example this time of, say, a mobile car detailer. Again, follow up the day after the job with a friendly message and a direct link to leave a review. Okay, but again, you want to make it feel personal. So you would basically include something in that message around perhaps how well the paint work came up or how great your car looked after. We did all the work on it, which is going to encourage them to reflect on that in their feedback as well, and also encourage them because they’re feeling good right at this point to spend that 30s and leave some feedback for you.

Nicole Goodman: [00:21:10] Well, next, and I really like the way that you put this, is that you suggest using SMS with intention and restraint because branded texts can be incredibly annoying, especially if it feels like spam.

Greg Nicolle: [00:21:24] Yeah, it’s a tricky one because it’s incredibly effective, because SMS open rates are much, much stronger than email open rates. But it often gets overlooked because of fear of spamming your customer. Okay, we don’t like getting spam, so we’re really conscious about not spamming our customers. However, used thoughtfully, it can be one of the most powerful post-purchase tools, especially for appointment based businesses. Okay, so an example here might be a physio. You know, they could follow up a few days after that first appointment with a quick SMS link that shows a short video recap of some key stretches or some exercises that maybe the next step or evolution on the program that they’ve put in place for this particular client. So it’s only a small gesture and it’s only a small thing. But to that customer who is really invested in their recovery to get that extra little value add after the appointment they paid for means a lot. It shows genuine support. It helps the patient feel looked after beyond that initial appointment as well.

Nicole Goodman: [00:22:32] Well, your fifth post-purchase suggestion, Greg, is to create milestone moments.

Greg Nicolle: [00:22:38] Yeah, well, I guess this is all around loyalty and the fact that loyalty doesn’t happen with just one click. You can’t send a thank you for using us email or text and expect the customer then to be loyal for the rest of their lives. It’s about celebrating all of the little small milestones along the customer’s journey, and to show them that you’re paying attention around that as well. So a local gym could use this type of activity to basically send something out to a new member in their first month, or maybe at the end of their first month. And I use this one as an example, because with gym memberships, everyone has great intent to go to the gym, but it can waver and it can die off. And they actually have quite high churn rates on gym memberships. So trying to keep your members engaged is actually really important. So sending something after one month, basically pointing out some milestones and some achievements that they made in that first month, and then you could also offer a free guest pass or a discount on some group training. So a little bit of an add on as well that you know that customer is going to be interested in. But again, it’s just motivating consistency and giving them some rewards and deepening their engagement. You know, opening the door to some add on services but without the actual hard sell.

Nicole Goodman: [00:23:56] Well, you mentioned discounts there, but Greg, your final suggestion is to offer exclusivity, not discounts. And I want to say, but come on, what’s better than a discount? They’re pretty good, right?

Greg Nicolle: [00:24:07] Yeah, look, discounts are great, but you don’t want to just always rely on discounts. And I think too often businesses do fall back on discounts, probably because they’re trying to market to their customers just when they’re trying to sell something so you don’t have anything but to offer them a discount because you haven’t built up that loyalty over time. So I think rather than just offering the discount, yeah, send them emails and messages that build loyalty, build a connection, build value, build trust, and help make your customers feel like insiders. Part of a special VIP group within your business. So you know a homewares store could, um, reward recent customers or customers from the last year with an exclusive first look email featuring an upcoming arrival or a behind the scenes peek of a new launch, or a new product, or a new accessory to something that they have previously bought. So it creates that sense of belonging and keeps customers engaged by making them feel part of something special, and they’re just as likely to buy than just throwing out, you know, random discounts to them on a on an ongoing basis where it just feels like you’re after, like a cheap money grab, rather than sort of looking after them and making them feel part of a community.

Host – Grace Jennings-Edquist: [00:25:24] That was Greg Nicolle, Group Manager of Client Success at Thryv Australia. Thanks for joining us on this week’s episode. Follow Business Essentials Podcast across social media and head to www.BusinessEssentialsPodcast.au for more. Business Essentials is a SoundCartel podcast. Producers are Nick Schildberger, Nicole Goodman and myself. Technical production is by Pete Letts. I’m Grace Jennings-Edquist thanks for listening. We’ll bring you more business essentials next week.