#35 Leadership Insights from my Conversation with Dr. Ken Wagner

Leadership culture doesn’t change through slogans, motivational speeches, or another poster on the wall.

It changes through behavior.

In this episode of The Learning to Lead Show, host Mark Cundiff shares exciting updates on the podcast's growth and introduces a powerful conversation with behavioral science expert Dr. Ken Wagner. 

In just five months, the show has been heard in 214 cities across 24 countries and 33 U.S. states—a sign that leaders around the world are hungry for practical wisdom they can apply immediately.

Mark and Dr. Wagner explore how behavioral science can help leaders strengthen culture, improve performance, and create lasting organizational change. Instead of relying on vague leadership advice, this conversation focuses on observable actions leaders can take to influence the behaviors that drive results.

If you want to build a stronger culture, align your team, and create real accountability, this episode offers a framework grounded in research and real-world leadership.

Key Insights from the Episode

1. Positive Reinforcement Drives Behavior

2. Culture Is the Pattern of Behavior Over Time

3. Accountability Works Best When It Is Clear and Measurable

4. Beware of “Helicopter Leadership.”

5. Most Change Initiatives Fail Because Leaders Skip the Momentum Phase

Free Learning To Lead Resources

• Free Book: The Trust Gap
• The Learning To Lead Newsletter
• LeaderNotes

🔎 About LeaderNotes

LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.

Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

Transcript

0:00

Learning to Lead show. I'm your host, mark Cundiff and I want to thank you for being a listener and following the show. I wanna share a few stats with you today from the Learning to Lead show. We've had great growth over the last five months. We've had growth every month. During that time, and I just wanted to share a few interesting stats. We've been heard in 214 different cities during that time in 24 countries around the world, and also 33 states in the United States. I want to thank each and every one of you who shared this with a friend, promoted it on your social media. Let others know about what we're doing here on the Learning to Lead show. Dr. Ken Wagner joined us for episode 34 to discuss how leaders can use the science of behavior to build stronger cultures, improve performance, and create lasting organizational change. He has been doing this work for more than 30 years with his global consulting work in different industries across different countries and different cultures. Ken explains how intentional leadership focuses on reinforcing the behaviors that drive results rather than relying on motivation slogans, programs that rarely stick. In this conversation, we discuss practical strategies leaders can use to shape culture, improve accountability, and help teams consistently perform at a higher level. Here's some of the key topics that we discussed during our conversation he talked about the science of behavior and why it matters for leaders. He also talked about why most leaders misunderstand positive reinforcement. He talked about how culture is really built through patterns of behavior, the leadership mistake that creates confusion in organizations. A good one here was why Employee of the month programs often backfire. And he also talked about why change initiatives fail and how to fix them. He talked about how leaders can create environments where the right behaviors repeat naturally. So make sure that you go and check out episode number 34. I'm going to give you a few highlights from that discussion. Talk about five key takeaways that I got outta my conversation with Dr. Ken Wagner. The first one positive. Reinforcement isn't praise. It's what gets repeated so many times, positive reinforcement gets a bad name. Most leaders think of reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is saying good job or giving somebody a pat on the back. Here's how Ken reframes it. He says Reinforcement is anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will happen again. Listen to that carefully. Reinforcement is anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will happen again. Reinforcement is anything that increases the likelihood that a behavior will happen again. The strongest form is natural reinforcement. When a behavior works for the person, in other words, it makes the job easier, it reduces effort, it improves results. When leaders help people see the impact of their actions, the behavior becomes self-sustaining. So here's a coaching cue for you. Don't just compliment the behavior. Connect the outcome. Number two is culture isn't a mystery, it's a pattern of behavior. So here's how he defines it. Culture equals the repeated behaviors that are encouraged or discouraged over time. That means culture can be designed not by slogans, but by deciding what to reinforce, what to interrupt, and what to consistently follow up on. Here's a key action that a leader can take. Define culture by answering this question. What would we see people doing if the culture is working? In other words, if you had an avatar of your culture and where you want it to be and the behaviors that you wanted to see in your organization, what would that look like? What would the people actually be doing on a day-to-day basis? Number three, accountability works best when it's positive and precise. Most accountability systems are built around mistakes and punishment. Ken teaches positive accountability. Three key aspects to that. Number one, be clear and specific about expectations. Observable behaviors, not vague. Traits many times, this is where leaders fall flat. They don't make their objectives, their expectations clear to their team members, and when they do that, it really limits the amount of feedback and accountability that they can provide to their team when their team doesn't truly understand what it is that is expected of them. Number two, reinforce progress through small steps. People build fluency through reps doing it over and over again. Number three, use data to measure not only the results, but also results achieved the right way. A key truth about this is if expectations are vague, follow up becomes impossible. Number four, helicopter leadership. This creates chaos even when the intentions of the leader are good. When senior leaders drop in and bypass supervisors, it often undermines middle leaders' credibility. Two, it intimidates the workforce. Number three, it creates misalignment and shadow priorities. Number four, it triggers hours of unnecessary work. It's what Ken called the president of the US effect, where he can mention something in a press conference, in a tweet, and the stock market goes up or down based on his casual statement. And this can happen when a senior leader goes in and makes some kind of statement. Or goes out onto the shop floor and says something and it can create hours or even days of work for the team. This is a better way for senior leaders to make this visit. Successful senior leaders should align with the supervisors. First, ask the supervisor, what have you been emphasizing? What are the important things that you wanna see your team doing? Then walk together with the supervisor and reinforce what the supervisor is already building. Number five, most change efforts fail because leaders skip the momentum model. Ken points to the common failure points in change initiatives like Lean Six Sigma safety programs. 70% of the time these change initiatives do not hit their desired goals or objectives. Let me give you four key reasons that this happens and how to do this differently. Leaders don't explain why it matters for the organization and the individual. Leaders need to take time to really connect the dots for the organization so that they know why they're doing this and why they're going through the pain of a change initiative in order to achieve the desired results and what the purpose is Behind that, mental managers are told to make it happen without anyone stating clearly what behaviors they need to be acting on, what behaviors they need to be executing in order to make it work. Milestones are too far away. Stretch goals discourage early effort. So we see goals that are really big to make this big accomplishment, but there's no really clear mile markers to set the course so that they can be some early wins. And then teams like early wins. So momentum dies before habits form. So the winning approach to counteract this is build change with small targets. With fast feedback and repeated coaching until it becomes a habit. Thank you for listening to the Learning Lead Show today. It is my hope that you got some value out of the conversation that I had with Ken. If you haven't listened to that, make sure you go back to episode 34 and listen to our entire conversation. There's a lot of great leadership content, personal development content, an explanation of how to understand the science of behavior. Also, make sure that you subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Make sure that if you got value outta this content, please go give us a rating. Those ratings help us spread the word about the conversations about leadership and how to be a better leader here on the Learning to Lead Show. Also, the Leader Notes are available for you for a free download. This gives you an outline of the things that we discussed and application steps for growth, and this helps you retain the lessons that you learned and put these into practice. We thank you for being with us on the Learning to Lead Show now. Make sure you go out and learn, grow and lead, and take your organization to the next level.