The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – CultureWerk: The Twelve Pillars of Leadership Multiplication by Tom Kereszti

Episode Date: March 17, 2026

CultureWerk: The Twelve Pillars of Leadership Multiplication by Tom Kereszti https://www.amazon.com/CultureWerk-Twelve-Pillars-Leadership-Multiplication/dp/166578833X Leadershipdisciples.com What if you could build organizations that thrive without you? In CultureWerk, you’ll discover the 12 Cultural Pillars that transform exhausted executives into architects of self-sustaining success. These aren’t consultant theories-they’re hard-won lessons from Tom Kereszti’s journey through five continents, turning disasters into triumphs for companies like Colgate-Palmolive, Benckiser, and Strauss Group. You’ll learn the same frameworks that helped transform a money-bleeding Prague operation into a profit powerhouse. The partnership approach that outmaneuvered Sara Lee and Kraft in acquisition battles. The trust-building secrets Navy SEALs use to turn ordinary people into extraordinary teams. Why Disney-Pixar created billions while Daimler-Chrysler destroyed value-and how to ensure you’re on the right side of that equation. But here’s what matters most: you’ll finally understand why your best people leave (hint: it’s not the money), why your team waits for you to solve everything (you trained them to), and how to break the cycle that’s keeping you trapped. This book won’t just change how you lead-it will free you from the prison of being indispensable. You’ll build something more valuable than a successful business: a legacy that multiplies through others. Your future self-rested, strategic, and watching your organization thrive without your constant intervention-starts here. You’re the only one who can close the big deals and fix the real problems-that’s not leadership, that’s a life sentence. Discover the 12 pillars that transform organizations and executives into architects of self-sustaining cultures where leaders emerge naturally at every level. “CultureWerk is not another leadership book built on theory-it’s a masterclass forged in the real world. Tom Kereszti doesn’t just talk about culture; he shows you how to engineer it, protect it, and multiply it so your organization can thrive long after you step out of the room. What makes this book rare is its focus on leadership multiplication, not leadership dependency. Too many organizations rise only as high as their most visible leader. CultureWerk teaches you how to embed leadership so deeply into your culture that your people grow, your teams self-correct, and your mission outlives any single personality. Through the Twelve Pillars, Tom delivers a practical, global, and deeply human blueprint for building teams that perform with excellence and sustain impact across generations. This is the kind of book that changes how you lead on Monday morning-not just how you think on Sunday night. If you are serious about building a culture that scales, lasts, and multiplies leaders at every level, CultureWerk is not optional-it’s essential.” – Chris Robinson USA Today Bestselling Author, From Drift to Drive Executive Vice President, Maxwell Leadership “Different companies, different industries, strategies, technologies, and products – peel it all back, and what ultimately seals a company’s success is its culture. This book focuses precisely on that – on what truly transforms organizations into lasting legacies. It brings together the vast experience, deep insights, and extensive knowledge that Tom – whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing since our days at Strauss – possesses.” – Erez Vigodman Co-Founder Terra-A AG, Former President & CEO of Teva Pharmaceuticals, ADAMA and Strauss Group. “I get asked to “endorse” a lot of books these days, and I always count it an honor. This book is quite different in the fact that I know the author personally and have had the privilege of seeing firsthand the fruit of his life up close. As a member of my church, Tom is a brilliant man, originally born in Hungary immigrated to the USA and this books carry’s a potent fusion of ‘old world’ Austro/Hungarian nobility, fused with ‘new world’ USA entrepreneurial pragmatism. About the author Tom is an industry influencer and is a highly sought-after coach, speaker, educator, and mentor. Tom’s new book C-Suite and Beyond was just published by Harper Collins. His approach to leadership comes from a lifetime of international experience. He has built and led executive teams in Fortune 500 companies in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States. His accomplishments include establishing global alliances, acquiring companies, leading successful start-ups, and creating brands. Tom is a certified member of the John Maxwell group, a leadership training organization built to grow and equip others to do remarkable things and lead fulfilling lives. Tom’s servant leadership principles are time proven and founded on biblical principles. “Man of God, leader of men.” That vision statement has guided every life choice Tom has made since 1995. Tom is down to earth and able to strike a balance between business challenges and common-sense solutions. His motivational and engaging style will leave you with practical and applicable solutions that you can put into practice. He is passionate about mentoring and coaching executives. He will empower you, your team, and your company to succeed. Tom is also an international speaker.

You wanted the best... You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. In the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready.

Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education role. rollercoaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. I'm this is Voss here from The Chris Voss Show, Tom. The gentleman in the early things that makes it official. Welcome to the big show.

I'm so glad I don't have to sing that line after 14 years. We could do that for over 16 years and 20 episodes. We've been bringing the Chris Voss show. And if you want to hear me singing the old line, the Chris Voss Show.com. You can go back and listen to the other 2,500 episodes, whatever it was. So anyway, an amazing young man, we're going to talk to.

and about leadership and all sorts of different cool things. It'll improve your life and your business and all those things. Because that's what we do on the Chris Foss show. We're these amazing guests that come on and they're super smart. They have the super brains and they share all their wonderful knowledge. And then you can have one too. You can grow one of those brains. Dan Aykroyd in that one SNL skit with the big alien brains.

That's what you'll look like when you get done with the Chris Foss show. Anyway, guys, we have an amazing young man on the show. We're going to talk to him about his books, his insights. But in the meantime, go to good research. com, forechestchristchrisvost, LinkedIn.com, Fortresschusch,christfuss, and Goodrease.com, Forchest, Chris Foss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show.

Some guests of the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it's not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, we have an amazing man on the show. I've said that three times now that he's just that durned amazing. What can you say? This book is entitled Culture Work. And that's Culture Work with a Work spelled W.E. RK. So if you're Googling that, you should know that for Amazon. Culture work, the 12

pillars of leadership application transform organizational value by building cultures where leaders emerge everywhere continuously, because that's what we need is more leaders in a company and more people to success. Tom Kareesti joins us on the show today. We're going to be talking to him. Welcome to the show, Tom. How are you? Great. Thanks for having me again. And coming back for the second time, so I must have done something the first time. You invited him back a second time. You passed out to pizzas last time, so we had to have you. Whatever works. And thanks for calling me a young man. That was a long time ago, but thank you. You know, a couple years ago, yeah. You've written this book as a hands-on guide for C-suite executives

who want to diagnose design and build a kind of culture that drives performance to scale. Tell us about some of the stuff you do there. I'm sorry, let's lead off with the dot com so we can get that out of the way.coms, any promotions you have? If you're listening and you would like a free copy of the book for the first 50 listeners, so the first 50, if you just send me an email to say send me a book, and you can send that to Tom atculturework.org, and I'll send you a free copy of a book for you download. What a deal.

What else could I, that's better than free pizzas, I think, no? Yeah, yeah, way better because we're going to learn more. You don't really learn much with pizza. Other than, you know, later you get to indigestion, you're like, I shouldn't have done that. So you're an industry influencer, speaker, advisor, coach, and mentor. You've done this for spanning six continents in the C-suits of Fortune 500 companies and helping turnaround, struggling businesses, launching new ones. And you're also a Maxwell Leadership, certified team member, mentored directly by John Maxwell,

who wrote so many amazing books on leadership and still does, I think, if he's up to that. So give us a 30,000 overview of what's inside this book, Culture, work. Like I'll call it the 12 pillars of leadership multiplication and why multiplication. It's pretty simple. I think Warren Buffett once said that he likes to invest in companies that have great brands that any dummy could run because one day a dummy will run that. So the thing. So similar philosophy to say, look, in any organization, it's only a function of time before you get bad fish at the head. There's going to be an incompetent leader that runs that company sooner or later. And if the culture is set right and you're constantly raising up leaders throughout that organization,

then that culture will outlast that one bad leader. It will sustain itself. If it does have a strong culture where you're kind of raising up leaders all the time, then you get a bad guy at the top or a bad woman at the top and things can go south real quickly. And there's all kinds of examples of that. 12 pillars. Let's get into some of the details on some of this. Can you tease out some of the pillars of them?

They're in the book and why they're important? Yeah, there's four sections, I would say. So there's three pillars for each section. The first section is really kind of discovering what your organization, what your DNA is. And I call it equivalent, you know, a person's character is equivalent to an organizational culture. So it's really finding an organization's DNA to say, what are they're all about, you know? What makes them tick? Why are they unique? Look, every organization is

going to have a different culture. It's going to have a different DNA, which is good. It's just really identifying what that DNA is. And the second portion of it is really discovering how you build your teams, right? Okay, now you know what your DNA is. You know what your culture is. Now let's spend some time to say who's on a team and how do we complement members of a team with what I call diversity of mindset and have a cultural ad rather than just on a cultural match. A lot of us hire people say, hey, we've got Tom and we love Tom because he fits our culture. Organizations look at that and say, what does Tom bring to a culture? What does he add?

He doesn't just match it, but he adds it. It makes us better. That's also extremely significant when you're doing mergers and acquisitions to say, okay, if I'm putting two companies together, chances are likely that the new culture of the joint organization is going to be some kind of addition of one plus the other. It's just not going to be totally one or totally other. You can't have two cultures, so you've got to pick one, but you'll probably take some good from either one. So you kind of identify that. And then I'm big on forming habits and rituals to say, you know, how do you reinforce that culture that you want to create?

You know, one of the stupid examples I always used was my first job when I graduated college and I had a boss and he had this silly little piece of paper, eight and a half by 11 piece of paper that says, out of boy on it. And then underneath it says, by the way, one our shit, wipes out a thousand out of boys. But any time somebody did something good, they would get this little piece, eight and a half piece of paper and say, hey, you got an outboard. You know, right on the spot. And people will kill for that stupid little piece. of paper. It didn't cost any money, but it was just one of those habits, those, you know, one of those those rituals that, you know, you do all the time. And it rewards the habits that you want to see.

It rewards the culture that you want to build. And then the last one is going forward is, is the once you take yourself out of the picture, how do you build that legacy? How do you keep that going forward? You know, one, two, and three, sections one, two, and three really are all about, identifying, putting the team together, leading it, and getting it to a certain level. And then the fourth one is you're gone, even probably the team that you hired are gone, but the culture sustained itself. So how does the legacy build? Yeah. Let me ask you this. I've been talking, I was talking to my young nephew, Gen Zier, and he's looking for a new job now. And one of the things that they have out there is,

is, you know, you have AI doing the first filtering for a lot of applicants and, you know, that send in their resumes. And I was thinking, geez, you know, it's so different. You know, I was big in what you talk about with culture, building a healthy environment, building a learning environment, Peter Senge, I think, turned me out of that. And probably some of John Maxwell's books, too, that I read later in life. You know, building that learning conversation to help what you talk about, bringing up those new leaders. and fomenting that sort of future.

And, you know, with it, I could go to places, maybe I didn't quite qualify for work in some places when I'm really young. But I would just use a lot of my, what did you use, people call Hoxma or, you know, my, my sort of ability to be personal and social and lead and just kind of shine who I was in the interview. And they would go, you know, you don't have a college degree because I started my first company 18.

You don't have a college degree, but you know what? You got a lot of gumption. Maybe that's the word I'm looking for. And it's, and I think you would fit in here at our culture. And, you know, part of my jobs are always selling. So the fact that I could sell myself in the interview, you know, that was the thing. But you can't do that anymore. And I've often wondered with AI running the front of hiring, you know, and filtering,

can it really, can it really filter for culture, you know, or is that really more of a human thing? You know, you and I sitting across each other, we can see if we click and we've got a good working maybe possibility and working together. You know, we can tell if we're seamless. I don't know that a computer can pick up on that or filter for it. What are your thoughts? I probably can't, but I would say the Generation Z is, look, be smart about it because even if you, create this great AI resume, and even if you get through the AI filter, there will be a day, day one, where you actually enter through the doors of that organization. You start interacting with

other human beings. So do yourself a favor and do a little research off front and make sure that whatever the culture of their organization is, what are the values of their organization is, what are the vision of their organization is, you first do a gut check and say, could I thrive in that organization? Because sooner or later, you're going to work there, and if you get hired, and it's the wrong culture, and it kind of raises the hair up on the back of your neck, then you're going to either be fired or you're going to be quitting

in about six to nine months anyway. So why waste anybody's time, including your time? You know, time is precious. So especially, look, today with technology, is so easy to research companies, see what their culture is, And if the culture is not evident on the company's website, don't even take the interview. If it is evident, do a gut check. Can you thrive?

Not just survive, but can you thrive in that organization. And if you think it can, then, okay, get through the front door. And if it takes an AI tool to design your resume because you can't do it yourself, okay, then have AI help you and get through the door. But just remember, once you're through that door, you know, the AI is it got you through that door, just like a resume got you through that door, just like the interview got through the door door. But then there's day one. Yeah.

And, you know, day one is, I joke all the time when, I don't know if I shared this joke with you, but guy dies and it goes to heaven and St. Peter says, hey, Tom, we've got a choice for you today. You can either go to hell or you can go to heaven. You can spend the day in hell and spend the day in heaven. You tell me what you want to do.

So Tom gets on the elevator, it goes down and the doors open up and there's hell, and there's a pristine beach and calypso music. playing and people are drinking beers and having a great old time. So he spends 24 hours. It flies by like it's two seconds. Next day, he goes to heaven. And just like you imagine heaven, it's sitting on a cloud with the harp playing, eating grapes. So St. Peter goes after the end of the two days. So Tom, what do you think? St. Peter, you know, heaven was just I imagined, but it's kind of boring. And heaven wasn't bad at all. I thought it was kind of fun. So I think I'll take help.

So St. Peter goes, all right, they take the elevator down, the doors open, and now it's really like hell. It's fire and dust and people are slaving. And St. Peter, what happened? He said, yesterday we were recruiting. Today, you started. Oh, wow. Wow. That is a powerful story of some of the things you see.

You know, I mean, so let me ask you this. If you're looking at culture, and I suppose Glass Door is what you're kind of maybe we're referring to, seeing if the culture works at the company? Is that a good reference point? Yeah, Glass Door is a great tool. It'll tell you employee satisfaction. It will tell you, I mean, I look at Glassdoors when I do canvassing for potential companies that could be part of my, you know, portfolio.

And Glass Door is great. And people are very honest. You know, they'll say the leadership of this organization sucks. They'll say, you know, the culture is terrible. I mean, people are honest on Glass Door. Yeah, that's great. And you'll have companies with a 2.3 rating and you'll have companies with a 4.5 rating. Yeah, it's a great tool.

Yeah, I mean, sometimes if I'm just bored and I want to, I'm going, you know, I can't sleep or something. I'll just doomscroll glass door. There's a few of my friends that I know that are just monster narcissists, ego maniacs, and that's saying something coming from me, they're beyond me, let's put it this way. They're more advanced than their levels. But we know they run their businesses really poorly and they're, pretty shitty and awful to other people. When I say friends, I say people I know on Facebook.

So sometimes we just take turns going and cruising their glass doors because we know how they are. And yeah, it's kind of, it's kind of a laugh. It should be sad. I probably shouldn't laugh at all. But yeah. But yeah, you know, let me ask you this then. We're going down the culture wormhole here, folks.

If, you know, I bash a lot of this over the decades, this culture by PR, decreed. or edict. You know what I'm talking about? Where a company thinks that they can set culture just by putting about a bunch of PR bullshit. And really, you know, maybe the CEO is operating completely the opposite of the ethics and morals. He's espousing. And, you know, people are seeing that he's full of shit. And you're just like, you guys are just putting out PR spin and then doing everything different, you know. We care about our employees. 44,000 of you laid off. You know, that's kind of crap. What do you think about that sort of operation?

The biggest challenge for large organizations is really sustaining a culture that they want throughout the organization on all levels. Because you may have some spots inside the organization that work well. I mean, the first job that I took when I came out of college was Colgate Pamolive. And one of the reasons I worked for Colgate Pamolive is I had the pleasure because there was no internet back there. So they used to take me on tours of companies to see, you know, kind of give you the nickel and dime show to get you try to work for them. I remember going in this one company and I was always an extra route. I would pull people aside, hey,

what's it like working here? Whatever. This one guy says to me, don't come here. This sucks. But Colgate, every person I talked to, they said, this is a great place. We love working here. So that's the company I started out of college. And they had a saying that people are our most important resource. And my first job at Colgate was a shift supervisor on a production line in a factory. I was an engineer undergraduate engineer graduate. So they stuck us in the factory to learn. So I had two weeks of day shifts, one week of four to 12 shifts, and one week of midnight shift.

So we get a word that Ruben Mark, who was the CEO at the time, brilliant guy. He was the CEO and chairperson for, I don't know, probably about 10 or 12 years or something, maybe more. Really had a great run with Colgate. And we got a word that Ruben's coming through for a plan tour. So we shut down the entire factory or my area of the factory for the entire midnight shift, just cleaning stuff up and make sure that those tunes are finally, you know, the machines are finally tuned. Nothing breaks down. But that moment that Ruben walks through. So we lost an entire production for the entire midnight shift. Place looks sparkling. I stick around the next morning to see Rubin.

And he walks through with his cronies, probably about five or six guys. And literally, if he stopped short, five or six guys would go, you know, ran right up his butt. Yeah, they were like, you know, like a phone. But they just, they didn't talk to anybody. They didn't say anything to anybody. They would just kind of look. But instead of engaging the local workers, they would just talk among themselves. and they were in out of there in about 45 seconds or two minutes, something like that.

And they annoyed this shit out of me because people are most important resource. And obviously, they're not living that because they couldn't care less about any of the employees that were working on the factory. They were just kind of huddling themselves apart, you know, and kissing each other's, you know, butts. They're a lower rank kissing, you know, Rubu Marx, but just kind of walking through. And I swore I would never do that again. So when I was CEO, when I would go into the factories, I would spend time with the local workers, even having translators

because it was different countries, and just, hey, how can we make your life easier? How could we make, do better for you? And then it was the, it was the responsibility

of the local management team to follow up with whoever we talked to on that production floor, whatever ideas they gave us. It was my team's responsibility, get back to their employees and say, hey, thanks for your advice, or thanks for your suggestion.

We're not going to do it, because it's not going to work XYZ, or we are going to do it. And thank you so much. So it was a closed loop, and I would never walk onto a production floor ignoring people. Because I thought it was just stupid. You know, it's just like, you live your values. I used to call it back in the day, touching hearts and minds when I'd walk the floor, shake hands, you know, give people a pat on the shoulder. Hey, how's it going, Mike?

Ask him about their family. And, you know, people can tell if you're genuine, you know. They can tell if you're genuine, if you're full of shit. How's your family? give me your TPS reports. You know, that sort of thing. And it was chucking into people. You know, a lot of my floor with salespeople.

And if their heads are not in the right band space, you know, there's some at homes bugging them or, you know, something else they got going on. There's all sorts of crap that can get in your head and muck you up. But when you're a salesperson, if that interferes with your ability to sell, your sales are going to go down. And, you know, I call it touching the hearts of minds. I think heart, I think HR says I can't.

call it touching anymore. But I mean, that's what you do. I'd shake hands. I'd maybe give a pat on the back or a shoulder touch and hey, how's it going? Mike? Just let people know that you're fucking human beings and we're all trying to do the best we can here. And I've seen, you know, great leaders.

I remember watching a little documentary or I don't know what it was. Something about, I think it was the head of HP. And he would do that. He would walk through the different levels of his corporation, usually a different place every day. And he would, He would meet everybody, but he would always check in on the front line, too.

You know, he'd go down through the levels. And he would do that. He would talk and shake hands, take pictures, ask how he could serve people better. And he'd go down the front line. And, you know, a lot of people don't go to the front line. Or they do what you do. They show up with the presidential White House security detail and kind of alien everybody. Yeah.

I mean, you know, a great example is I do apologize because I forget the guy's last name, but Jim, and he was the president of Costco for many, many, many years, the old guy. He retired probably, I think, about five or eight years ago, and Jim was famous for walking in every store, and he knew just about every employee's name at every single store because he visited all the stores. And you didn't have to give him the numbers. He would just, by walking through a store looking around,

could tell you what your numbers were. So he had his hand on the pulse, and he was a really people-centered guy, and people used to love working for Costco. Costco employees loved working that. They were being paid well. They were compensated well. They had great attitudes.

I would say if you're going to Costco over the last five years, it's like a different store. It's not the same as it was under Jim's leadership. It's very, very different. People are not as pleasant. The workers are not as pleasant. I don't think they're that happy working there anymore. It's a different culture now.

Yeah. And the culture is really important. And like I say, some companies think they can just decree it with a PR notice. Oh, we're highly intelligent, and we believe in innovation and integrity and, you know, the CEOs outlying his ass off about something. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's the number one before our call rightly, correct me if we're wrong, it's the number one reason people leave a company is poor leadership.

So there's your proof in the pudding that why leadership is so important in culture. Absolutely. Yeah. What are some other aspects of the 12 pillars, maybe the your favorite? we should flesh out. And then I'm going to throw this at you because you can just pick which question you want to answer then. You talk about the 12 pillars of leadership multiplication. What's the multiplication thing going on there? There's three levels of leadership. And, you know, you talked about John Maxwell, and John Maxwell

defines this three levels. First level is leading yourself. The second level is developing followers. And, you know, most leaders get pretty sufficient and pretty good at the level two. And then the third level is where you're developing future leaders. You're multiplying leaders. So you're no longer worried about, hey, I'm making my team a really, really good team, and I'm making my team a really successful team. When you go to level three, when you go to leadership multiplication, as a good leader, the majority of your time should be developing people, mentoring people,

among them the way, making them better versions of themselves, lifting them up, putting them into situations where they can fail, fail quickly, you know, without devastation and learn from those failures, you know, put them into situations where they're learning or they're growing. So your emphasis is on developing on future leaders. Your emphasis is not on getting really teams to function really well or at a level one guy would just try to get himself to function really well. So that's what multiplication is all about. And if you do it right, you're going to have a 10x growth in your company because people all of a sudden throughout the organization are empowered right you chosen well so you're not going to empower people that you

don't trust so you have to stop micromanaging get those people ready empower them making them you know making them responsible for their own actions have them own those situations because there's a huge there's a huge difference between delegation and empowerment delegation means i own it I watch over you. I give you the authority to do some stuff, but it's still my ownership and I'm still watching over you. Empowering, hey, Chris, it's yours. For good or for bad, you got to figure it out.

If you fail, you failed. If you succeeded. And really my chore in that is just to make sure that you're ready. I've put you in enough situations that I have all the confidence in the world that when I empower you, you're going to do great. So it's getting into that multiplication where you feel confident of empowering people, trusting people that they're going to succeed and creating an environment where they can be successful. Oh. I mean, it's so important, so important. Let's talk about some of the things you offer on your

website, some of the services and products and different things you have there. We let off the thing where you're giving away, I think, 50 free copies of the book and stuff like that. Tell us about some of the other things you have going on here. I see the pilot tier max and the tools to invest in your growth. Yeah, we do traditionalizing and consulting. We do. We do. Traditionalizing and insulting. We which could be something as simple as we come in and do some workshops. You may be having a difficulty situation with either growth or trust or empowerment or something that we can help you with that has to do with culture, right? So I wouldn't come in and do a marketing workshop.

That's not our bread and butter. Our bread and butter is really doing workshops on culture, leadership, things like that. We can do, as part of that workshop, sometimes we come across executives that want to have some executive coaching. So we'll do some executive coaching to bring that individual along. We'll do consulting on projects. We'll do keynote speaking if you want to come in and have me, you know, fire up your sales force or you've got a management team meeting or something you want me to help, get really support your ideas across and share so much stupid stories from all over the world that may help you. So we can do that. And so those are the traditional tools of

consulting, workshops, masterminds, stuff like that. And then there's a really, cool tool that I came across a while ago. It's called PILTia Max. And you mentioned about AI before. This wasn't possible five years ago or even four years ago, three years ago. It's really the whole AI revolution allowed this to happen. And it's a pretty cool tool that gives you a constant feedback on how you're doing as a leader. So think about you're on a Zoom call or a Teams call or a Google meets call. Now, there's already tools out there that transcribe that meeting and it tells you what happened in that meeting. Now imagine that after the transcription, you got a dashboard across 12 criteria, which is predetermined what makes your

better leader, things like empathy, things like communication, right? And then it marks you on those from a zero to five and say, hey, you know, on this particular call, your empathy was a four, zero, but your communication or something like that was maybe a two and a half. So you got to work on that. So it marks you on these 12 criteria. And in fact, it looks at your body language. So if you're looking down constantly on your phone, playing with your phone or something like that, or you're rolling your eyes or you fall asleep, you know, it's going to also mark you on facial features. And it's also buzz you.

You know, we've got a little pop-up window. Say, hey, Tom, you know, you're not letting anybody else speak. So back off a little bit because you're really hogging all the time. you talk down to somebody. So it'll give you a little popper windows live to help you correct. And then if you're in a regular conference room, it's a little bit more burdensome because you've got to set up your phone and your phone is watching you.

It does the same thing because if you're in a conference room, you know, Zoom, it can distinguish it being you or me. You know, they know who you are and you are. But in a live conference room, you really can't tell who's talking, whether you're talking or I'm talking. So that's why you kind of point your phone at you. You kind of log into the system and point the phone at you. So it gives you feedback on what you're doing.

It's a great little tool, especially for traditional coaches, because if I'm a coach and I'm coaching you, I meet with you maybe once a month. We have a one hour powwow. We have a debrief and then you go away for another month and I don't see you. So I don't know how you're doing in all those meetings that are taking place in your company for that month. And the pilot here gives you feedback. How you're doing it also?

I see how you're doing it. You can find out some people are going to sleep on you there in the meeting. What is it? I think Amazon does meetings where everyone stands up. We've had a few Amazon folks on, and they have some interesting stuff. So as we go into it, you also have, what was the other thing I wanted to ask you about? The Live to Lead, what is that? Live to Lead.

A Live to Lead. Lift to Lead is an event that Maxwell organization puts out once a year. Okay. They have some pretty cool speakers there every year. year and they license that material. So I do the event in San Diego because that's where my hometown is in San Diego. So we do a big powwow at leadership event every year in San Diego where we have guys like John Maxwell, this year was Craig Rochelle and John Maxwell. But they have about five or six speakers each year on the event. So it's a pretty cool event. And we have local leaders

come in. We had a couple of panels. We had some two years ago. We had Navy Seals. Last year we had fighter pilots, top gun fighter pilots. So kind of transition or transform what they learned in the cockpit or what they learned on the battlefield that has effect business. So it's pretty cool. We got some interesting people in. Yeah, that's pretty wild. I mean, and we've had some of those people on the fighter pilots and the Air Force and stuff. Boy, they have to make some quick split second life and death decisions a lot of times. You know, they've got, you know, they've got an enemy they're targeting or maybe they're being targeted. by the enemy. Maybe they're, you know, they've got, you know, boots on the ground, so they've got to

worry about, you know, if I drop this bomb, am I going to kill my own people in the, in the, in the blast of, you know, what's out there? You know, and they, and they, a lot of times they have to make these decisions, you know, split second. And a lot of times it involves a, a multi-billion dollar machine, like a, you know, an F-35 or 16 and stuff. And, you know, even ditching, like ditching from the plane is can be catastrophic for them health-wise. One of the pilots shared this great story. And he said, look, and he translated into business really well. He said, look, when you're business, your sales may be falling, your profits may be falling,

you know, you may be in all these kind of different things and you're trying to correct too many things, trying to fix too many things and climb out of, you know, maybe a loss situation. He says, look, I'm in the cockpit and, you know, my engine's on fire. I don't worry about my engine being. on fire is that what I'm worried about is keeping the plane straight and getting back to that ship. You know, we can put out the fire

later. He says, I just want to steady that plane so I can get back to the aircraft area. That's my focus, right? I'm going to do everything that I can to be able to steady that plane to be able to land that on that aircraft. And what happens

is in business, we have a fire and we're so worried about putting out the fire and everything else. Just don't worry about that. Steady their business first, you know, get those, you know, performance indicators doing the right way and performing the right way, and then worry about putting out the fire later. So I thought it was a pretty cool, pretty cool advice. I mean, what's that old? We had one of the astronauts from Apollo 13 on, and he wrote a book called Never Panic Early. And it was a lot of the things that the fighter pilots in the U.S.

talk about, you know, don't, you can't let your emotions take over because then you start making bad decisions and they'll compound. This is the other problem you have with emotional decisions. And so you've got to stay focused. You got to stay on point. In a business, there's sometimes there's, you know, there's fires, there's, you know, somebody goes viral, you know, was that one at the baseball park where the CEO was cheating or something.

Oh, at the Coldplay concert. Yeah, you know, you have some employees say something. Suddenly you're viral or front page on the internet and you're getting all the arrows. You know, there's all sorts of things that can happen, you know, the food recalls and different things. But, you know, you've got to be prepared for all that. But you also got to, like you say, steady the plane because if the plane's not steady, you know, you can put out the fire. But if your plane is turned down and going into the ground because you didn't steady it, you probably have a bigger problem coming real quick, actually. But anything else we want to tease out or tell people about before we have you go.

Just thanks for being, you know, inviting me on the show again. It was a lot of fun. for all your listeners, again, if you're working inside of an organization where, you know, people are churning left and their right going out the door because they don't like it, or they can't retain good talent, they can't recruit good talent, you know, if the culture is just not right, just give them a book or let me know, you know, follow up. Maybe you should, are there consultants and coaches that go through Glass Door and then they call the people and they go, hey, we just got to read your glass store and they're shit. So you really need to

hire me. I'm trying that. That might be recruiting or their marketing. Yeah, I'm looking at glass. Look, you know, the tough part about it is, is if you reach out to the CEO, let's say you read a common on glass door that says, you know, the leadership in this company sucks. And then you go to the leadership in the company and said, you know, your employees are telling you suck. They don't take that too well. Yeah. I mean, It's really interesting to me. One of the things I always find amazing when I talk to leaders is, I'm like, what's your leadership

style? How do you develop culture? How do you, how do you seed it? How do you maintain it? How do you lead? What is your leadership sort of thing? You know, because there's different versions, you know? One version I always see is the popular high school version, the high school

virgin? I don't think they have those anymore. But the high school versions where it's about. popularity in adulation. It's almost like a fascist sort of management position where, you know, just they're surrounded by sick of fans who worship them and the people who are doing the work are sitting or

going to the work going, I don't know why I'm bother working because those people aren't and they just kiss the boss's butt all day. And the boss just loves the adulation and the thing. Those are all phase two. You know, I talked about phase two. It's like that particular person, good leader or a bad

leader, is into being worshipped. You know, they have to be there. a good you know if you go to the next level which is phase three they don't worry about that because in fact they're trying to work themselves out of a job because they don't want to be needed then that's the best kind of leader there is yeah i i've i've i like that thing can i get some grapes over here and the palm leaf guy's not waving to keep me cool can we get that fixed people all right let's get on it anyway yeah i never want to be one of those people that makes his employees worship other people.

I do have them carry me around on one of those thrones, though, around the office. Hey, if it works, good for you. You don't want to see my glass door reviews. I just look them up. Anyway, so it's been wonderful to have you on again, very insightful as well. Give us dot-coms, all those people tell them where to pick up the book and pitch out whatever offers you want. Yeah, so again, culture work that's cultural. and then W-E-R-K-org.

That will redirect you to my website, which is caressy.com. That's my last name, K-E-R-E-S-Z-T-I-com. And you'll find all kinds of information about not only this book, but other books, about the different tools

that we, Chris and I discussed. And like I said, or you can just find me on LinkedIn and start from there, because there's not a lot of Karestis on LinkedIn. It's me and my two daughters. And like I said, first 50,

on this podcast, whoever you're listening to, just drop me an email, send me a free copy, and I'll send you a free copy of your book. And if you know anybody that could benefit from it, let them know and let me know. All right. Sounds good then. Thank you very much for coming to show. We really appreciate it and all that good stuff. All right. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Its book is entitled Culture Work, The 12 Pillars of Leadership Multiplication out January 30th, 2026, and it's culture work, W-E-R-K,

because he's cool that way. It's kind of like, what's that one thing? That was the electronic band. I forget, techno work or something like that. Anyway, guys, thanks for tuning in. Go to Goodrease.com, Fortess, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortezs, Chris Foss, some of those crazy places.

Thenet, be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next. You've been listening to the most amazing intelligent podcast ever made to improve your brain and your life. Warning, consuming too much of the Chris Walsh Show podcast can lead to people thinking you're smarter, younger, and irresistible sexy. Consume in regularly moderated amounts. Consult a doctor for any resulting brain bleed.

All right, Tom, great show.