Workplace Culture: 3 Shifts Every Leader Needs

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Can a company really put people first and still build a thriving workplace culture? On A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso, my guest Josh Block says yes — and he’s got fifteen years of proof.

Who Is Josh Block?

Josh Block spent fifteen years leading Block Imaging, growing the team from fifty people to more than four hundred, and revenue from thirty million dollars to two hundred fifteen million. He didn’t get there by squeezing more out of people — he got there by building a workplace culture rooted in trust. He went on to found Cube Mobile Imaging, expanding access to medical imaging for patients across the country, and today serves as Executive Advisor at Block Imaging. He’s also the author of the new book People Matter @Work.

Josh works with executives navigating growth, brand-new managers who got the title without the training, and teams stuck in fear and disengagement — helping them reshape their workplace culture around trust, ownership, and generosity instead of pressure.

Why Workplace Culture Starts With “We,” Not “Me”

At the center of People Matter @Work is a simple but demanding idea: the biggest thing standing between a team and real performance often isn’t strategy, budget, or talent — it’s a leader running everything through “me.” Josh’s framework is built to shift workplace culture from isolation to ownership, and from pressure to possibility. If leadership has ever felt heavier the more responsibility you took on, this is the conversation for you.

3 Shifts That Build a Stronger Workplace Culture

Josh breaks it down into three practices any leader can start using right away to strengthen their workplace culture:

Lead together, not alone. Shared ownership — not hoarded decisions — is the backbone of a healthy workplace culture.
Make decisions with intention. Thoughtful choices beat leading on autopilot, and they signal the kind of workplace culture you’re building.
Practice transparency. Managing perception wears leaders out; honesty is what makes a workplace culture people actually trust.

Whether you’re an executive navigating change, a manager who wasn’t quite ready for the promotion, or leading a team stuck in disengagement, these three shifts are the blueprint for a workplace culture where people — and performance — actually thrive.

Listen to the Full Conversation

Josh’s book is a playbook for building the kind of workplace culture where trust, accountability, and generosity aren’t posters on a wall — they’re how the place actually runs. Catch the full conversation with Josh Block on A New Direction with Coach Jay Izso, live and on the podcast, and get a new direction on what it actually means to lead.

Josh Block’s book, “People Matter at Work: Fostering a Culture Where Team Members Thrive and Everyone Wins” is an outstanding book. If you are a fan of “The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team” by Lencioni then you are going to love this book! It takes a deeper look at how we will can truly build a team that builds trust and makes you organization and business more profitable.

We have all heard the saying, “culture eats strategy for breakfast” well Josh Block has the proof as he takes his company to a higher stratosphere financially through a powerful workplace culture shift. And how does he do that? By sharing the principles of People Matter @Work.

Josh literally takes us through his step of becoming a 20 something President of an already successful company and makes it even better. He recognizes during his own humbling experience there are 3 T’s, Working Together, making Thoughtful Decisions that affect his people, and being Transparent, helps his entire workforce become safe, seen, and successful. And the result is people take ownership of the company to want to see it succeed and in turn makes it tremendously profitable.

It may sound like a risk to the average CEO, but as Josh points out the real risk was by not doing the work to make his entire team a integral part of the business. This book is for both the current leader and the aspiring leader. And he not only has proved, he gives you the tools and the mindset to create it for your business as well. Really enjoyed every page of the book. I highly recommend it.

Get your copy of People Matter @Work by clicking here!

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ABOUT YOUR HOST

Meet Jay Izso

Executive Performance Coach | Host of A New Direction

Every week on A New Direction, I sit down with CEOs, founders, and the researchers behind the science of leadership performance. The conversations go deep. We talk about the decisions that built companies, the mistakes that nearly destroyed them, and the personal breakthroughs that changed everything.

But here’s what most people don’t know about me: the show is an extension of the work I do every day with executives behind closed doors.

Who I Am

I’m an Executive Performance Coach. I work with CEOs and founders of $5M-$50M companies who have hit a wall they can’t explain. The marketing looks fine. The team is capable. The market is there. But the business won’t move.

The problem, almost every time, is the person running it.

I find the personal behavioral patterns that are driving the business dysfunction. Then I help the CEO disrupt those patterns so the company can grow. That’s it. No motivational platitudes. No vision boards. Diagnostics, intervention, results.

Where This Comes From

My approach comes from two places most coaches never set foot in.

The farm. I grew up as a farmhand in Ithaca, Nebraska—population 100. I started working at nine years old. By the time I left for college, I’d spent a decade learning that you can’t cheat the harvest, pain is part of the job, and the work has to get done whether you feel like it or not. I was fourteen the first time I had to castrate boars. Nobody was going to do it for me. That lesson never left: sometimes you have to do things afraid.

The forensic psychology unit. In graduate school at Washington State University, I trained under Dr. Thomas Brigham—co-author of the Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis—in a human behavior lab focused on real-world problems. I then served in a Clinical Psych II role at Eastern State Hospital in Medical Lake, Washington, a forensic setting where I conducted psychological evaluations of individuals charged with the most serious criminal offenses. Sixteen months assessing human behavior at its most extreme taught me how to cut through defenses, identify what’s really driving someone’s decisions, and see what they can’t see in themselves.