Are you a coffee bean, carrot or egg?

What kind of person are you in tough environments?

What kind of person are you when the pressure is on?

Do you get harder? Softer? Or do you change the environment around you?

In this episode of Culture Conversations, Megan Robinson sits down with community-builder and podcast host Ben Albert for an unscripted, real-time exploration of a powerful leadership metaphor: the egg, the carrot… and the coffee bean.

What unfolds is a thoughtful, honest conversation about how we show up in hard situations, how leaders shape culture, and what it really means to create environments where people can thrive without losing themselves.

Tease Key Insights

• The Coffee Bean Leadership Mindset: Most of us are used to reacting to our environments. Stress hardens us. Grief or burnout softens us. But the coffee bean does something different. It transforms the water itself. Great leaders don’t just survive tough envirohttp://them.Younments; they influence and elevate them.

• You Don’t Become a Leader Without Being an Egg or a Carrot First: Megan highlights a powerful truth that becoming someone who positively shapes a culture often comes after being shaped by difficult experiences. Hard moments build strength. Soft moments build empathy. Leadership requires both.

• Culture Is Created in Small Moments: From stepping in to reset the tone of a harsh email thread to modeling respectful communication, leadership isn’t always loud or formal. Often, it looks like someone quietly saying, “That’s not how we treat each other here.”

• Psychological Safety Doesn’t Happen by Accident: Ben shares his desire to build communities where people feel safe to speak, experiment, and show up as themselves. That kind of space requires intentional tone-setting, clear boundaries, and leaders who are willing to go first in vulnerability.

• In a World of Rapid Change, Culture Is the Advantage: As workplaces evolve, especially with the rise of AI and constant innovation, the teams that thrive will be the ones where people feel safe to learn, fail, adapt, and grow together. That kind of environment is built by coffee-bean leaders.

  
  

Why this Matters?

Work is full of boiling-water moments: tight deadlines, conflict, uncertainty, change, and pressure.

If leaders only react to those conditions, culture becomes reactive too. But when leaders choose to intentionally shape the emotional and behavioral tone of a space, everything shifts.

Meetings become more honest. Feedback becomes more productive. Innovation becomes safer. People stop bracing and start contributing.

The conversation between Megan and Ben is a reminder that leadership isn’t about title. It’s about impact. Every person on a team has the ability to influence the “water” around them. The question is whether we do it by default… or by design.

Listen Now

If you’ve ever wondered how to:

• Show up as a stronger, more grounded leader

• Create a culture where people feel safe to speak and grow

• Balance empathy with healthy boundaries

• Influence your environment instead of being defined by it

This episode will give you both the metaphor and the mindset to start.

🎧 Tune in to this episode of Culture Conversations with Megan Robinson and Ben Albert and ask yourself:

Am I being shaped by my environment or am I helping shape it?

Ben Albert

Owner and Founder

Ben Albert is the owner of Balbert Marketing LLC, founder of GrowGetters ONL, and host of the internationally recognized podcast, Real Business Connections.

Through his companies, Ben empowers growth-minded leaders with strategic marketing, podcast production, and community-building resources. Once an underdog, now a successful entrepreneur, Ben is passionate about helping others achieve their potential. He is on a mission to move the needle on one million lives, one conversation at a time.

JOIN THE COMMUNITY: https://WeAllGrowTogether.com/ 

About Ben + Press Appearances: https://realbusinessconnections.com/host/ 

Balbert Marketing LLC: http://balbertmarketing.com/

Real Business Connections Podcast: https://realbusinessconnections.com/ 

Full Episode

Hello and welcome to Culture Conversations, the podcast where we explore the people side of work. I'm your host, Megan Robinson. For years, I've found myself deep in discussions about workplace engagement with industry experts.

Now I get to share this wisdom with all leaders new and experienced on their journeys to build cultures that maximize potential. We spend so much of our Let's make it a place where our teams can grow and succeed. Hello, welcome to Culture Conversations.

I'm your host, Megan Robinson, and we have a very unique and special episode today. I'm going to be talking with Ben Albert. And we were prepping for this and also trying to prep for this conversation.

We had a really great topic, all lined up, really specific for what Ben's passionate about and how to bring communities together and digital varieties. But when we jumped on and said, you know what, I've got a conversation that I want to have. And I was like, look, this is called Culture Conversations.

We are here for conversations. So this is unscripted. I actually don't even know what the topic but you're going to get to have that live, real raw thought process and thinking and creativity in that deep connection that we often have when we have really great people that we're putting together and we've sparked something.

So I will introduce Ben. Ben is the owner of Balbert Marketing. He's the founder of Grow Getters Only Collective.

And he's also the host of the internationally recognized podcast of Real Business Connections. I will say he is fabulous at making connections, incredible podcast host, and I have been lucky enough to join him on his podcast. So Ben, go ahead, take it from there.

What do you want to talk about today? What's up, Megan Robinson? I'm pumped to be here. And I hope people do go listen to that episode that we did together. That was cool.

That was a good one. Also a unique one, very, very thought centric and weaving. And I enjoy workshopping with you, Megan.

And that's why I listened to a podcast last night. The speaker was Damon West. And I couldn't stop thinking about it.

And then I started to apply all my own ideas to this analogy provided. And I literally was losing sleep over it. And I'm like, I kind of want to bring this up.

And because I love workshopping and collaborating with you, I want to kind of hear your opinion on it. When he was talking about being a coffee bean, and I'm going to take a step back for a moment. So imagine boiling water.

And in this analogy, the boiling water is your environment. It's your life circumstances, your experiences, you have boiling water. What happens when you put an egg into boiling water? You get hard boiled eggs.

Yes. Or if you're me, you get cracked hard boiled eggs. Me too, sometimes.

But the inside of the egg hardens. So imagine you're in an environment, maybe you're in the military, maybe you're in a very high stress workplace. Maybe it's very much like a startup that you're working like double time grit and grind that can harden you.

It can make you want to run faster, it can make you grittier. Sometimes it could make you actually push off other people's opinions and kind of be hardened in your way of thinking. Now there's another thing, a carrot.

Now what happens when you put the carrot in the boiling water? Yes, you get boiled carrots and the insides are soft. And some environments will soften you. Maybe it's a terrible thing that like a family member passed away, or maybe you're in a culture that's very collaborative, and there's more empathy and conversation.

You have a softer ear, you're a little less hard, you're a little less go get it. And I'm a soft dude for the most part. But being soft doesn't always work properly in all scenarios.

And a good friend of mine, Brian Bogert, always talks about having a soft front and a strong spine. You kind of want both. You want to be soft, you want to be empathetic, you want to listen, but you want to have a strong spine.

You don't want to be pushed around. You want to be able to value yourself. So it's like you don't, neither are bad, but do you always want to be the egg? Do you always want to be the carrot? And in both scenarios, the environment itself is either softening or hardening you.

Don't we want to show up as ourselves in all circumstances? And that's where the coffee bean comes into play. Because when the water boils the coffee bean, it doesn't really hurt the coffee bean. Rather, the coffee bean makes coffee.

It affects the environment. So what I can't, I was losing sleep over is how do I become more of a coffee bean in my virtual community? For the people, how can I create environments that doesn't necessarily soften or harden people, rather affects everyone around me? How can we become a coffee bean and make coffee where someone, let's say in my community, grow getters only, they don't come out of it hardened or softened or either or per se, but they come out of it affected better. They've changed from it without changing their inside.

And this is where I'm kind of flubbing up because I'm verbal processing this with you. I'm learning how that I can better become the coffee bean and leave environments more affected by me in a positive way than allowing the environment to affect me in one way or another. So if you're, we'll say the boiling water.

Yeah. And you're the coffee being inside of it. And you have, I'm going to even say, enhance the water, right? You had water.

Now you've got coffee for most of us. That's an upgrade for some few tea drinkers, right? Downgrade didn't want coffee. They'd rather have the boiling, boiling water, some plain Janes in there.

Just wish it was lemon. So I think that's an important thing to know is that not everyone is going to like that environment that you've created. It's not necessarily.

And being comfortable with those that don't resonate or aren't the coffee drinkers, that's okay too. They have different preferences. But if you have boiling coffee now and you put an egg in it, you're still going to get a hard boiled egg.

Coffee egg. I've never tried that before. Or coffee carrot.

So you're taking it a whole new level where you're taking another, because my, the thought process is how are you affected by your environment? Do you allow it to harden you, soften you, or do you find a way to make the environment better because of it? So in theory, you could be a tea bag and make it better if the environment calls for tea, not coffee. But I don't think you would, you wouldn't toss an egg because you never were the egg. You never, someone else could, Oh man, you just, you just put me through a tailspin.

Yeah. Cause what I'm hearing you ask is if, how do I be a coffee bean? Why do you want to be a coffee bean? So you've created a better environment for other people, which is wonderful. You've created coffee.

Some people, and now it's kind of like two sides of it, right? Some people like coffee. Great. You've created something that they're attracted to and they want to continue to sip on you.

On the flip side, you also haven't necessarily, from the other person's perspective, how much has the environment changed? Or is there something wrong? Do they want to be softened? Do they want to be hardened? Or do you want to find more coffee beans? So you're making a stronger coffee. Ooh. Well, theoretically we we've talked about lead by example, very much in this world, leading by example.

You're leading by example by being a coffee bean. And I want people to step away from whether or not they like eggs, like coffee, like carrots. Just you're the kind of person that comes into the environment and creates a different color, a different tone.

You change it in a positive way rather than letting it affect or hurt or change you. In theory, we want to lead by example to allow for more coffee beans because some people have been an egg their whole life. Things happen and it just makes them harder and more stubborn.

And I love them, but it's frustrating to see people get harder and more stubborn over time. And it's frustrating when people get so softened that, like, stand up for yourself. And there are two different, like, dichotomies here.

I want more coffee beans. And I guess theoretically based on the environment and who you are, maybe you're not a coffee bean per se, but the concept of changing the environment for the better without losing yourself or allowing the environment to affect who you are as a leader as a person just as a human being at the core. Well, I think that's two different pieces.

If we're focusing on just how you can be or how anyone could be more of a coffee bean, I think that's stepping into leadership. And that is stepping into leadership at any level. I think, you know, my mission in my organization is really focused on how to make leadership more accessible and attainable for anyone regardless of title, position, or experience.

For your metaphor, everyone can be a coffee bean. Everyone is impacting the culture and it's mostly at different levels how you're responding to the environment versus how you're driving the environment. And both of those have aspects that are coffee bean-like, right? If you're seeing something and you don't say anything, if you see someone, I was in an email chain several months ago, and one of my colleagues ripped into another colleague very unfairly.

And it was, I don't think intentional to be as harsh as it was, but it was a very direct and curt and abrasive tone that wouldn't leave anyone feeling good. So, I like to practice what I preach, right? So, I stepped in as another senior leader in that group and said, hey, not okay. This is what we're doing.

Thank you for your help. Thank you for doing what you did. And not in a rude, put someone in their place kind of way, but acknowledge that that wasn't okay and that is not okay by me or anyone else.

And letting people know where those guardrails are and where those boundaries are. Let's say coffee bean, right? I will say, I don't think I could have been the coffee bean in that situation had I not been an egg and a carrot in other situations. Because I can think of many experiences that hardened me in some aspects that were both positive and negative and others that softened me.

Mostly positive, right? We got hardened first and then we got softened. And then somewhere in that pendulum, you become coffee once you have both of that flexibility. And I'll say even if we put egg and carrot on opposite ends, loving that we're just beating this analogy forever.

I think that's now the title. Are you an egg? Are you coffee? Or are you a carrot? Real leadership is having flexibility and meeting people where they're at. And so you have to have both skills in order to be able to balance and adjust that environment for the appropriate situation.

It's a learning process. I say that's more servant leadership in that aspect of meeting other people where they're at. On the flip side, I think you have more inspirational leadership, more visionary leadership that isn't on that spectrum.

Because at that point, you're really affecting the water. You are changing it to coffee. You want it to be something very intentional and specific.

I've never liked the concept of fake it until you make it. I kind of update that to be it until you become it. And I think you can show up and say, I'm a leader.

I'm a builder. I'm gonna help. But you can't just be a coffee bean without being hardened in some scenarios, without being softened.

You can want to be a coffee bean. This is why I was like losing sleep over this. In what scenarios am I becoming softened? In what scenarios am I becoming hardened? How can I show up better in scenarios and do the best thing that I know? But I'm not always gonna be this perfect, delightful, tasty espresso bean.

And that's why I don't believe in faking it or pretending to be someone you're not. It's an iterative process that we learn as we go. And I was thinking about my community.

And I have a virtual community at GrowGittersOnly. And I want to create environments where people feel like they can show up as themselves. And as they speak, they're not being judged.

They're not being pushed away. They're not being criticized. They're the coffee bean when they speak.

They're the coffee bean when they share. We can bring ourselves to the conversation and affect the environment rather than the environment telling us how we should act and how we should say. And I just want to continue to try to cultivate that kind of environment in my community, but just in my connections in general.

So it's not like there's just one coffee bean. Theoretically, we all get to be the coffee bean if we all allow each other to show up and impact the environment in the best way that we can. I think that's to your point, how do you set the tone so that everyone does jump in as a coffee bean into that environment? And I think that's very much how do you create a culture of learning or growth or experimentation and vulnerability? And I can throw agility.

And there's going to be a weird connection, but I'm working on a project on transformational leadership or AI leadership in the age of AI, which sounds like an AI generated title. But how do we lead with AI? And so much of that is how do you create a culture or an environment where people can learn, where they can test, where they can play, where they can fail, where they can have some of those vulnerabilities of, I don't know what this means for me or my future. And you're going to work through it and work with it so that you are in that next phase because it is growth.

It's team growth, it's adaptation, it's innovation from an organizational perspective. I think for what you're really creating with that community is how do you take that still vulnerability and that adaptation and that change from a personal, it's personal, professional, but even when we were chatting earlier, you have so many versions of where grow getters go that each one of those needs to have that same environment for innovation. And it's a self-innovation, it's a space for reflection.

I will say that's the classic safe space that you create. So I think a lot of that is vulnerability. Nothing happens without that little Brene Brown in there, that courage that you need to have to say something or think or put it out there or put yourself out there in that aspect.

It's different communities and different, like if I hire a consultant that's really good at one specific thing, I kind of want them to go in as the doctor, take the MRI on my business, and give me the answer as quickly as possible. In my community, like one of my favorite pieces of feedback was a member said, this is like business therapy. And I don't have a therapy license, I'm not trying to do therapy, but it means that she felt comfortable enough talking about things in her business that she wouldn't talk about elsewhere.

And as a group, we were able to answer some of those questions, expand on some of the opportunities and she's better for it. And again, the consultive MRI, this is the way to do it. Neither of those examples are wrong.

I just personally like to be in those environments that I feel that connection with the people in the room and it almost does feel like therapy. Like a conversation like this, you were kind of like my podcast business leadership therapist. I'm like, I lost sleep over this analogy.

Let's talk about it and see where it takes us. And I'll be the first to admit because I do have a podcast, I think I'm very much a verbal processor. It's that talking about an idea and that iteration process that lights me up.

And I'm like, how can I, that's why community is great, because we can verbally process things together and figure stuff out together. I like to joke all the time that there's no key to success, it's a combination lock. And oftentimes that combination lock are the people surrounding you.

They're the people in your circle. I'll never deny that, who you surround yourself matters dramatically. We are not the first people to come to that conclusion.

I always find new ways to skin a cat. I was going to say, wasn't it coveted to say like you're the combination of the five people you hang around most? Yeah. Yeah.

A hundred percent with that. I think when you go to that therapy analogy, it makes me giggle, which is kind of where I was thinking of being that coffee bean for you specifically, for the type of environment that you want to create that coffee bean. When I was first starting out and shifting from marketing to coaching, I used to joke that I called it business therapy, because you go deep when you are in that coaching relationship or in that coaching space.

You're giving people opportunities to be vulnerable, to talk. I always used to, I still say, if someone's struggling to say something like, say it to me the wrong way first. You'll find the right way to say it, but this is the space where you can say it wrong.

People have said some very wrong things that are not HR appropriate, but it's what they're thinking and it's what they're struggling with. Yes. That's okay, because those feelings are valid.

That is part of it. We can figure out how to say it the right way or how to justify it or how to reposition it or reframe it or work through it so that it works. In that point, when you were looking for growth in any way, shape or form, having that coaching-like experience or that coaching-like environment is where you're going to get the most out of it.

I will say if you pick up a coaching style of leadership, rather than a dictator style or a laissez-faire style or even a democratic style, there's lots of different styles of leadership. If you have more of a coaching approach to your leadership or that coaching style, you will always get the best out of your team. That's typically what they're looking for, the growth, the place to experiment, the resources, the vulnerability, the safety, the acceptance of failure, and continuing to grow with it.

I think it makes sense that if you're looking to create a coffee environment, that it has a very strong coaching approach to what that is or a coaching environment. There's better ways to make coffee. You get the right beans.

You get the right French press. It takes some coaching and strategy and collaboration to find the best way, but no matter what, you're going to have a better team if you're working together. Absolutely.

I'm going through different types of beans versus different types of pressure or brewing. I think that's what style. It is style.

I know we're talking about this big picture analogy, but the question I've been asking myself is, how can I be a coffee bean? That's what I want the listener to be curious about. What is my style? What is my flavor? Maybe I don't want to be a coffee bean and I want to be a latte. That is cool, but how can we show up and, again, not be hardened by the environment, not be bitter, and not be softened or shameful? How can we show up and positively affect our environments? The key is as ourselves.

That's why it's very ethereal because all of us are going to be different in our leadership style, in our communication style, and most of the time, there are harmful people that I'm going to... There's acts, in my opinion, that are deplorable, but 99.9% of people I meet are pretty darn cool, and I want them to bring themselves to the conversation. I will say if you're trying to be more coffee, there's a self-awareness that needs to happen along the way, and I always look at two eyes. I'll say intention and impact.

When you are clear on setting intention or the impact that you want to have on people, that is where you become coffee, right? You're not letting the environment affect you. You are bringing an intentionality to it to shape the water, to change the water. I have this little iteration just because... This is, again, a callback to my friend, Brian Bogert.

He talks about AI, awareness, and intention because if we have awareness and intentionality of the tool, the purpose, but we bring ourselves to it, we prompt it, we human edit it, it can do... It's our greatest assistant ever. It can do amazing things, but do we want AI to just be the boiling water, or do we want to use AI to affect and create something beyond the boiling water? It would require awareness and intention to use AI as a coffee bean rather than just typing in a thing and then copy-pasting it and posting it as a LinkedIn article. I think that's where AI is the water, and we are still the coffee bean.

We're still changing it. Those were actually the two first words that I wrote down. I threw an impact at the end, but I think intention and awareness are those first two steps.

I will say a lot of great leadership, those steps into leadership is clear thinking. If you don't have clarity yourself, you can't bring clarity for others. You're not acting in alignment.

You're impulsive. That can definitely bring out the worst of us. I feel judged.

Why? I'm just kidding. I'm a thinker and I'm a seeker. I'm probably clearer than I give myself credit for, but I have a lot of ideas.

I don't have the tunnel vision, this is the way kind of clarity. Part of my clarity is actually curiosity. It's like the more clear I get, the more unclear life becomes, if that makes any sense.

100%. I think clarity goes in a lot of different directions. Nothing is ever 100% clear.

It's never 100% clear. The pieces that you are clear about are the things that you will be, and the things that you'll work towards, and the things that you'll act towards. If you are bringing an intention and awareness and clarity about how you want to shape environments, you will do that.

If you are just showing up in environments, you won't do that. Hmm. This could be a tangent, but I'll keep it groped in.

I had a sales background, and one thing that's big in sales is they give you a script. Part of why they give you a script is so you do understand the process of the best way to possibly ask questions, or give a presentation, so on and so forth. It's less about the words you say long term.

Learning a script, especially when you're younger, isn't the worst thing on earth, but as you become more advanced in anything in life, it's less about the script itself, or the words you say. It's about the intention you bring to the interaction. Am I here to help them solve a problem? If I can, find a way to refer them to someone who can, and actually be curious.

There's sales trainers that teach curiosity tones, and teach assertive tones. It's like if you have bad tonality, that doesn't hurt, but the best way to have a curious tone is to be curious about people. Add authenticity with it.

It's coming to the conversation, not with the perfect clarity on how it's going to go, but clarity on how you want to treat the interaction. For me, that comes to, and this is where my key takeaway with that will be, if you want to be the coffee bean, it's about stepping into leadership, and to step into leadership takes that intention, and that awareness of the self, and the intention of the impact that you want to have, but it's beyond checking boxes, because I call that checkbox leadership. I asked everyone how they were doing, because I wanted to create a vulnerable community.

Did you actually care or listen to how they were doing? Did you let that shape how the conversation went? Mm-hmm. If you did it to check a box, then you're not being authentic with it. Dang.

It's like I asked them how they were doing, box checked. They replied, box checked. Okay, and now, so what now? I used a curious tone.

Yeah. I used a curious tone, box checked. Yeah.

Was I actually curious? When the hardened mentors in my life would say, so what, now what? You checked a couple boxes. What now? You going to do something? That's where the heart comes into place, a little bit of self-motivation.