From Expectations to Non‑Negotiables

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4gjFphfJ3I

Clear Boundaries Build Stronger Cultures

Culture doesn’t break down all at once. It erodes quietly—through unclear expectations, avoided conversations, and values that exist on paper but not in practice.

In this episode of Culture Conversations, Megan Robinson sits down with Bowen, leader of the interim accounting and finance staffing practice at BrainWorks, to explore one deceptively simple concept that radically shifts workplace culture: non‑negotiables.

What unfolds is a grounded, candid conversation about integrity, work ethic, and feedback—and why leaders who define and live by clear non‑negotiables create teams that are healthier, more accountable, and ultimately more human.

Tease Key Insights

• Non‑negotiables take values out of abstraction and place them directly into daily behavior, decision‑making, and accountability. As Bowen shares, non‑negotiables aren’t aspirational—they are requirements.

• When leaders clearly articulate what is non‑negotiable, they remove ambiguity. People know what success looks like. They know where the guardrails are.

• One of the most powerful ideas in this conversation is carefrontation—the belief that if you care about someone, you are obligated to confront behavior that is misaligned with their goals or values.

  
  

Why this Matters?

Contrary to popular belief, psychological safety doesn’t come from lowering expectations. It comes from clear ones.

When people know what is expected, how they’ll be evaluated, and how feedback will be delivered, they can focus on doing their best work instead of guessing where they stand.

Non‑negotiables create freedom—because ambiguity disappears.

Listen Now

Tune in to learn more about how non‑negotiables aren’t about control. They’re about integrity, clarity, and care.

When leaders define them, communicate them relentlessly, and live by them consistently, culture stops being aspirational—and starts being real.

The question isn’t whether you already have non‑negotiables.

It’s whether you’ve named them.

Bowen Knarr

Bowen leads the Interim Accounting and Finance staffing practice at BrainWorks, a boutique national recruiting firm. He is originally from Philadelphia, the greatest city in the world, and moved to Denver with his wife and dog 4 years ago so that he could spend too much time skiing.

Full Episode

Megan:

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 lives at work. Let's make it a place where our teams can grow and succeed. Hello and welcome to Culture Conversations. My name is Megan Robinson and I am thrilled for the conversation I'm going to have with Bowen today. Bowen is one of the most unique people that I know. I love his direct attitude, his approach, his style totally resonates with me and he's one of my favorite people to have conversations with. So when he mentioned his topic today of creating non-negotiables, I was thrilled. Because creating boundaries, setting those really clear expectations and how you communicate and hold up them really shifts a culture. It creates a lot of intention. And I cannot wait to learn from him. Welcome, Bowen.

Bowen:

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here as well, Megan. Thank you very much.

Megan:

Yeah, I'm very excited. So Bowen leads the interim accounting and finance staffing practices at Brainworks. It's a boutique national recruiting firm. He is originally from Philadelphia, which according to him is the greatest city in the world. And despite that, he still moved to Denver with his wife and a dog just four years ago so that he could spend too much time skiing. Like, yes, all accurate. I hope moving to Denver aligned with your non-negotiables. But let's go ahead and kick it off. What are these non-negotiables that you've created?

Bowen:

Well, first off, thank you so much for having me here, Megan. And thank you for the very warm introduction. You are as well one of my favorite people to talk to. And we could take this thing out to two and a half, three hours. So we'll try and keep it relatively short. When you brought up this opportunity to talk to you on the podcast and said, what would I like to talk about? I think non-negotiables is one of my favorite things to talk about because it's also one of the things that whenever I interview someone to work with me, I ask what their non-negotiables are and you get a lot of really interesting answers. And then I explain mine and most people, because it's an interview, those are totally mine too. So that's always an interesting twist in the conversation. So my non-negotiables, and we can get more into depth about why they are, how I came up with them and. Specifically what they are, but starts with integrity. That's the number 1 most important thing. Most people talk about it as table stakes. I like to define integrity as not just not being a pathological liar, but doing what it is that you say you're going to do right? Being impeccable with your word. If you've ever read the 4 agreements. The second is work ethic, particularly in my business, in sales and recruiting. You don't have to be a genius to do this. This is not rocket surgery, as I say, but it does take a significant amount of effort, right? You have to be able to get your teeth kicked in six days in a row, show up smiling on day seven, asking who's kicking, right? That's what ultimately will lead to success. It's a numbers game. And the third, and the one that I see most people struggle with, the one that really seems to be The hardest to implement for the majority of individuals that I deal with is the ability to take and implement feedback, right? We all think we want to be better about things, and the only way to do that is to actually take that feedback. So we have a very feedback rich environment here.

Megan:

Ooh, I love that feedback. How do you see people not take or implement feedback? That's the one that people are always struggling with. What does it look like and how do you address it?

Bowen:

One of the things that's really interesting, feedback is both positive and negative, right? Like if a really fun thing that I learned doing trainings at one of my former employers was we would break people into small groups and we'd say, hey, you know, we all want you to write down someone that you work with that you'd like to give feedback to back at your office, right? Because we'd have them at corporate, we'd bring them all down. We say, write the person's name, and then write three things you'd like to give them feedback about. And then we'd all come back, and they'd say, OK, who wants to volunteer? You don't have to say the person's name, but what are you going to give them feedback about? And they'd be like, they need to make more calls. They need to show up earlier. every single time it was constructive. It was 99% of the time negative. And we're like, you know, you can also give positive feedback. And everyone was like, Oh my God, like no one's brain when you say provide feedback, right? No one's brain goes to, I wanted to tell you that I thought you're a very sharp dresser. It's just not when we hear feedback, we immediately

Megan:

Assume negative.

Bowen:

Assume it's constructive. Assume it's something that you could improve on. And I think that's the thing that people really struggle with, is if you don't mix both. If you are not also saying, hey, giving enough attaboys. You did a great job. I really liked how you showed up here. It was phenomenal that you were able to implement the thing that we had talked about. If you're not doing enough of that and you're just doing, helicopter or seagull management, right? Come in, make a lot of noise, crap all over them, and then leave, right? It doesn't matter what you're saying because it's just like, oh, everything I do is wrong, right? And it becomes really hard for people to, you know, you lose the forest for the trees. There might be some nuggets of really good stuff in there, but if you haven't made enough deposits, it's really hard to get them to do what you need to do.

Megan:

I do a lot of workshops where we're talking about giving and delivering feedback. And I've used the SBI situation behavior impact model for a lot of it, right? It's a simple one, something easy everyone can kind of gravitate to. But then I force everyone to actually give some positive feedback using the same model. Because if you're just giving the attaboys or the attagirls and you don't actually really think about how constructive it is, if you give the unconstructive positive feedback, it also feels empty. just as much as unconstructive negative feedback. So I love that you really force them to look at both sides of the equation and address it.

Bowen:

SPI is a great model and have used it as well. And I think part of it is you need to be one intentional with your positive feedback. We can talk about the constructive stuff as well. But also you have to make it around something that they can control. And that's something that other that you also see people struggle with is like, they start with the boys and they're like, hey, that it's great that that worked out. And you're like, that was totally out of their control or right? The it's the. You can give a compliment, but if that person didn't have any power over that, it doesn't feel all that impactful to them, right?

Megan:

My terrible story for this, when I was nursing my son, I'd get up in the middle of the night and I did the brunt, the bulk of it. I was like, why wake him up because I'm already up, I'll just do this. And it's probably like six months in, seven months in, and I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm going down at 2 a.m. My husband yells from the bed, I appreciate you. And he was like, okay, stop my rage for a second, because I had a very specific response to that. It was like, go F yourself. I was like, no, no. Okay, I'm going to need a little bit more. I'm going to need to know what the impact was, why you appreciate me. Like, this was not enough in this moment. And I use that at work all the time, because it's normally not enough on that feedback. Okay, I'm sorry, we're totally deteriorating, because I keep going on feedback forever. You talked about this list, so we've got the give and receive feedback, or sorry, implement feedback, the work ethic, and the integrity. How did you come up with this list?

Bowen:

So I like telling the story. So I had a pretty decent run early on in my sales career, ultimately got taken down to corporate office to provide trainings. Sometimes it would be 20 people, sometimes we'd have as many as 70 people in that class. And I try and go down 2 or 3 times during the year. I loved it, right? It was just, it was super fun to be able to give back and to try and make people better. And inevitably on the either lunch the 1st day, maybe breakfast the 2nd day, someone would come up to me in line while we were getting our croissants or our cheese sandwiches. And they'd be like, hey, man, what's the secret to success? And I would try and always answer the same way I came up with something. I'd be like, hey, I'd lean in and I'd be like, hey, so the secret to success is there isn't one. If there was one, we would have told you six months ago when we hired you, we wouldn't wait to bring you down here to do that. Right. And then after that, I'd go into the, you know, into the big room where we'd have everybody and I'd say, hey, does everybody want to know the secret to success? And most people would raise their hands. There's always one person that doesn't raise their hand because there has to be that guy. And I go, well, let me tell let me flip it around and here are the 3 reasons I see most people that have the ability to be successful in our job ultimately fail. Right? And it was. Integrity, right? They again, not that they're pathological liars, but that they don't do what they're saying they're going to do or they start to feel some sort of pressure and maybe they put in some fake activity or and it's such a slippery slope, right? Like you start saying and doing things and then that gray area gets too fast. It's like no, no, it's black and white from an integrity perspective, right? Second is the work ethic piece, right? Sales and recruiting is a numbers game. You have to hit those inputs, the things you can control, right? If you are not putting in that effort, it does not matter how good you are, right? Someone's going to outwork you and they're going to do better and you're ultimately not going to be here. And then the feedback piece, right? That's the thing that really seemed to end most very promising people's career is you would say, hey, this is what you need to do. And they would either take it personally or they they'd be overly sensitive about trying to implement it, or a lot of times the feedback would be given in not the right manner, right? And they wouldn't be able to, or it would be, you know, you have to give people smart goals, right? And if you're not, if they're not actually able to understand what it is that you want them to accomplish to do that thing, then they can't do that there. Or people just, some people just lack the ability to implement, right? They have, they're super nice. They're genuinely kind people, but they just can't get it to actually do the thing. And hey, you're setting them free to go do something else with their life where they're gonna be happier as opposed to being here and just getting crapped on every week, right?

Megan:

Yeah, that flexibility or that agility to adjust, which you could say, but I love that it's really clear on feedback. I am now obsessed with how you came up with that because looking at that inverse, it's so hard to tell someone what they have to do, but being able to say, here's how to avoid what those issues are, I was recently reading some Charlie Munger, and that was one of his big quotes, right? Always look at the inverse, and what's it going to take for you to fail if you don't do these three things?

Bowen:

Him and Warren have some great, great, and I wouldn't even say one-liners, two or three-liners. You just read them, and you're like, ah, damn, that is, got to get that tattooed on my forearm, and I'd be much better at investing than picking individual stocks, which I currently suck at, so.

Megan:

This is not, I have no stock tips for you. I'm sorry. I have someone else do all that for me. Okay, so you've got this really clear expectations. You have these really clear non-negotiables. How do people react when you communicate this? How do you communicate and how do people react?

Bowen:

So I, you talk about them constantly, right? That non-negotiables are or should be the lifeblood of your understanding. One of the things that I really appreciate about the team that I currently have at Brainworks right now that works underneath me and with me Is. I know that if I'm not there, because we have talked about it so much, I know the actions being taken are within the realm of those 3 non negotiables. Right? And I talk about them constantly. We, if something comes up, we go, okay, well, how does this fit into. Are we doing the right thing from an integrity perspective? Did we put in enough effort to help the client out? Like, did we try and provide feedback or get feedback from them on how we can adjust? Yes? Okay, well, then we're doing all the right things. And it has allowed me, you and I were talking about our summer vacations a few minutes ago, it has allowed me to unplug in a manner that I really haven't allowed myself to do previously because One, I think I've gotten a little bit better about over-communicating it. We tend, as people, to think that other folks remember more about what we say and do than they actually do, right? And so I say it a lot more often than that. And I mean, that's the fun part is, we had the BrainWorks All Hands meeting in Bluebell, Pennsylvania, actually 15 minutes away from where my parents live, somewhat randomly. No one from my company works there. They just picked that spot. And I was like, I slept in my childhood bedroom. Very wonderful. And one of the gentlemen that we had come to speak at our conference was a former employee of mine, a current mentee. We actually still do a call every single week. And he was up there on stage and he was talking. And he goes, you know, one of the things that I learned from Bowen and I still hold near and dear to me is, you know, the non-negotiable of integrity. And I was like, I mean, I almost cried in that meeting, right? Like to know that that stuff impacts people in a positive way. And he hasn't worked for me for five years, four or five years, and that still helps guide him. That's incredible, right?

Megan:

Well, I love that it's not just talking about it as empty pieces, but the questions that you ask, the way you solve problems, the way you make decisions, you're very transparent in how those negotiables are influencing those choices. It's not just the put them up there. These are, I mean, because it's borderline the values that you're talking about.

Bowen:

Yeah, I always tell anyone that I interview and ultimately hire. is here are the three non-negotiables. Every single, every single initial conversation, follow up conversation. I want to make sure that you understand like this is what you are getting yourself into, right? Like that's, this is how we stand by these things. If you cannot live up to these, it's a pretty quick out, right? Like higher, slow fire fast, right? And I have made some tough calls in the past around that, right? It has not always been easy to do what you need to do when that happens. One example of that on the integrity side is I had at my old company, billion dollar company, the number one recruiter in our division worked for me. And unfortunately, that individual made some decisions super early on that I said, hey, if you ever do this again, like his background was one that I gave him some slack, right? Didn't have higher education, came from a slightly different, I said, Oh, you're right. You know what? You didn't, you didn't fully understand what corporate America is like. I'll say, but if it ever happens again, you're done. He was the number one guy in the country. He put in some fake activity, unfortunately. And ultimately I had let him go that day. And I got a call from the president of our company. And he called me and said, Hey man, like, is there anything we can do like about this? Right. And it's still one of the proudest conversations I've had professionally, because I was not prepared for him to call me, right? I guess I should have. I should have known that was going to happen. But I got a call. And he said, hey, is there any way we can, like, you know, do we have to let go of somebody that's performing at this level? And I'll never forget what I said. I said, hey, right now, this individual is not married, does not have kids, right? This is going to suck, but it's not the end of the world. If five years from now, this individual is married, has children, and then does this same thing because I didn't make it clear what the repercussions of these actions were, then that's on me, right? And he was like, OK, can't argue with that. All right, man. So he's done. And to me, that rings true, right? If you are true to those values, like you said, if you are true to your non-negotiables and you are living by them, and I try very hard to, then it makes those super hard decisions easier. It's a black and white thing, right?

Megan:

You took the next question, which is, what happens if someone violates them? It is a quick decision for you. You don't hem and haw over it.

Bowen:

It's black and white. I've had people come back to me in the past and say things to me like, well, I didn't understand. I didn't know. Okay, man, hey, I give, and I try and document, right, if someone's struggling, it's like, all right, let's keep track of these things. And it's like, listen, I told you seven times in eight weeks, and it didn't change. If that's not an inability, it's either one of two things. You either don't understand how to implement the feedback, right, or you lack the ability to synthesize what it is that someone is giving you, right, in this case, your boss. So we're done here, right? Like, I don't know what else we can do. Like you give them all the ability, like you support them, right? I'm not saying like somebody does one thing and you go, oh cool. You know, they get an email and their computer shut off, right? I want my people to succeed. It's not, you try not to use it as a cudgel, but you, yes, once it's clear, it does make it easier for you to come back and say, hey, we've talked about the non-negotiables since before you ever worked here. These are the repercussions if it doesn't happen there. One other thing about the feedback thing I'll say, because again, that's the one that catches most people up. And again, I stole this from my old business because they had a term called carefrontation, which I absolutely love and still use constantly. And what carefrontation means is you confront someone because you care about them, right? You've built a relationship with that individual. And if you see them doing something that is either not in line with what they want to accomplish professionally or who they want to be personally, you are required, obligated, right? Not allowed. It is a requirement to have a conversation with them. And that changes the tenor of what a team's culture is, right? You see someone doing something, you're not like, oh, that idiot. Like, oh, no. And one of the greatest things that I love is if someone on my team comes, because, hey, no group of individuals is perfect. If they come to me and they're like, hey, and they're complaining or whining about something else, someone else on our team about something they did, They always started with, listen, I've already got a call scheduled with them, right? Cause it's like, this is not my job. You are, you have, you, they understand what's the third non-negotiable feedback you need to call and have this. They're like, don't worry. I'm already talking to them tomorrow. Or I'm talking to them this after like, and that's so amazing because that it prevents stuff from festering and people getting frustrated. And that's, that's a total culture killer. Right.

Megan:

It is 100%. And I think that's one of the biggest pieces that you see is people hesitant to give that feedback. They wait. They don't know how. They make excuses for it. And they don't actually have those conversations. I've seen people almost get fired. Literally talk with a president of a company. It's like, oh, this person's not doing what they need to do. It was her admin. It was like, great. Have you had the conversation with them? How have you told them that? No. Well, what happens if you don't do that? I'm going to fire her in three months. I'm like, well, go have the, like, literally, I mean, this is a summaries conversation.

Bowen:

They should know it's like, yeah, but they don't. So now it's on you, right? Like they've, they've shown what they can do now. And that, and that's again, part of why, when you make feedback and non-negotiable, there's a freedom to it, right? You, it takes out the, Oh, do I have to? Yeah. Do you want to be on this team? Because feedback's non-negotiable. Like, if you can't provide it, there's not a space for that individual. And again, I've never had to fire anybody for not giving feedback. But they know it's real, right? Like, my team understands. Like, oh, no, I have to go have these challenging conversations. And the nice thing is it's a muscle. It's like anything else. Like, you do it enough times, and you see it. The right people react the right way, right? And you see it impact people positively that it allows you to then take that into other parts of. Your life, and my, my team, they'll shadow me on meetings and I've had so many people say, I've never seen anyone talk to executives or. other people, particularly people that I've only met once or twice, like literally a first meeting and me being like, listen, you just need to STFU. Like I need to, like what you're saying, like, let me explain to you. And they're like, oh my God, like, but the right people react great. And some of them are my lifelong friends right now, right? And then they're like, oh my God, like that, that changed my life, that conversation, man. Like no one had spoken that directly to me in years if ever, right? And that's, and listen, some people, they don't like it and they can't take it. And those folks need therapy. We all do, but those folks especially, so.

Megan:

Well, I think that's definitely cultivating the culture and an expectation. Some people are uncomfortable with that amount of directness and they're uncomfortable speaking in that way. And so finding, holding within the guardrails of giving that feedback and having the expectation set up, how they execute on it is going to be very different from person to person.

Bowen:

That's part of the charm of coming from Philadelphia is we were voted the rudest, most direct city in the United States. But what that just means is we're OK with giving people feedback. If you have spinach in your teeth, we're going to tell you. We're not just going to, we don't care if we know you. We're just going to be like, yo, your mouth looks stupid. We might not communicate it in the easiest way. But yeah.

Megan:

What if someone doesn't, I mean, and I think you have a lot, with these, sorry, I started like five times, with these non-negotiables, you have a lot of gray area with it. It's not just that you expect them to take that feedback and implement it immediately and turn around and not take things personally. You give people grace to have those emotions, to figure it out. And you hold them accountable to those results, which I think is the beautiful piece of it. It's not, oh, you have to be direct. Oh, you have to not take anything personally. Yeah, that is definitely how you operate. And it's within a very specific culture and team that you've cultivated of people that are comfortable with that. But you also have that flexibility for them. And it's okay for that as long as the end result is still within those expectations.

Bowen:

Yeah, that goes back to, it's a sales job, right? It's performance based. And so long as your inputs are there and you're performing those inputs properly, right? It's not just BS. Success is inevitable, right? Like that's just the math. That's the way that you talk to enough people that have the potential to buy your service. and you do a above decent job, you will ultimately get enough clients that you will be able to feed yourself and those around you, right? And so yes, there is that you, it goes back to the smart goals thing, right? Where it's like, hey, do they understand what these things are? Are they measurable? Are they achievable? Like, are they realistic? Like all the things, right? Do you give them a timeframe to do those things? Hey, I'd like to see this done because you see that you bring up a good point, That individual that you said that president was like, yeah, my my admins really underperforming. What was your conversation with them? You're like, no, they should figure it out. They should know that. And it's like, OK, well, they don't. Unfortunately, the next step with people like that is they go and they go. we used to jokingly call this the suck less feedback. Hey, I just need you to suck less. And you're like, okay, like, what? Yeah, you see that all the time where people like, hey, you're not doing good. Why don't you stop not doing good and do good. And you're like, I'm, I'm sorry, what, like, you have to trust me, I'm trying to suck as little as possible right now. Like, can we can we make this? How do I get better at those things? And I have worked at organizations where I lost a really great colleague at one place because they had asked one of our bosses, they said, hey, what does success look like? And that individual said, you know what success looks like. And I was like, come on. How are you supposed to interpret? They're asking you to give them some parameters so they know what to hit, so they know there's a certain level of uncertainty and discomfort that this person has that they're not achieving what you want. You gave them an incredibly amorphous answer and that individual left a few months and you know she's killing it now she's doing great but it was like maybe if that person had some guardrails and understood what they were working towards as opposed to You know, most type A people that I know, and this has been most of my life, is no matter what you hit, it's always about the next thing, right? Like, oh, it's do this. It's bring in a million dollars of revenue. Well, now it's bring in 1.5. Well, sure, now it's two. So if you tell us to set our own, like, we're never gonna achieve what it is that we think is good enough, right? Like, it's always gonna be, oh, I got lucky this year, because the 4,000 people I've been in contact with over the last three years, enough of them got back to me. It's like, yeah, it's amazing how lucky people that work hard are.

Megan:

I love it. Going back to some of those other non-negotiables.

Bowen:

Yeah. The feedback ones, just the most fun to talk about.

Megan:

I don't know. They're all fun to talk about. I mean, work ethic is, any one of these can be interpreted very, very differently. And I think that you have a very clear expectation of the behaviors and outcomes that each one of those non-negotiables have. You haven't just created this list of values or goals or aspirations. You have very clear understanding of, what is in line with that or what is not in line with that, what that means to you. And you, throughout the process, not just from interviewing to onboarding, to problem solving, to feedback, to, you know, decision-making, communicated what those are within those boundaries. And to your point, it creates that psychological safety. People know what success looks like. People understand what they can do. They do their best work. They're able to be themselves and bring it towards the culture. So what advice or suggestions do you have for people that are still developing their non-negotiables?

Bowen:

I think you nailed it with values. Understand what your values are. Work with someone, if it doesn't come naturally to you, right? Work with someone or chat GPT, I guess. I don't think I'm utilizing enough AI in my daily life, so maybe I'll just talk about it here. But say, all right, like put out content for yourself and say, all right, like, let's see what my non-negotiables are. And I find a lot of people, again, not that mine are perfect, right? But you find people come in with some version of that, right? And I've seen people mishmash it over the years. And I've seen people say, you know, you gotta be having fun when you're doing stuff as well, right? And you got like, there's some other things that you can do, but make sure it's core to you and keep it super simple, right? Like I've talked to some people And it's one of the things that I've actually started to, if someone's going to be interviewing with me, particularly if I'm working with another recruiter that's sending me candidates, right? And I'm going to be, and I'm currently interviewing people trying to hire folks for my team. And I changed it because I used to surprise people by saying, hey, I want to understand what your non-negotiables are. And I have found it is a very difficult question for most people to answer off the cuff, right? You get, you get a few good answers, but a lot of people fall back to, I don't necessarily know if it's a non-negotiable, like I need to be paid enough money. It's like, okay, well, that's a criteria, right? Like I understand you wouldn't go work there, right? But I don't know if that's a non-negotiable, right? Like if you won the lottery and you had all the money in the world, maybe that becomes like my non-negotiables. don't change, no matter situation, personal, professional. You have all the money in the world, right? People are like, oh, I need to be treated respectfully by leadership. I said, yeah, I think that's true, right? But maybe there's some, if you're in that environment, that's toxic or that's abusive. That's more of like, OK, that's, I don't want to take it for granted. You shouldn't be in that anyway, right? Like, it could be on the flip side for some of these things.

Megan:

That's why it was a non negotiable.

Bowen:

That's that is that's why it's a that is why it's a non negotiable. So figure I'd say. working with someone that maybe is a little more advanced or, you know, I'm a huge fan of mentorship, right? I love mentoring people. I am a mentee, right? Like I have a mentor that I talk to for lunch on a quarterly basis and that it can and is life-changing, right? To have someone that is successfully living in your future, right? And I think that's a big piece of how you can determine yours, right? Talk to that individual and say, hey, if you go back to when you were my age and, you know, I'm trying to get to your level, What are those conversations look like? And that will probably help inform what some of your non-negotiable should be. I need support. I need this. I need those things.

Megan:

Beautiful. Well, any other final words of wisdom? Because that's beautiful.

Bowen:

No, that's like 99% of my wisdom right there. You got it all. You picked one topic that I can actually talk. Somewhat eloquently about so I've, I've covered everything and over communicate right? I would if there's 1 thing that I would say is I probably. I love that there are people that you can talk to that. I haven't worked with in years and. they would still remember the non-negotiables, right, of what it takes to be a part of that team. And I also think there's a certain freedom of when you have your non-negotiables and you have to have those tough conversations to let people go. I won't say all of them, but the majority of people that I have separated professionally with over the years, Because of some non-negotiable or another, most of them I am still relatively close with, at the very least friendly, and some of them I am dear friends with, right? they either learned a lesson that they didn't really realize they need to learn at that time or that. So it can be super hard in the moment, but if you live by your non-negotiables, and then you get people that buy in and say they want to as well, and if they don't, that they understand their repercussions, and sometimes those things, hey, it happens, and it changes their life for the better, because they're like, oh, I really got to reevaluate how I'm approaching everything. It's a beautiful thing. I don't know how else to describe it.

Megan:

Oh, that's perfect. I know this has definitely inspired me to review my own non-negotiables, or at least put them in that framework, because it is very inspiring. It is very powerful. You know when something's right or wrong intuitively, and being able to document it and really articulate it as succinctly as you have is incredible. I hope it inspires everyone else to look at their non-negotiables, to reevaluate it, but mostly to continue to communicate it and really make sure that it's shifting towards the culture and the direction that you want to go.

Bowen:

Thank you so much for your time, Bowen. Thank you so much, Megan. This has been a blast.

Megan:

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Culture Conversations. I'm your host, Megan Robinson, founder of eLeader Experience, a professional leadership development company. Today, we shared actionable ideas to navigate the evolving workplace landscape, compete for talent, and build cultures that maximize potential. If you're looking to learn more about how to support your organization's leaders, you can learn more about our work at eLeaderExperience.com. Now get out there and contribute positively to your organization's culture with your own conversations.