Unstoppable @ Craig

Unearthing the Secret to an Exceptional Work Environment

• Craig Hospital • Episode 8

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In this enlightening dialogue with Brian Vogt, CEO of the Denver Botanic Gardens, we unpick the threads of creating a flourishing work environment that fosters productivity and growth.

One of the most potent elements we identify in this discussion is the power of hiring the right people - those who are not only skilled but also possess a genuine love for their work. Such passion can transform an ordinary workspace into an extraordinary one, as evidenced by the Denver Botanic Gardens' success story. We also highlight the indispensable role of empathy, respect and connection in our dealings with the public. These aren’t just grand values; they play a significant role in challenging times, fueling dedication and hard work, which ultimately leads to rewarding outcomes.

Instead of reacting with judgment, we propose the path of compassion and empathy, examining the situation from a human perspective to understand the root cause. We delve into the essence of service in leadership roles and touch upon the idea of leaving a legacy that outlives us. This chat is not just about the dynamics of change and leadership; it's a testament to the incredible things that can happen when we practice patience and create a culture that celebrates shared vision and effective leadership. You won't want to miss these insights into leadership and the pursuit of excellence. 

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Disclaimer: The content in this podcast is intended for general informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice or treatment for specific medical conditions. No professional relationship is implied or otherwise established by reading this document. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat a health problem or disease without consulting with a qualified healthcare provider. Craig Hospital is not affiliated with resources that may be referenced in this podcast. Craig Hospital assumes no liability for any third-party material or for any action or inaction taken as a result of any content or any suggestions made in this podcast and should not be relied upon without independent investigation. The information on this page is a public service provided by Craig Hospital and in no way represents a recommendation or endorsement by Craig Hospital. Any use of this content by a corporation or other revenue-seeking or -generating organization is prohibited unless first approved by Craig Hospital. 

For more information, transcriptions and behind-the-scene photos, visit https://craighospital.org/unstoppable

Craig Hospital is a nationally recognized neurorehabilitation hospital and research center specialized in the care of individuals who have sustained a spinal cord injury (SCI) and/or a brain injury (BI). Located in Denver, Colorado, Craig Hospital is an independent, not-for-profit, 93-bed national center of excellence that has treated thousands of people with SCI and BI since 1956. Learn more: https://craighospital.org

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Welcome to Unstoppable at Craig, where we pull back the curtain on what makes healthy workplace cultures click and what happens when people are empowered to expand the boundaries of what is possible. We'll explore the perspectives of employees and leaders who have carte blanche to speak their truths, tell their stories and unlock uncommon ways of approaching challenges. I'm Dr. Jand el Allen- Davis, CEO and President of Craig Hospital, a world-renowned rehabilitation hospital that exclusively specializes in the neuro-rehabilitation and research of patients with spinal cord and brain injury. Join me as we learn from people who love what they do and what happens when fear doesn't stifle innovation. There are these people and organizations that, if we are blessed and privileged, we have the opportunity to stumble upon or be invited to join and be engaged with. And it's in those moments where you again, if you're blessed and privileged and lucky, to watch incredible magic happen. In fact, given who we're going to be speaking with today, to watch amazing things grow and flourish. And that has been my wonderful, wonderful journey coming to know Denver Botanic Gardens.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

I used to tell our guest Brian Vogt, who is the CEO and President of the Denver Botanic Gardens, when we'd walk about the gardens during the time where I was the board chair of the place that you get to work in a postcard. And it's not just a postcard because of the incredible beauty of those spaces and places that you've got responsibility and accountability for.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

You work in a postcard because of what I got to see around people who work in a place that they truly love. They all understand how what they do leads to, encourages, invites the kind of flourishing and growth that we get to see, and the beauty that we, as attendees and members, get to see, and so we're going to spend some time together talking about how you build great cultures, cultures of excellence. And so it's my absolute honor, privilege and pleasure to invite you to Craig and our Unstoppable at Craig podcast to talk about our relationship, our friendship and the gardens and just our journeys in leadership and why it's so, so important to think about what great cultures do in terms of impacting excellence. So welcome, Brian.

Brian Vogt

Oh, you're so kind, thank you.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

I've been on your board at your invitation since 2011. And I'm coming down to this is my swan song year.

Brian Vogt

Oh, I hate that part.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

This is my second emeritus term. And I had a three year stint during one of the most exciting growth times over your journey there as your board chair, which really gave me an opportunity to watch you at work and see the magic and the wonder of the place. I suspect we'll talk a little bit about that, but what's it been like? I'm just going to start there, because you came in 2007. What's that journey been like for you?

Brian Vogt

You know it's been a really quiet 16 years. Everything has happened at the gardens of the world, but it has been a dream come true. Creating, building, getting to know people, finding meaning, developing big ideas and then seeing them actually come to fruition. It's a dream. And it's really about the people. The plants are obviously the critical players in it, but the purpose is really about people.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

And so you get to, in this dream, I imagine do a lot of things in terms of making sure that you're thinking about who you hire, how you hire, how you support the folks there so that they live purpose.

Brian Vogt

Absolutely, We go through. You know our mission and vision and values and all that. And it really is about making culture intentional. So just yesterday I met with all the new employees coming in. Every month I meet with whoever's new. Sometimes it's two people, sometimes, like yesterday was about a dozen. And we had a really deep conversation about culture and how it's affected and how we could build it and create something that everybody can thrive with, you know.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

What are some of the things you say?

Brian Vogt

Well, I first asked them if they know what culture is, because I think a lot of people don't really contemplate it much.

Brian Vogt

They live it, but they don't contemplate it. And they gave really good answers. They said things like it's how you really behave, it's how the kind of quiet agreements people make about how they work together, and I gave them the example of when we're children. So during the summer months, when I was home more from school, I was just sent outside in the morning after breakfast, and then you find a place to have lunch and then you come home for dinner. Then you go out until it's dark.

Brian Vogt

S o I just spent my whole childhood outdoors. And you kind of pick up quickly that there are some houses where you really want to go for lunch because they're really friendly and they have good food, or it's funny or there's something interesting, you know. And some houses where you just don't want to go. Even the kids that are from that house don't want to go to that house, and that's culture.

Brian Vogt

A culture within a family that invites people in, makes them feel welcome, or a culture that has a lot of stress and pain. And you can feel it. When you walk into a store and they don't care that you're there and somebody's talking on the phone and you can't get their attention. That's culture. When you walk into a store and they're helpful but not cloying, they just say I'm here if you need me and welcome. You know that kind of thing. That's culture.

Brian Vogt

So a lot of culture is unintentional. It just builds up by combined experience right, And when you work to make the culture intentional, it can change the world.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Do you ever think about what, through the lens of your leadership and the things you've had the opportunity to do, whether it was at OEDIT, the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, or the gardens or the South Metro Denver Chamber, or the work you're doing nationally and internationally now in terms of public gardens and conservation and other efforts that you're involved in. As you take that look back over a life through the lens of your leadership, what do you think has been your purpose or what is your purpose?

Brian Vogt

Mission-driven work has always been what's drawn me. The experiences I've had in my life that have meant the most to me are the ones where the needle was moved most dramatically. So when I think about society today, I think about how can we create opportunities for people whether it's at Craig Hospital or it's at Denver Botanic Gardens or it's in our neighborhoods and how can we create opportunities where people are empowered to do good work and to really make a difference and to move that needle as far as they can. And that's what I see on a daily basis at the gardens.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

You know you are a builder. How do you stay out of the way when people have big dreams, or what role do you play do you think, as a leader?

Brian Vogt

Well, it kind of goes back to what we started talking about the influence of people that believe in you. I feel the joy in giving that support to other people that builds their confidence.

Brian Vogt

So when Jennifer Riley-Chetwin comes to me and says I want to co-direct a new project with Metropolitan State University of Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver called Oh Wow, One World, One Water. And my response is well, tell me more, what's that about? And she did. And it's this integrated international water education program. And I said do it, do it, you're going to be great at that. You know all these amazing things that the gardens is engaged in right now globally. We have our director of horticulture in the Center for Global Initiatives is in Taiwan right now. We had a team that just got back from Senegal doing a project there. Jennifer is connected now to a water scarcity in agriculture through the United Nations. And she's gone to meetings in Rome, I guess, for five years every year. I'm kind of jealous, but you know, and it really goes across the board.

Brian Vogt

We have this program where we provide staff experience scholarships and they have to apply. It has to fit into our core values and it has to bring meaning to the gardens and to them. But it doesn't necessarily have to do exactly what their job is. It could be something that gives them a whole new perspective or an experience or connections, something that realizes some of their passion. We're about to give another couple dozen of those scholarships in the amount of, I think, $62,000. And these are people at every level of the organization And so they go off. Some are international. There's one that's a really cool kind of an experience, training up in Yellowstone National Park.

Brian Vogt

How cool would that be? That's what generates that confidence in them. When you're a leader and everybody around you is raising the bar constantly and striving and doing cool things and connecting and communicating and impacting, you get the best job in the world because you're their support, but you're also their audience and you celebrate what they accomplish.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

You know, it's a wonderful reflection to think that, and I think this from time to time. It's like what do I do every day? What really is?

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

You know I can't get a 30-year career in any of the things that most people do here, and yet I have the privilege of doing what I get to do every day, and I think you just encapsulated it in so many wonderful ways. Our jobs are to encourage, to inspire, to support, to the extent that someone didn't come in and say let's burn the house down because that would be fun. That is, they're coming in with ideas that support the mission and purpose and give them the opportunity. Because I bet Jennifer if, when she first got involved with Oh Wow, never imagined that it would lead not too, but along a path to who knows what's next, to connections at the United Nations on this really important issue of water in our world. And our job is just to kind of, you know, just give fuel to these great ideas.

Brian Vogt

Yeah, I lead with yes. I lead with yes. I try in most every circumstance to say yes to people's dream and vision and goal. That just means they don't come to me with why they can't do things. They come to me with what they want to do next. Some things work, some things don't, but most everything does work. That's because you've got a human being behind it that is determined to make it happen.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

How does that support the notion of excellence? I'd love it if you'd even talk about what excellence means to you.

Brian Vogt

If your cup is full, you're not thirsty, you're not seeking for yourself. So, at a certain point, the more people around you have cups that are full, the more they want to spread it even more and more and more.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Cool.

Brian Vogt

Instead of taking, taking, taking. I'll give you an example. This blew me away and I got really emotional about it. We get shut down in March of 2020 and it happened boom fast for everybody, but we had to close down the gardens and we were heading into our spring season. So, first of all, everybody go home. We're going to maintain the facilities, we're going to maintain the plants, but we're going to do it in shifts and we're all going to stand really far apart and all that. But don't worry about anything, we're going to cover you.

Brian Vogt

So in the ensuing two and a half months that we were shut down, we pledged and you remember this we pledged that no one was going to get laid off, we weren't going to cut salaries and we weren't going to cut benefits, and I didn't know how we were going to do it. But I thought if we show fidelity to our team, they'll rise to the challenge and we'll figure it out. So we were doing this virtual plant sale, where it was crazy hard. We're behind the scenes, separated, putting together people's orders that they did online and then putting them in bags and then putting them in alphabetical order, and being in the parking lot and cars would pull up and we would just have them open up their trunks and we'd put the bag of plants in their car.

Brian Vogt

Amazing, incredible, huge work, but it kept the plant sale alive and it gave people something to do. We added about six weeks of paid leave to everybody because they needed to take care of stuff. They had family issues, they had medical issues, all kinds of things were happening. And when we came back we were the first cultural institution in the state to reopen. And when we opened again, the emotional response of people being able to visit the gardens and we kept everybody apart, we did everything was different, but still people could experience the gardens, the thought of the staff, at that point their cups were full. They weren't thinking what I need more, I need more. They said what can we do? What can we do? So, following George Floyd's murder and the unbelievable stress of that summer, we created a thing called Evenings of Healing and the staff built it. They said you know, there's a lot of musical acts in town that don't have any gigs because there's no venue, so we're going to hire them.

Brian Vogt

And then we're going to go out to our community partners that worked with traumatized communities and first responders and we're going to say pick a night, this night's for you. Just come enjoy no charge, just come, find some peace, listen to some music, bring a picnic and find some place of normalcy. And I just was blown away by how beautiful that experience was and that these people were looking out instead of in.

Connection and Success in Work

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Wow, there's the teams who will bring discretionary effort into work when the environment invites that and when the environment encourages and in some ways expects that. But you know, discretionary effort, you can't expect it. You've got to work at it as a leader that make the place good enough, make the place welcoming and enriching and enlivening enough that people want to bring the entirety of themselves into work in service to a mission and live that purpose. We have to build that. But you also have the opportunity. I mean, I'd say one of the things that, pardon the pun, grows as a result of that is you get raving fans who will tell your story with you not having to tell it yourself. I'd ask at your place, I'd ask you to talk about your experience of working with the public, because it's not all pretty, we know that there can be some challenging folks.

Brian Vogt

T he public is a little bit of everything, right?

Brian Vogt

And I think empathy, respect, listening, connecting, joy, sharing joy, making sure people feel comfortable, it's part of our diversity work that's so critical is that we we are really getting to know communities in a deep way and figuring out where we can make connections that are reciprocal and beneficial to everyone. And when you do that, it just enlivens everything, you know, it's just everything improves. It's giving people outlets and respect and space when they need it, connection when they need it, really trying to understand, and so everything we've been talking about is my dream of what our whole society could be. We could actually be thinking about making sure everybody's cup is full and they're doing their best to make smart decisions and do great things, and even when there's disagreement, you can still find ways to connect.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Yeah, I love that you you'd said that the walking about the gardens and having the chance to talk to team members and visitors is very much akin to here and as a leader, that's, I tell people coming upstairs and being on the floors, it's like chocolate to me. It's like the best thing ever and it keeps me in the game. It keeps me wanting to come back and work harder.

Brian Vogt

This is going to be a little off kilter for a second, but I have to go back to my major, which was classical antiquity. Right?

Brian Vogt

And in studying Egyptology, they believe that when you pass, you are taken before the gods and Anubis is there and they have a scale. There's a lot of mythology that has to do with scales. And you put your the heart on one side of the scale and a feather on the other, and you make sure they're a balance because you want a light heart. And I think about that balancing act all the time and I remember after leaving one career, when I left the chamber after 18 years, I remember thinking I've blown it because my goal was to do work that on net gave more than it got. And I just felt so filled with warmth and connection and support that I thought I can't possibly give enough to ever balance that scale out.

Brian Vogt

You know? And I agree with you, when I'm at the gardens, when I walk around and I talk to people and they ask questions and I try not to wear my name tag so they can see my role, sometimes they figure it out, sometimes they know, but just having that human connection is so, it's so powerful. And I go back and I'm doubly motivated then to figure out ways to do more to support other people. You know, because you got to keep that scale in balance.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, you know it's funny that it makes that's beautiful, this light heart. I said during COVID and getting us through it that it was heart work, hard work and heart work.

Brian Vogt

Yeah.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

It was a lot of hard work.

Brian Vogt

And hard work is the most fulfilling work. You know, the easy things leave us like yeah okay, yeah. There's a tradition now, a folklore, I think, at the gardens that has sprung up over the years that when new people come on staff and they're in some kind of leadership role, their colleagues take them aside. I've learned this just recently. and they say one thing you need to know, be careful about taking ideas to Brian, because he's going to say yes. And then you're going to have to do it.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

That's so cool.

Brian Vogt

I interviewed a person for a role a couple of years ago and he was asking about how the place operates and I said, we think big, we dream big, we raise the bar and I'm going to do everything I can to clear every obstacle out of your way and give you the sport you need. And people react really powerfully to that because they're not used to it. We live in a society where we think what's important that drives all of our decisions are paramount. It's all about the numbers, it's about discipline and everybody has to fit a mold and all these things. And that's not what humanity is about, And we've learned that even more deeply in the last couple of years. So the more you give people a chance to be their own star, shine their own light, the better.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Talk about what's happened around membership and around growth and around the financial health of the organization. Your employee satisfaction. Tell us a little bit about that.

Brian Vogt

You still have to get the business done. You can't be a failing institution as you're ascending your impact. And there are people that want to judge an institution by the numbers. There truly are, and a lot of them board members have fiduciary responsibilities, so they're going to be eyeing that. So in order to have the freedom to have a culture like we have, we had to be successful, and that started with giving people an idea that things could actually happen.

Brian Vogt

Confidence in the institution was lacking when I started. There was a lot of scarcity mentality and now there's an abundance mentality. So people are pushing the envelope. And that's people that are using funds and people that are bringing funds in. It's people on the inside, it's members on the outside and donors on the outside. It's our incredible financial team, which is so good and so thoughtful. So I think budget was about $8. 5 million when I started. It's $33 million this year. Our visitation was about 400,000. Last year it was 1. 36 million. The number of members was probably 14,000. It's 52,000 households now. And I remember, I look back on it I know what was I thinking at a board meeting you were at. Somebody asked me what did I think the kind of the upper echelon of our membership base could possibly be. And I said I think we'd probably peak around 35,000.

Building Excellent Cultures, Passing on Legacy

Brian Vogt

And we've been steadily over 50,000 for the last two years, and so all of that gives us a success story that becomes a support system for all of this dream-making that happens.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Yeah, I think that it also wouldn't be, you know, sort of a telling of a full story of how you build great cultures if we didn't talk about the fact that not everybody wants to get on board.

Brian Vogt

No. No.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

And not everybody can necessarily see the vision, or people, there are people who are either skeptical or just sort of live in the place of we call ministry of no or no way, or I won't, or you're trying to change, you know those sorts of things, and people see evil's too strong a word but they see malfeasance or they see negativity and trying to change from who we are. So any thoughts about that, in terms of when you think about the from toos that you just laid out from us, there must have been people who'd be grudgingly, went along or didn't. How do you manage that?

Brian Vogt

Yeah, the thing about culture is that's so powerful is that if you have a really positive culture, the people that are kind of the destroyers, like you're you're describing, don't like it because they can't run amok and their joy or their energy comes from stirring the pot. You know, if you have a bad culture, it chases off people that want to be in a healthy culture.

Brian Vogt

So it's a constant battle And the thing I know absolutely is you have to look at everybody with compassion. The people that feel like they're just always negative and they're, you know, they're just a drag to everybody around them and they suck up all the energy in the room and all that. You have to look at that human being as a human being and think to yourself, I don't know their journey.

Brian Vogt

I don't know their life, I don't know what they're experiencing. I learned a long time ago that it's always about something else. When people come to you and they have an intense kind of they're ready to really let you have it and they're telling you what the problem is and they're very upset, I pause for a second. I think what is this really about? Because it's hardly ever the thing that they are discussing with you. It's something else, right?

Brian Vogt

Yeah, and you've learned that too. And so you have to react in that pivot point where you're showing respect and empathy and compassion, but you're actually trying to discern what the real issue is and sometimes you can't help them get to a solution. You can never really solve it for them. You can help them solve it themselves. At that point there could be a separation and it happens, and I've seen it with people that have been highly functional for a long time and then they just start to fall apart. And again, I don't know their journey. I don't know what's happening on the weekend and the evenings. I don't know what's happening in their families or what traumas they've been through or something that changed, or that maybe they got health news or I don't know any of that.

Brian Vogt

So I can't react like you're bad and you don't fit anymore. I have to look and say I know that your journey is going to go somewhere else and that's okay.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

Yeah, yeah, that's beautiful. These roles of service and I mean that, I say serve, I try hard not to use the lead word. I'm just one of the gang. If you didn't come in with humility, these jobs will humble you fast. And even if you did come in with humility, because you're just sort of positioned that way and I know that about you, these jobs will humble you fast because we don't do everything perfectly. But that idea of I would say about Craig that I knew I was working off of a strong foundation.

Brian Vogt

Like you say, stasis is not an option, and so the gardens has been beloved from the very beginning. It has been the recipient of genius work from the very beginning, the architecture, the designs the plantings, extraordinary.

Brian Vogt

I didn't inherit something that needed a complete overhaul. It just needed a lot of repair work and then some new twists and then added elements. But I'll tell you, the next thing to think about is how am I going to pass it along? And I was asked one time what I wanted my legacy to be at the gardens, and I answered really quickly and I thought I think that's exactly how I feel. I would like, when I leave the gardens for it to be barely noticeable that I left. That would be an amazing legacy.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

That's when you know you've planted, pardon of the pun again, you've planted some serious trees, some serious seeds, laid down some great roots.

Brian Vogt

It's thriving.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

This place would be fine whether we're here or not, and we can look back and say well done and that we're proud of what we were able to accomplish or move along or help.

Brian Vogt

And thank you for whatever forces brought me to that place at that time, you know, I just feel so much gratitude.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

I live that every single day here at Craig. I do say I get to go to Craig. I work alongside fabulous, wonderful people and I think that notion of the charismatic leader I've thought about for years because I watched great places become not so great when those amazing leaders moved on, and it is one of the harder and yet most important obligations we have is to make sure that part of our legacy is that it wasn't all tied up in us, that there are people here. Brian, I, you know I love you.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

I have to say that to the whole world, and you keep doing what you're doing because the garden is as we know you didn't say that from to it's one of the premier gardens in the world. And that's not a board member bragging, that's fact. So thank you for spending time with us.

Brian Vogt

It's been a joy. Thank you, thank you.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

So building excellent cultures, or continuing to enable excellent cultures to be even more excellent, or good places to even be greater than they already are, embodies a really interesting recipe that I think we had the opportunity to explore in this last hour. It starts with a dream, and the dream, as a leader, is actually part of who you are. It's the fabric of that person who strives to be part of doing great work and doing something better, who knows that there's another great story in there to be told, another great chapter of their own lives to be led and to be written. And it involves hard work. Clearly, it involves the ability to humble yourself in the presence of those who, in that organization or that space, came before you.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

It requires a huge amount of learning. We heard that for sure that ability to ask lots of questions and to listen hard.

Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

It involves the notion that stasis is a premorbid condition, so that change is inevitable and there's careful and wonderful and important ways that we do it. It involves hard conversations in terms of those who may be reticent to move along, but it also, at the same time, involves the patience and the importance of us understanding what's behind the reticence, because there's some potential great learnings in that that could keep us from stumbling as leaders. And out of all of that, the alchemy that we have the opportunity to create and to watch just happen and I should say, create together, is the stuff that grows great cultures, grows excellent cultures, creates the kind of impact that Brian rattled off beautifully, and at the heart of all of that is just really good leadership, and I mean it. I was envious getting to see what he got to do. So once again, thank you for joining us at Unstoppable at Craig, and I hope you'll pick us up on wherever it is that you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much and see you next time.

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Jandel Allen-Davis, MD

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