Want your team to actually tell you the truth?
In the Army, Roxanne Petraeus watched senior officers announce an open-door policy and then act like the door was shut. So she stopped trusting what leaders say and started trusting only what they do.
"I only believed what I saw."
Today, Roxanne is the co-founder and CEO of Ethena, and she runs the company on the opposite of what she saw back then: never say a thing you aren't willing to back with action.
We get into how that one commitment builds a culture people actually believe — and who owns it when the CEO and the head of people disagree.
(If you’ve ever experienced the frustration of working with a “do what I say, not what I do” leader — or you don’t want to become one yourself — this episode is for you.)
👀 Here's what you get in today's edition of the Culture Creators:
The weekly ritual that makes her team comfortable telling the CEO exactly what she got wrong
The one-sentence test that reveals what your culture actually is, no matter what your posters say
The reframe that turns a CEO's "not now" into budget for your next HR initiative
Check out the episode wherever you get podcasts.
— Nate Bagley, Producer of Culture Creators
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In the Army and later at McKinsey, Roxanne kept running into the same expensive problem: what it costs a company when a leader's actions don't match their words.
She remembers consulting with several leaders during her stint at McKinsey who all said the same thing:
“We want to be more innovative.”
Then someone would make a mistake, and the leaders would freak out.
As Roxanne puts it, "You can't have both."
There's no innovation without the freedom to get things wrong. Most leaders love the idea but don’t want to pay the price for it.
She observed the impact of varying degrees of hypocrisy throughout her entire career. So when she started Ethena, she made herself a promise: back your words with action, and when you fall short, own it and make it right.
Sounds obvious. But it's brutally hard in practice.
And it's the real reason her team trusts her — average tenure sits around four years, held steady through five straight years of macro chaos, at a moment when tenure is falling off a cliff almost everywhere else.
The rest of this email lays out how this mindset shows up in everything Roxanne does.
Notice how she gets specific about the exact behavior she wants, then models it herself before she asks anyone else to.
Here we go! Five powerful moves from a stellar culture leader we can all learn from:
1. Demand criticism. Don't just allow it.
It's hard to tell a leader about a problem.
It's even harder to give them feedback — the "hey, that was the wrong call" kind — even when the door really is open.
So… people don't.
They sit on it, wait for a better moment. But the better moment never comes.
In the Army, Roxanne saw plenty that wasn't right and never had a real way to say so.
It turns out, you can't speak a feedback culture into existence. People don’t believe or trust you if your actions conflict with your words.
To combat this, Roxanne instituted “Feedback Fridays.” Every Friday, each of her direct reports owes her one thing she did well and one thing she could've done better.
The "could've done better" half is required. ("Give me three pieces of feedback" just leaves people wondering how many are supposed to be nice.)
But the feedback she collects — although helpful — isn't really the point. The point is that her team watches her take the feedback without flinching or without arguing back. Then, she thanks them for it and actually does something with it.
That's how the behaviors spread, and values get reinforced.
If the CEO won't eagerly seek out and take coaching or feedback, why would anybody underneath her?
If she’s not modeling it, is it really important to the organization?
❝ "I'm expecting you to have something to say here." [45:00]
The strategic logic: a speak-up culture you only talk about is fiction. A standing, required slot kills the "is now a good time?" problem and, more importantly, hands you a stage to model how feedback is supposed to land. Her tell that it's working? The shorter and more generic someone's note, the more you know they're about to say the real thing.
The first move: put a weekly, two-way slot on the calendar where feedback for you is required, not optional. Then nail the part that actually teaches — take it, thank them, show them what you changed. When someone says they've got "nothing," push. There's always something.
2. Make "maybe" a no.
Every company hits the moment.
You're behind. You needed the hire yesterday.
And someone walks in who's… fine. Not great. Fine. And your brain starts quietly building the case for "good enough."
Roxanne says, “Don't.”
That one "maybe," waved through on a week you were drowning, becomes the new bar everyone else measures against.
Do it enough times, and your culture turns into whatever you were willing to settle for on your worst day.
So she made the standard a rule you can't fudge: "maybe is not our standard."
A founder sits in on every single hire, even a junior SDR, not because only the founders can judge, but so the whole team can see the bar is real.
There's a dedicated values interview run by a trained interviewer. And they’ve even turned down candidates who crushed every other round and flunked that one.
❝ "We've absolutely turned down candidates who passed everything else and failed the values interview... otherwise, like, what are you doing?" [09:18]
The strategic logic: your standards can't ride on your willpower on a bad day. They have to live in the process. A values interview you'll genuinely act on protects the bar in the exact moment you're too slammed to protect it yourself.
The first move: decide a maybe is a no before you're desperate — because desperate is when the rule gets tested. Put a senior person in every loop and add a values step you're actually willing to reject on. A bar you won't hold under pressure isn't a bar.
3. Everything is your fault.
Roxanne’s friend — Bonobos founder Andy Dunn — wrote a whole piece on how being a leader means everything is your fault.
Roxanne stole the idea for herself.
Here's how it plays out: She'll roll into a session with her executive coach venting about someone who's driving her up the wall.
“They're so negative, always doing this, always doing that.”
Her coach won't bite.
"That seems like a you problem. You're tolerating it and not doing anything about it, which means you're not really mad at them. You're mad at yourself for not dealing with it.”
If everything is your fault, everything is also yours to fix.
She leans into that for two reasons, and neither one is beating herself up.
First, she wants to work with people who demonstrate that same level of ownership.
One of the ways she screens for it is by listening to how candidates talk about their old bosses.
Second, it makes her team feel safe.
When the CEO owns the outcome, nobody's left holding the bag.
That's what lets her back her people hard in public even when they've fought about it in private — like sticking up for her head of people after an unpopular perk got rolled back: "none of you would've wanted to be in her spot, so knock it off."
People take real swings when they know you've got them.
❝ "Being a leader is... everything is your fault." [22:50]
The strategic logic: ownership at the top is what makes a feedback culture safe to join — and it's a scary-good predictor of who's going to grow. Disagree in private, align in public, and let the team watch you absorb the risk.
The first move: next time you're frustrated with a person or a situation, write down the one action you've been avoiding. That's almost always the actual problem.
4. Compliance done right is just culture, made specific.
As the CEO of a compliance training company, Roxanne’s definition of compliance is: Culture, made specific.
Her favorite example comes from a compliance leader at an LGBTQ dating app who told her, "We have data that could literally get someone hurt... or killed, depending on the country they're in."
That context makes compliance feel like a duty instead of "please finish your data-privacy module by Friday."
And that instinct to make culture specific is essentially Roxanne’s entire leadership playbook in a sentence.
She names the exact behavior she wants, and builds systems and incentives around it.
Want a growth mindset? → Feedback Fridays
Want ownership? → Everything is your fault
Want cohesion? → Maybe is not our standard
Want trust? → Communicate like a pilot (see below)
❝ "Your culture is the worst behavior you will tolerate." [32:28]
The strategic logic: nobody changes their behavior for an abstraction. Executives fund what's tied to their currency — talent, reputation, dollars. Junior folks act on what they percieve will keep them safe, or get them ahead.
Your values on the wall don't set your culture. The behaviors you name, model, and enforce do (along with the ones you let slide).
The first move: take your fuzziest "value" and rewrite it as one concrete behavior a new hire could actually do on day one. Then, for your next budget ask, say it in your CEO or CFO's language and put a number on it.
5. Communicate like a pilot.
Roxanne's dad flies planes for a living, and she says the best leaders sound like the best pilots: they tell you what's really happening to the plane (not the vague, smoothed-over PR version).
"We're going through turbulence. There's a maintenance issue, I don't know how long it'll take, here's my best guess, and I'll talk to you again in ten minutes."
Nothing's changed. You're still stuck in seat 14C. But you can breathe now, because you know what's going on.
She runs crises the exact same way.
When Silicon Valley Bank was melting down, she gave her team four things:
Here's what's happening
Here's what I'm doing about it
Here's what you can do right now (usually: nothing)
Here's when you'll hear from me next — every six hours, and "you might just hear, 'I have no update.'"
She didn't have the answers. That was never the point. The point was to take away the not-knowing.
❝ "The best people can smell BS from a mile away." [56:45]
The strategic logic: in a crisis, the thing wrecking your team usually isn't the bad news — it's the silence. Not knowing whether anyone's handling it is the part that eats people alive.
A steady drumbeat of "here's where we are" hands them their focus back. It also buys trust: your best people can always tell when they're being spun, and they stick with the leader who just tells them straight. (Roxanne credits Kayak founder Paul English with the version she likes — people are interested in charisma, but they follow authenticity.)
How much should you share? Enough to answer the three questions running in everyone's head: what's going on, are you on it, and when will I hear more?
The first move: next time it gets uncertain, don't wait for a clean resolution to say something. Send the four-part update — what's happening, what you're doing, what they can do, when they'll hear from you next — and hold the cadence even when the update is "no update."
Notice the pattern? Every one of these is the same move: Roxanne names the behavior she wants, then does it first. And she does it as the same person in every room — CEO, mom, crisis manager, no costume changes.
That's why demanding criticism doesn't feel like a trap to her team. They've watched her be honest when honest was hard.
The "so what?"
If you're running people at a 100-to-2,000-person company and you're tired of hearing your work called "soft," this one's your evidence that culture is a business outcome — built one specific, modeled behavior at a time.
And if you're a CEO who still files the people leader under "support function," it's the case for the partner who's actually holding your team together.
We turned Roxanne's playbook into a toolkit for YOU!
The bonus toolkit for this episode includes:
Balancing Authority and Culture Decisions: Questions for CEOs and CPOs: the conversation guide for a CEO and head of people to settle who actually owns which culture calls, before the next disagreement forces the question
Stop Being Afraid of Constructive Feedback: Implement Feedback Fridays: everything you need to run Roxanne's weekly, two-way ritual that gets your team comfortable telling you exactly what you got wrong
Grab both and bring Roxanne's system to your own team this week in the Asset Library on the SHRM website:
Companies that consistently recognize and reinforce the right behaviors and values build cultures where people stay longer, perform better, and pull in the same direction.
Nectar helps HR teams and leaders make those moments consistent with a culture platform that's easy to adopt and actually gets used.
→ Recognition that doesn't feel forced
→ Engagement and listening you can act on
→ Communication that reaches people where they are
See Nectar in action:
Your culture is the worst behavior you will tolerate.
Your values live on a poster.
Your culture lives in what you allow.
It's the most honest one-line culture audit a leader can run… and the most uncomfortable.
We ask every guest about their "Culture Crush" — a person or organization they admire for the culture they've built.
Roxanne's, no hesitation: Netflix. She's a self-described fangirl (her chief people officer has heard the pitch more times than she'd like), hooked on how Netflix hands people real freedom and autonomy and then holds them accountable for what they do with it.