Podcast Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Work with Erika Ayers Badan
Episode: WORK Unsolicited Advice: How to Build Good Habits and Avoid Bad Culture at Work
Host: Erika Ayers Badan
Date: January 14, 2026

In this episode of "WORK," Erika answers two listener questions:

1. Which habits should leaders and employees adopt early?
2. How to handle culture clashes in mergers or partnerships?
   With her signature candid, humorous, and practical tone, Erika offers unfiltered guidance drawn from her real-world leadership experiences, reflecting on both successes and hard-won lessons.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Essential Habits for Leaders

[00:18–03:50]

• Consistency
  Erika emphasizes that consistency is crucial for leaders, especially in dynamic or tumultuous environments.

  • Consistent leaders are seen as trustworthy and reliable.
  • Steadiness helps employees feel safe, especially during challenges.
  • Leaders should aim to be approachable when problems arise.

  "Steadiness in a leader can be very, very important, especially if you work in something tumultuous... I think the best thing I can be is just steady."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [01:02]

• Presence and Approachability

  • Being present and walking the walk matters.
  • Predictability in leadership helps people feel secure bringing challenges forward.

  "You want to be a leader where people can go to you when things are going wrong."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [01:28]

• Communication

  • Erika values over-communicating, whether via email or meetings.
  • Lack of communication breeds doubt, distrust, and dysfunction.
  • The "black box" effect happens when teams silo information, stalling collaboration.
  • Leaders should proactively communicate—even when news is negative or answers are unclear.

  "Communication or the lack of communication is where doubt and distrust and dysfunction set in."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [02:15]

  "If people could just commit to communicating when it’s good, when it’s bad, when you don’t know the answer, doing what you say you will do... those are habits that are really important in leaders."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [03:12]

2. Valuable Habits for Employees

[03:51–05:00]

• Initiative and Curiosity

  • Initiative is highly underrated compared to intelligence or experience.
  • Action and curiosity outweigh overthinking and excessive meetings.
  • People with initiative gain more by doing and learning through action.

  "You can be less smart, less talented, less capable, less experienced. And if you have initiative, you will end up ahead because you will learn more by doing more."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [04:45]

3. Handling Culture Clashes in Mergers and Partnerships

[05:01–10:02]

• Reality Check: Most Mergers Fail

  • Erika references statistics suggesting up to 88% of acquisitions fail; culture is a primary culprit, not financials or product-market fit.

  "Most mergers fail... Acquisitions fail mostly because of culture, not really because of product or the finances or the structure."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [05:20]

• Empathy and Complexity

  • Mergers are difficult and impact all parties.
  • Tension often arises from "mothership" resentment, perceived outsider success, or envy toward the acquired team.

  "There's always something, I think, a little bit in mergers and acquisitions where the mothership... resents that they couldn't create what the acquiree did."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [07:10]

• Best Practices from Experience

  • From her board seat at Axon, Erika cites incentive alignment and combining the best of both companies as success factors.
  • Real-world examples where integration worked and where it didn’t.

• Addressing Culture Clashes Directly

  • Don’t ignore tensions; acknowledge and solve them in real time.
  • Avoid letting problems fester or turn into organizational resentment.

  "How you handle it is you have to put the culture clash and the tension always at the forefront so that you are solving it real time."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [08:08]

  "When it's not working, but nobody says anything... it's like gum. The resentment just sticks to one another on all sides."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [08:23]

• Actionable Steps

  • Put problems at the forefront.
  • Establish a shared vision and align incentives.
  • Celebrate wins, call out problems promptly, and foster open conversation.

  "When you don't talk about the clash and you just avoid it, that's really when things start to slow down and things start to fail."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [09:10]

Notable Quotes

• On communication and trust:

  "I think consistency and communication are two highly, highly, highly underrated and underutilized habits by leaders."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [00:30]

• On employee initiative:

  "I think initiative is also highly, highly underrated."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [04:24]

• On mergers:

  "Acquisitions are tough for everybody. And acquisitions are tough because you are growing unnaturally."
  — Erika Ayers Badan [06:12]

Memorable Moments & Timestamps

• Contrasting styles of leadership and their impact on culture [01:00–03:50]
• Concrete example of internal silos: The “Black Box” problem [02:35]
• Empathy for merger participants and reference to Barstool’s acquisition [06:00]
• Steps to address culture clashes head-on; “resentment gum” analogy [08:08–08:35]

Conclusion

This episode delivers candid, actionable advice for anyone seeking to foster strong habits or navigate difficult cultural dynamics at work. Erika champions steadiness, communication, transparency, and initiative while offering honest reflections on why so many work cultures falter after mergers. Her humor, humility, and willingness to “call out the messy stuff” make the episode a practical resource for both seasoned leaders and employees just starting out.