In this episode of Career Sessions, J.R. Lowry sits down with author, speaker, and culture expert Greg Hawks to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today:

Why are so many people disengaged at work and what actually changes that?

Greg introduces the concept of the “ownership mindset,” a powerful shift in how individuals approach their work and how leaders build environments where people feel invested, accountable, and motivated.

Drawing on decades of experience working with organizations, Greg explains why most employees start with energy and intention, but often lose it over time and what both individuals and leaders can do to bring it back.

They discuss:

• What it really means to “act like an owner” (and why it has nothing to do with your title)
• The difference between owners, renters, and vandals in the workplace
• Why engagement breaks down and how culture often unintentionally discourages initiative
• The five “unlocks” that help individuals and teams build ownership and accountability
• How leaders can re-engage employees who’ve stopped investing their energy
• Why values only matter when they are consistently lived, not just stated
• How to think about ownership not just in your role, but across your entire career

Greg also shares practical tools from identifying where you’re placing blame to making small, consistent changes that compound over time to help you take greater ownership of your work and your future

If you’ve ever felt stuck, disengaged, or frustrated by your work environment, this conversation offers a clear and actionable framework for reclaiming control, finding meaning, and building a more fulfilling career.

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Check out the full series of “Career Sessions, Career Lessons” podcasts here or visit pathwise.io/podcast/. A full written transcript of this episode is also available at https://pathwise.io/podcasts/greg-hawks/.

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How To Act Like An Owner: Building Engagement, Accountability, And Meaningful Work, With Greg Hawks

One of the biggest challenges that organizations face now isn’t really about strategy or technology. It’s about engagement. Seventy percent of US workers aren’t engaged. This has been true since Gallup began measuring it 25 or 30 years ago, and the numbers are even worse outside the US. This dilemma has leaders across industries and around the world asking the same question. How do you build a culture where people actually care about the work, take initiative, contribute beyond the minimum requirements of their role?

You may be thinking that this is for employers to figure out, and it is. As an individual, don’t you want to go to work feeling excited about what you’re doing, feeling like there’s a purpose to it? I’d argue that this topic matters for all of us, whether we’re running companies or staffing the front line. My guest, Greg Hawks, has spent more than two decades helping organizations with this topic, and his work focuses on what he calls an ownership mindset the idea that the most effective teams are those where people think and act like owners regardless of their job title.

He’s got a new book, Act Like an Owner: Five Unblocks for Creating Culture People Love and Results Leaders Need, that we’ll be talking about. We’ll also talk more generally about what it means to act like an owner, why culture is shaped by everyday behaviors rather than corporate slogans, and what leaders and employees can both do to create workplaces where people feel engaged and accountable and invested in the outcome. Greg, welcome.

Totally a pleasure.

The Spectrum: Owners, Renters, And Vandals

Terrific. Let’s dive right in. Let’s talk first about the ownership mindset. What does it actually mean to act like an owner at work?

The essence of it is folks who bring their heart, head, and hands, is my shorthand for it. People that still care, bring a passion, use their imagination, bring some creativity, and bring their skills because I talk about owners, renters, and vandals, and so the idea is that renters are every other person at the workplace. They’re not bad people at all.

They’ve just learned it’s not worth caring, it’s not worth using my thoughts beyond what I have to do, and they just show up with their skills. They do a job, they’re good at their job, they get the job done. That ownership element is that one that says, “I’m still fully engaged, heart and mind, and I care at a level that moves me, that makes a difference in how I make decisions.” That’s the shorthand version of it.

Why do you think that some people naturally adopt this owner mindset and others, to your point, are more renters?

Work Engagement: We are all investing our lives every day, and we’re always getting a return  financially, emotionally, relationally, or through growth and development.

My philosophy is everybody starts out day one at an organization with an owner’s mindset. They show up, they want to prove their value, they want to contribute in meaningful ways, they want to make a difference, they want to show that you made a good hire, this was a good idea, “I have something to offer.” I think people show up that way. Over the course of time, they want to contribute, and people are like, “Simmer down. We’re going to crush your spirit too. We’re going to crush your dreams too. We just need you to show up here and do the job.”

A lot of work environments create a renter’s culture where they don’t want people having a sense of autonomy or a sense of opportunity. They just want them doing the job. I was talking with a marketing VP here in Minneapolis, and it’s a company based out of here, and she said, “I don’t think they want people to act like that. I think they just want them to do the task.” Not every organization wants that, but I think people show up wanting to bring that, and then the culture of the place usually snuffs out that desire.

I have a philosophy that all of us are investing our lives daily and we’re always getting a return. No matter what you’re doing, no matter what level you’re doing it at, you’re making an investment with your life. If you’re getting a return back, whether it’s financially or emotionally or relationally or growth and development. If people learn, “When I invest my life, when I care, and when I use and I contribute ideas, and they just get shot down all the time, I don’t get the return I’m looking for.” Just like any good investor, they go, “It’s not worth investing here. I’ll show up and do the job, but I’m not going to go and extend myself because I’ve learned it’s not worth it.”

A lot of companies will say that they want their employees to act like owners, but they still want the ability to fire them at will.

That’s the beautiful thing about somebody who carries an owner’s mindset. People who are contributing with an owner’s mindset at a company generally are the most beloved, in the sense that because they care, because they’re trying to use innovative creativity and thinking to move things forward, they have a tendency to be producers.

Even when you let somebody go when you have an owner’s mindset, you’re like, “Okay, I’ll find a place that I fit better, that the skills and abilities and ways of working I bring are most fruitful, and I find a lot of joy in that environment,” whereas frustration usually happens with people who are not succeeding. You can fire an owner, but somebody with an owner’s mindset then looks at it as just the opportunity that says, “All right, where can I lead my life next? What opportunity does this create for me?”

I think you’re getting into the idea about owning your career in a broader sense because you don’t have always full control. Even if you are supposed to act like an owner within a company, you don’t always have full control over what happens. It may not be your performance that’s getting you let go, it could be layoffs, which have more to do with the bigger picture of what’s going on in the company than they do with you individually. I think what you’re saying ultimately is that you’ve got to take ownership for your broader situation and manage the whole of your career, not just blinders on in the situation you’re in, the role you’re in, and just taking ownership of that.

This is so real-time for me right now. I’ve got a great client, and they’re having to do a RIF, 10% of the whole company. When you are that person and you’re like, “I just got let go,” but it wasn’t for cause, it wasn’t because I didn’t produce, it’s because of the economy and situation with the company, then they have a sense of, “I was contributing my best,” it sets you up to be referred. Even when you bring an owner’s mindset, it does have a long-term return, even if not within that company. Even if it’s not a momentary win, people that bring the owner’s mindset always find themselves in the position to at least have a sense of optimism towards what’s next.

Yeah, I hear you say that, and yet I think there are a lot of people who are renting their way through life.

Totally. That from a personal perspective, I am grieved when you get around people and so many of them feel like life is beyond their control. It’s just like, “What am I supposed to do about it?” They feel that way, they’re conditioned that way, or they grew up in a home that way because it is a mindset, it’s a mindset that’s just like, “Well, there’s nothing I can do about it.” Totally a renter’s mindset.

Owning your thoughts is hard, owning your actions is hard. It’s much easier just to blame. It’s much easier just to blame others, the situation, the scenarios, society, the work, and feel very justified about that. I get it, I have empathy for people that feel that way, but I want to be a proponent of it’s a little bit harder but a lot more worth it to take an ownership mindset to every aspect of your being.

Let’s come back to the corporate perspective and some of the clients you work with. How do you advise your clients to spot and nurture the owners within their organization?

Honestly, the ones I’ve worked with, the challenge I have for them is, “How do you recognize the potential you see in someone? How do you nurture it out of them?” a lot of times, people that already show up as owners, they usually have a distinction about them that has a make it happen personality or a make it happen mindset that’s like, “I’m going to do what it takes, I’ll figure it out.” Those people, it’s recognizable.

I work more with like how are you looking at renters and saying, “How do you get people who have said, ‘It’s not worth it’ but they’re good people, they did care once, and maybe a season of life or a bad experience or a bad manager or difficulty with a colleague have caused them to pull back and now they’re just showing up and doing bare minimum?” How do you re-engage those folks to cause them to buy back in?”

One of my philosophies is you don’t go hire the best, you just bring the best out of those you have because hiring the best is really hard because they’re a premium, but all the people you have with you, there’s a lot of people not having the best brought out of them. I live in Minneapolis now, the great 3M is up here. Historical approach to giving people a little bit of autonomy in an area of interest. In the economy, it’s hard to do, but that idea as a leader. Do you attach a person’s individual values and mission to what they’re trying to do?

I think just across the board, leaders aren’t as effective at that as they could be, that would create a sense of fulfillment with ease, saying, “Here’s the job you have, here’s the work we’re doing, here’s the people we’re serving, here’s the product we’re making, here’s the service we provide, here’s how your role in light of our values serves what we’re trying to do, and how does that connect with you? Let’s help you find how your personal value system aligns with that.”

When people come to work and they have their own personal sense of, “I’m on a mission, what I’m doing here matters,” when they’ve concluded that for themselves, it’s a game-changer for how they approach work. Leaders being able to help people do that not a lot of people know how to do that on their own or to see, especially if there’s numerous points along the way of when a client is served from where their job is, and maybe they’re internal, they’re not customer-facing at all.

How does that align with a mission and values that resonates with someone that then enables them to serve and go, “Here’s why what I do matters?” That’s a pretty simple idea, but it’s really hard for people on their own to calculate, and without a strong leader and a smart leader that says, “Let me show you why this is really important, and I’m not just giving you lip service, but here’s why this really matters, and I hope you find a sense of yourself in this thing we’re doing,” that’s always the first step for me. Have you helped people align their own mission, values with what we’re trying to serve in a way that they really then can sincerely go, “What I do really matters.”

The Five Unlocks: Building A Culture Of Excellence

You talk in the book about five unblocks. Do you want to walk us through your framework and how that fits into the discussion?

Sure. I love those five unblocks and those are the attributes. That idea of the first one is the Risk Bold Commitments, and so I’ll talk about like accountability and contributions. I’ve been referring to that because it’s a commitment to keep contributing when it’s not well received. It’s a commitment to be held accountable in areas as a professional because it’s really hard to acknowledge the essence of accountability is that we need help. There is no grown adult professional who’s walking around going, “I need a lot of help in my job.”

That’s not a position most people want to take, but accountability says, “I’ve recognized something in my life that is not at the level I’d like it to be. Would you help me get there?” I look at it as a nudge. Invite people to nudge you to be who you’re currently not. We drop back to mediocrity as people, which is where our natural existence is. We don’t live at a level of excellence, and so it takes people in our lives that holds us to that standard.

My philosophy is without accountability, you can’t have excellence. With that bold commitment of saying, “I’m willing to put myself and subject myself to a peer and be transparent, vulnerable in this area and I’m going to invite these people in,” that’s a big commitment. I have the reverse philosophy like if you don’t have people in your life that you’re accountable to, then you’re just committed to mediocrity.

It’s just like, how could you not recognize there’s always opportunities to grow? Even with accountability, I think of them as like progress partners. That idea of the Risking the Bold Commitment is how am I putting myself out there to let other people know that I’m self-aware enough I still have areas to grow and I want to invite you to help me, and I can acknowledge you’ll do that.

The second one, Activate Lasting Value, is really probably one of my favorites, if not my favorite of the five. It’s this idea of how do we just make things a little bit better? How as an owner am I always just mindful that I can create some little change and little adjustment and little thing that activates value that’s going to stick around and last?

In the book, one of the pushbacks I would get is like, “Well, I don’t have a budget, I don’t have authority, I don’t have decision-making power.” Again, the people in your audience whether they’re at the top of the leadership, they’re just starting out at a new job, I talk about using free words that everybody has access to free words. If you can use your free words in a specific way, it can transform literally people’s lives and your own life if you’re cognizant of being intentional with it.

In that one, just that idea of how are we creating value with the people that we’re working with, how do we value them? It could be spoken words, could be written words, could be expressions of gratitude. I always say that value lands in specificity. The human nature, the negative sticks and the positive slips. Most people carry around negative self-thoughts. People have said words to them negatively that have just landed and have never left them. That’s just the nature of the soul. Unfortunately, we all have that.

The idea of how do we use positive words in a way that really grabs hold and makes a difference to create internal motivation is through specificity, that’s the hooks in the soul, I call it. When you use specificity, it gives people identity to grab hold of. That’s why it’s this activating lasting value because my belief about motivation is it’s not an external force.

You and I are most motivated when we have an internal connection to this identity that we’re moving into. You’ve probably gotten to do this and it’s one of the great gifts of leadership. When you speak to the potential of someone and you say, “I see this in you,” they go, “I didn’t see that in myself.” All of a sudden, they go, “I love that idea that I could be that person,” then they live into it is my terminology for it. They live into that image that you see, the potential that they don’t see. That as a leader, that’s the gift, that’s the best thing about being a leader is we get to do that for others.

Nobody has to say you’re a leader. You can do that peer-to-peer. I can say, “JR, one of the things that I really appreciate about you, one of the things I really notice about you.” I can do that to anybody I work with, and it immediately makes you more valuable because you have a sense of recognition and being seen and being understood, and there’s real value to that and then the words I say also.

There’s a reciprocity that happens when I start saying these things to you and I literally would say something like, “JR, I just really like you.” There’s something that happens soul-to-soul, not in a manipulative, not in a weird way but it’s just like you’re like, “I like you too, man, I don’t know what it is.” It’s this idea that people like people who like them. You don’t have to be a likable person. You don’t even have to have an extroverted personality.

Sometimes people think, “I’ve got to have this dynamic personality.” You don’t. You just have to be a person who likes other people. If you’re that kind of person, you will be a magnet. People will be drawn to you, connect you, because there’s this reciprocity. I don’t know what it is in human nature, but it doesn’t take a lot to figure out. We’re drawn to people who like us. “You like me? I like spending time with you. Tell me the things you like about me.”

With leaders, you don’t have the right to not like the people you lead because if you don’t build some likability, you won’t have trust. Without trust, there is just no chance of effective leadership, good communication, transparent, truthful communication. With leaders, it’s not so much that everybody needs to like you so you can be buddies, it’s people don’t trust people they don’t like. You’ve got to be someone who nurtures that and says, “I really like you as someone I’m leading.”

Work Engagement: You can fire an owner, but someone with an owner’s mindset will always ask, “Where can I lead my life next?”

That creates a value on a team and in an organization that you can’t maybe put any metrics on, but when there is thick trust, people solve the right problems quickly, they’re willing to have the hard conversations right off the bat, and they’re not wasting time in dancing around things and they get right to the heart of the matter. That’s what’s so significant about that.

That’s 2 of the 5, JR. Third one. Reach for Responsibility. It’s the idea of this is what most people think ownership is going above and beyond. This is the one where I’ll talk about an E-FROG return. Emotional, financial, relational, opportunity, growth. That idea that people really matter and why would somebody go above and beyond?

Fourth one is Widen the Circle. A lot of organizations have silos and they’re location-based and they’re floor-to-floor. I’ve worked with companies that the second floor didn’t like the third floor because you know who’s up on the third floor. It’s weird separations. This idea of how do we widen the circle? What happens is people find their identity in their authority. If you are in sales and you’re like, “This is my background, this is my history, this is my experience, this is my education,” well then of course you’re like, “I’m great.”

If somebody from the HR team comes over to you and says, “We’ve been talking in HR, we got a few ideas on how sales could do this better,” they’re like, “What? Who are you?” There’s this thing. That’s why a silo exists, because it’s all built on the renter capacity the hands, the skills, the ability. That idea of how do you invite people, how do you go, “It’s not just the sales team or it’s the HR team,” but how do we take people who appreciate what we’re trying to accomplish and be strategic about invitation, incentivizing, all those things.

The fifth one is similar and it’s Think Whole House. Most people think their room’s the most important room in the house. This idea of how do you think whole house? As an owner in buying homes, I don’t like any room better than another room because the house is what gives the room value, not the room giving the house value. You’ve probably heard this, JR, where people are like, “If it wasn’t for us, this whole place would fall apart. People don’t even know what we do around here.”

It’s not true. You’re a room in the house. You’re not more significant than the house. Yet it can feel like that because people spend so much time there. That idea of how are you thinking whole house? A room outside of the house is just a box in a field with no value. What gives your room value? It’s because you’re part of a whole. When you have a thinking about the whole accurately, it enables you to serve way more effectively in the room you’re in.

Again, for leaders, that trickle-down effect of it’s not just semantics but really saying, “I value the whole, I’m here to serve the house and this is the room that I’m serving in,” instead of “I’m in this room and I got to go fight the house so everybody knows how important our room is.” it is really a lot of mindset. That’s not a skill thing. It’s not like I need you to work in every room. I just need you to care. I need you to care that when one room is hurting instead of despising them going, “How could we contribute to it?” because they’re going to affect the whole house of our value and our growth and our opportunity.

It’s totally just a mindset on those five. When you see people that think like that, the original conversation about how do you connect people to it. How are you cross-pollinating from department to department? How are you reaching beyond in ways that aren’t maybe in your job description but could be things that are fueled by your own passions and how are you thinking about the whole and being mindful of what we do here, how it affects other people? Those are those five unblocks.

Defining Culture: Beyond Static Symbols

We talked a little bit earlier about what leaders can do to foster this. How about more at the corporate level? How does a company or an organization create the environment where people feel empowered to act like owners?

JR, I love that. That is the sweet spot of my passionate self because the people at that level then are shaping the environment. They’re saying, “We’re going to utilize our values and our efforts in communication here to not just declare but model how we operate here.” I don’t know how you define culture. I’ll get asked that in these conversations. It’s usually interesting in so much that it’s like there’s not just one definition of culture because people define it in context of in their world.

When I think of culture originally, I think of it like in a broader sense of society. If you go to France, they have a language and an art and a way of thinking and a way of engaging and a food and music. They have all these things that create the culture of the French. When they are out and about in the world, they still carry that sense with them.

You come here to the United States, you just go state to state, and different states have different cultures and it’s usually around arts and maybe government policies and the way they process and function and all that. In an organization, the idea around culture is what is this environment that is shaped by the values you have? It’ll be demonstrated by whatever the place looks like, whatever the place feels like, what your branding is what all those things are the external, the art of it if you will but what is the internal?

Executive leaders get to lead the charge in creating environment built on the values. I’ve had the good fortune to work with companies that their values like really matter. They’re not just static symbols, they’re not just words, and they’re not just from 50 years ago. They’re for-profit companies that are like, “This matters, how we act around here.” Executive leaders, they don’t get to define those words, but they do get to create the opportunity for those words to be discovered.

Values are discovered, and then they’re the ones who model at the top levels and put in processes for those values to be infiltrating through the whole company, whether it’s through visual campaigns, whether it’s through every meeting we start with these things and these are our mantras and this is our three words that are critical to us and so we’re going to talk about them weekly.

When we do our town hall meetings, we’re going to have people stand up and share stories about how those values played out in their business unit or in their community.  For executive leaders, it’s the clarity of values, the reality of living them out, and then show that they are actually true, meaningful to us. Executives bear that responsibility. Once that’s in place, then they’re the perpetuators of continuing the message consistently.

I think of it as values and beliefs and behaviors. It comes back to what you were saying earlier about the fact that it’s got to be real. It can’t just be words, it’s got to be things that are actually lived in practice that are steeped into the way that things work in a company day to day. If you don’t have that, your culture is just hollow.

The Expanding Role Of The Modern Workplace

I appreciate you saying that because it’s been really fortunate. I’ve worked with some companies where it’s like not just values at the top of the organization matter, but people talk about them, they’re integrated into the language. You’re like, “This is what it really looks like when values aren’t just terms, but they’re really held in regard like these are sacred mandates for us at this place.

“How we interact with each other and how we behave and how we treat each other and how we talk to each other and how we respond to problems and how we serve clients and how we filter decisions.” It’s really rewarding to see that. Of course, I’ve worked with companies that that hasn’t been the case where it’s like “people matter” then it’s like “not really, what matters is getting the job done.” We’ll burn the people out.

Go get new ones.

Honestly. It’s like they have frustrated ones and disappointed ones, but at the end of the day, it’s like, “Oh, what really matters is.” There’s grace because it’s hard. Just like we talked about earlier, Jared, the idea of like the shifts in society and I’d love to hear some of your take on this because I’ve been working through some of this. The workplace in general has had to absorb more responsibilities for the individual than they used to.

That never used to be work’s responsibility. The spiritual life of an individual, the relational life of an individual. Now it’s like work is being asked to meet all of those needs, whereas before, society just in general, all that was exist out there. Now it’s like everything needs to come through my workplace, and if it’s not, then I’ve got an attitude. That’s a big burden to put on a company because they also have to serve the client, produce the product, get the thing out the door. The difficulty in work now is there’s a lot more expected a workplace to provide for an individual than is ever been expected before. How do you think about that?

I think you’re right and I think part of it is religion has fallen off in importance. I know you are a faithful person, but for a lot of people, they’re not in the way that they were a generation or two generations ago. Organized religion plays less of an important role, so you lose that. I think community plays less of a role for most people. We are more transient in terms of where we live and how we interact with the people who live around us.

People are looking for more from their work environments and to your point, you’re right, most workplaces are not in a position where they’re really well able to handle all of that. It falls to some degree on individual leaders to deal with some of the issues that people on their team are facing and to navigate through corporate systems that aren’t necessarily going to be really helpful to them. I just think it’s all really hard. I think there’s a lot of things that are making it really hard right now. I wish I could tell you that I had a magic answer, but I don’t. I think it’s hard both for companies and for the individuals and I’m not quite sure how it’s going to play out.

For me, because I’m an optimist also, and that’s the excitement of life. We don’t know how it’s going to work out, like there’s so many factors that are just all unknown. How will any of this work out? I don’t know. You know what I do know? If you’ll take ownership of your own life, you got the best chance for a successful, fulfilling, meaningful life in your relationships and in the work that you do and the skills you develop and in the way that you invest your time and life.

It’s hard for employees to have compassion for the corporate beast for the monster of it that is. It’s also like they’re taking on church, they’re taking on the community, they’re taking on all these aspects. It’s really difficult and I think leaders finding ways to articulate that without it sounding like making excuses, and I think employees that are engaged in a way that they’re like, “I’m getting what I can here.”

Social media, that has given inaccurate perspective about so many things about work because people are watching people quit their jobs in real time or get reprimanded. Nobody’s had exposure to that before. I think speaking about our young, the idea that they’ve seen other people quit jobs and get new jobs or they’ve seen people quit jobs and go retrofit a bus or a van and live in it and you’re like, “Is that an option for life? Okay, I didn’t know that could be done.”

It’s a convoluted work environment on both sides. This philosophy that I have that I genuinely have a passion for is that if people just take ownership, then all these meandering routes of how and why and when and where they’re unknown, but you just take the next best step. When you own that, and you don’t blame others, then you really will find yourself in a place of fulfillment.

Work Engagement: When people take ownership, the endless questions of how, why, when, and where become less important. You take the next best step, stop blaming others, and find yourself moving forward.

Conclusion: Reclaiming Agency And Ending The Blame Game

If someone reading who wants to start acting more like an owner tomorrow, what’s the first thing they should change?

Do a bit of a self-analysis on where blame exists. Who am I blaming for what? Then take back my own agency and say, “I’m going to do something about that.” I’m going to take the responsibility even though if it’s not my responsibility, even if I don’t think I should. People can talk themselves out of it. The first step is saying, “Let me just do an assessment, a blame assessment. Am I blaming anyone or anything else for a condition that I’m currently in? If so, if I reconfigured my mind to go, ‘Okay, that’s all on me. It’s 100% my responsibility,’ how would I then approach it?” That’d be the first step.

I think that’s a good way to close and thank you for doing this show with me.

Thanks, JR. It’s been a great time. I appreciate you.

All right, practical takeaways from my discussion just now with Greg. First, ownership is not about your title or whether you hold equity in the company. It’s about how you show up. Anyone can bring an ownership mindset to their role by taking initiative and solving problems and investing energy into improving the environment around them.

Second thing is that leaders play a role in this. As we talked about, it is a lot harder to be a leader in an organization nowadays because your employees are expecting you to play a greater role in their lives than I think was the case when I started my career. You’ve got to foster this owner mentality while also looking out for the whole of your people and delivering results. It’s a hard mix to get right.

The same is true at a corporate level as well. Creating a culture, living a culture, honoring that culture, delivering results, taking care of the people it is a very difficult mix. If you want your team and your organizations to be engaged and energized, you have to get that equation right. Coming back to this idea of having an owner mindset, it also means looking at it in more of the whole of your career. It’s not just within the scope of your role.

If you are working now and you are under the age of about 55, you are going to have multiple more jobs and potentially more careers in your life. Being ready to think about the fact that you always have to be managing your career direction, you don’t always have to have things figured out, but you always have to have an assumption that you are taking ownership for how things are going to play out. Whether good or bad, and you’re going to have to make the best of those situations, and that’s what taking an owner mindset looks like in the scope of your career.

Finally, it’s just this idea of little actions compounding over time. We didn’t talk about that so much, but I think it’s an important thing for this conversation. Contributing a little bit more, taking a bit more responsibility for challenge, investing more in your work, taking steps outside of your job to invest in your own growth, all of those things compound on each other in a way that will benefit you in the long run.

I invite you to subscribe to Career Sessions on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, and if you found the discussion enlightening, join my membership community, which is called PathWise, and also subscribe to our newsletter, which is called Pathwisdom. Thanks, see you next time.

Important Links

• Greg Hawks
• Act Like an Owner: Five Unblocks for Creating Culture People Love and Results Leaders Need
• Career Sessions, Career Lessons on Apple Podcasts
• Career Sessions, Career Lessons on Spotify
• PathWise on LinkedIn
• PathWise on Facebook
• PathWise on YouTube
• PathWise on Instagram
• PathWise on TikTok

About Greg Hawks

Greg Hawks is a keynote speaker, author, and corporate culture specialist who challenges leaders and teams to Act Like an Owner. For more than 25 years, he has partnered with organizations across the country to reshape culture, deepen trust, and activate ownership mindsets.

Earlier in his career, Greg spent a decade as Executive Director of a nonprofit, leading teams through complex challenges and building environments where people contributed their best. That experience became the foundation for his work with companies of every size, from ESOPs and credit unions to Fortune 500 corporations and national associations.

In his book, Act Like an Owner: Five Unlocks for Creating Culture People Love and Results Leaders Need, Greg introduces vivid metaphors and frameworks such as Owners, Renters, Vandals, the Five Unlocks, and the 3D Plan for designing culture intentionally. Known for his energetic presence, distinctive language, and practical strategies, Greg equips executives and employees alike to re-engage, increase accountability, and spark growth.

Today, his work transforms workplaces into ecosystems where an ownership culture becomes the competitive advantage.