Does your organization’s culture matter? And how can you as a leader foster the building and maintaining of a culture that meets the mission of your organization?
In your organization, culture is the means by which people work together to achieve the mission of your business. If you want to produce a product or provide a service that takes more than one person to complete, you need to be intentional about the culture in which the people are collaborating to accomplish that joint task.
“Culture is a term that refers to a large and diverse set of mostly INTANGIBLEaspects of social life.
According to sociologists, culture consists of the:
- values
- beliefs
- systems of language
- communication
- practices
that people share in common and that can be used to define them as a collective.” (Thoughtco.com)
Researchers often use the term psychological safety when describing the optimal culture. Additionally, emotional intelligence is referenced and discussed in professional development initiatives that focus on the soft skills. Soft skills is the term often given for the “large and diverse set of mostly intangible aspects of social life” skills as quoted above.Learning to understand ourselves, understand others, and be intentional in our behaviors (aka soft skills) takes a lifetime, and those skills are anything but easy to learn and consistently apply to the complexity of our life circumstances. With that said, it might be complex, yet it is doable.
Furthermore, with the growing use of technology to meet the needs of our clients it’s even more important to create an optimal collaborative culture. The temptation with advanced tech is to think that the need to talk with people will be minimized. And yet, as technology advances, it is even more important to be intentional in creating positive human interactions. The fast-paced nature of tech advances makes it even more critical to create a culture that rewards respectful and trustworthy interactions with colleagues.
So how can you move beyond theory to implementation in building a culture that enables your employees to bring their entire selves to work, ensuring your staff, clients, stakeholders, and customers can reap the benefits? Much like any skill development, whether it is learning a new computer program or advancing interpersonal skills, to create a desired culture, you need specific step-by-step instructions. This article’s intent is to show you what to do!
The How-To of Creating Your Desired, Positive Culture
Step One: Assess the Situation
Observation, interviews, and formal assessments are the first step.
Typical indictors of the health of an organization are engagement surveys. These surveys provide information as to the level of commitment and communication of your employees. In addition to the information you may already have, I encourage to take advantage of A Deeper Way’s complimentary Culture Survey. It’s always good to take several looks at an issue from multiple different vantage points. Click here to take the survey: http://www.janeschuette.com/resources/. I will contact you with your results. Remember it’s free of charge!
Along with formal assessments, I encourage you to be curious. Start watching, listening, and asking questions about people interactions. Get out of your office often and walk around the grounds, attend meetings that you typically do not attend, and stop and chat for impromptu conversations. Is there something obvious you have been missing?
Working to create the desired culture in your organization means looking at both the emotional as well as physical safety of the culture. This past year has brought many changes emotionally and physically due to Covid. We have had to modify our working conditions, and with all the change our emotions are sure to have been roused. Ask and be curious about the emotional states of your people.
Do you have people on your team who are angry or scared? They may be flooded with emotions from prior circumstances, even without taking Covid into consideration. Have they been psychologically injured at work? Are they protecting themselves from some unspoken villain? Maybe it’s a villain from the past that is still impacting the present such as memories of an abusive leader. It could be a teammate with a cynical outlook whose bad behavior is being tolerated.
It is quite possible that many employees are stuck emotionally, and due to the circumstances or other past events, some so-called bad behaviors have surfaced and have been allowed to continue.
As you are assessing your culture realize that any change can move people into a protection versus connection mindset. There are always two mindsets possible within us – the force to protect ourselves and the force to connect with others. Dr. Daniel Siegal calls the need to protect ourselves the guard dog brain. When the guard dog is triggered,there is no connecting either to ourselves or to others. Think about the last time you were triggered, scared, or under massive stress. How rational was your thinking?
Take time to gather your observations and culture surveys, and then make sure you are making your workplace safe.
Step Two: Create Safety
Connection is only possible when there is safety.
To create safety, boundaries must be established and enforced.Boundaries provide structure and order, helping to ensure that the environment is safe for open, fair, and honest communication.
Dr. Curt LeVang, a psychologist and expert in the field of Basic Needs says the following about the importance of boundaries, “In organizations, leaders act with intention and respect. They create and promote an organizational culture of positiveness, establish just policies and procedures, encourage open dialogue, and allow for differences of opinion.”
Consistency is an essential hallmark of a psychologically safe culture. All people are treated fairly with controls put in place on extreme energies of expression. In other words, it is safe to talk about mistakes and conflict with the “how” potential controversies are being brought up being just as important as “what” is being said.
Are there behaviors that need to be stopped before you can foster the desired positive, supportive culture? Ask yourself if one person’s behavior is sending others into protection mode. If so, it is most likely a behavior that needs to be addressed. As you work to address the behavior, make sure that you are in connection mode. Use “I” statements in the conversation, name the behavior that is hurtful and how it hurts others, and reinforce that the person belongs and is significant to you and the organization.
Step Three: Have A Clear Destination
A clear destination means a clearly stated mission statement. State your mission simply, not using flowery language just to sound good on the corporate website. Can a six-year-old understand what you are working to do as a group? If not, work to find that simple mission statement. Have the destination be both crystal clear and exciting.
You will want to define the challenges that are sabotaging your Desired, PositiveCulture and spotlighting why creating that culture is so vital. What’s getting in the way? What are you hanging onto that you might need to let go of to reach your destination?
Define Your Desired Culture.
- What specific behaviors are observed in the desired culture?
- What behaviors support success and lead to the organization’s stated desired outcomes?
- Are there different desired behaviors for various members of the team?
- What are the desired attitudes when working in the desired, positive culture?
Step Four: Determine a comprehensive Desired, Positive Culture “Professional Development Program Curriculum”
One professional workshop or one team building event does NOT produce a positive culture. For lasting change to occur, a comprehensive program is necessary. If you have a goal to improve your health and lose weight, you need to change your habits. Going to one informative meeting on how to eat healthy will not result in a loss of weight immediately after the meeting. It most often takes time and support in changing habits to see results.
Essential Desired, Positive Culture “Professional Development Program Curriculum” Components:
- Individual Leadership Coaching
- Group Desired Culture Exploration and Analysis
- Personality Assessments to explore:
- Self-awareness – who am I?
- Other-awareness – who are you?
- Intentionality – how do I do the next right thing?
- The Logic of Emotions
- Understanding and Managing Stress: People Pressure and Personality
- Meeting My Basic Needs
- Encouraging Workplace Groundedness with Psychological Values
- Conflict Styles for Conflict Management
Step Five: Gratitude
REQUIRE—yes, that’s strong— Daily 5-Minute Leadership Accountability Ledger. You and your team are encouraged–no, strongly urged–to start each day writing down three things that made leading easier the day before. The research is clear that writing down what we are grateful for “increases promotions, bonuses and pay, improves sales by 35%, reduces coding errors by 37%, even improves healthiness by reducing sick days from six to two every year.” (Jennifer Moss, Unlocking Happiness at Work: How a Data-driven Happiness Strategy Fuels Purpose, Passion and Performance.)
Praise and Reinforce Progress I call it catch them doing it right! To learn a new and complicated skill people need to see the right behavior modeled. Appropriate behavior needs to be identified and praised.
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert and the author of several self-help books, dubbed a praising culture “low in culture gravity”. Think about how gravity pulls you down. According to Adams, “Every culture has its own feelings about success. I call that cultural gravity. If your culture celebrates success, you have low cultural gravity, and you can rise according to your talents and efforts.” (Adams, Scott. Loserthink (p. 190). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.) Help your people rise in their talents and efforts by calling them out and praising them!
Ways to reinforce building the habits that form your desired culture:
- Daily Leadership Accountability Ledger (Contact Jane@janeschuette.com)
- Desired Culture Development Champions
- Weekly Check-ins
- Leadership Practice Labs
- Partner Accountability
- Small Group Discussions
- Book/Article/Podcast Club
- Daily Calendar Reminders
- Create a Culture Mantra
- Biweekly focus on key behaviors with support articles, videos, discussions
In conclusion, Dr. Casey Lancow, chief psychology officer at A Deeper Way, explains that effective leaders do two things: “challenge people and support people.” As a leader, it’s time to make your culture the desired, positive,supportive culture that challenges people and supports people. It’s a culture that allows people to be the very best that they can be to meet and exceed your organization’s mission–in essence, to make the world a better place.
Now that’s something we all want to see!