Tag Boost Corporate Culture

You may have seen memes of a lion or battle-hardened soldier with the words ‘The Problem With Being Strong Is That Nobody Bothers to Ask.’

I’ve asked

I’ve talked.

I’ve tried.

But it seemed that nobody listened.

It seemed that nobody wanted to hear.

I am a big man; I’ve lived a great life, and I come across as hard and strong.

I’ve led soldiers and emergency responders and been hugely successful.

Yet I have failed.

Failed in relationships, struggled in business and made moral mistakes that sit heavy on my heart.

I was a functioning drunk who drank Rye like it was a cure for alcoholism.

I am pretty sure I have been depressed, and I know I have struggled with my mental health.

I grew up in an environment and served in the Army when you were not sick unless a bone was sticking out of your body.  I understood that mental health issues were a sign of weakness. Motivational posters surrounded me saying: ‘Big boys don’t cry,’ ‘Pain is weakness leaving the body,’ and a visit to the Chaplain or a Counsellor was a black mark on your career.

Such initiatives like ‘#SickNotWeak’ and ‘#BellLetsTalk’ are excellent in destigmatizing mental health issues.

For a child of the ‘60s, it is remarkable that mental health problems are now considered normal and asking for help is the right thing to do.

But where ‘#BellLetsTalk’ misses the mark is that we need to have a complementary imitative called ‘#LetsListen.’

But for many bringing an emotional problem up is hard to do.

In many of my blog posts, I have spoken about my last couple of years at Red Cross. I was struggling in a shifting and changing workplace. I had made a bad hire and was trying to manage an asshole. Years of working in high tension environments were catching up with me. I was leading a giant disaster and working on my Master’s degree.

In short, a lot was going on.

One day I was rushing to a meeting in another city.

While driving, I witnessed a small car get T-boned by a pickup. The vehicle was flipped end for end several times. I stopped to help and saw the driver, a young mother, was dying, the passenger, a Grandmother, was dead.

As bad as the scene was, the worse was finding a toddler in a car seat, not moving and trapped in the back seat. Other good Samaritans and I fought to get into the back seat to help the baby. It seemed to take forever, but we got a door open, the car seat out, and to our giant relief, the baby started crying and was seemingly unharmed.

Police, Fire & EMA came in time and took over the scene, and I carried on as if I were completely normal.

But I wasn’t.

Something switched deep inside of me, and I began to struggle even more with work.

One day I told my boss what had happened, and that was bothering me. All I received for my vulnerability was an unblinking stare.

I never felt so exposed or let down.

That one incident changed my entire relationship with her. She was once a trusted friend and confidant, and now she was someone in authority with whom I had lost trust.

The outcome was preordained the moment that trust was lost.

Eventually, I left or maybe was pushed out of a job I loved and left people I cared for.

There were many times that I reached out when I struggled with emotions and mental health.

I made myself vulnerable by trying to “#BellLetsTalk,” but no one listened.

A relative who told me that everyone hates their job so quit complaining; A boss who betrayed my vulnerability; or a Pastor who didn’t ask that one more question.

And all that accomplished was a guarded fear of opening up again.

So this year, as part of “#BellLetsTalk” let us try harder to ‘#LetsListen.’

Credit to:

Patrick Lencioni & The Table Group for the “First Team” concept,

Jason Wong of https://www.attack-gecko.net/

and  Dalmau Consulting for the image

I loved my job.

I was part of a powerful and effective executive team to whom I was loyal. I had no problem identifying that they were the team I was personally responsible for and accountable for.

They were my ‘First Team.’

I had built my team into a great team. People took on some of the most complex projects you could imagine and not just succeeded but excelled. I felt great loyalty to everyone who directly and indirectly reported to me.

But there is no doubt that my division was my ‘Second Team.’

Read about what Punk taught me about this situation.

“First Team?”

A First Team – best articulated by Patrick Lencioni – is the idea that true leaders prioritize supporting their fellow leaders over their direct reports—that they are responsible to their peers more than they are to their individual or “Second” teams.

If you’re not entirely on board with that concept, I get it.

In my experience, a “First Team” mindset has been transformational in creating a high performing organization by improving the quality of leadership and management practiced.  

When leaders have built trust with each other, it becomes significantly easier to manage change, exhibit vulnerability, and solve problems together.

I was part of a team who looked and functioned as like example A in the drawing:

When I fell out of my “First Team.”

Things changed when I got a new boss close to me and considered myself a trusted confidant. Over time she went quiet, stopped sharing reasons for decisions and stopped responding. People were hired onto the leadership team I belonged to, whom I believed did not demonstrate the standards I expected of them. My performance began to slip, and my reactions to events were not always as professional as I either hoped or was expected of me.

In retrospect, all the signs pointed to the simple fact that I was nearing or had gone past my best before date as far as she was concerned. To be clear, I have never purported myself to be perfect in any regard. Still, in this case, I was dealing with a boss who was not providing me precise and proper performance management nor effective leadership.

As pictured in example B, I lost faith in my boss and much of the leadership team.

So much so that I focused on my team, and slowly but surely, I became more and more isolated from the organization’s objectives.

 Other Examples of a Broken “First Team”

Imagine a world where the top leaders in your organization are gathered to solve the company’s most pressing challenges. Instead of coming together as a team focused on solving that problem, they approach the exercise more concerned about their self-interest than solving the company’s needs, as pictured in example D above.

Or are you part of a leadership team so disconnected from the rest of the company that they have

no idea what is happening on the shop floor? Picture example C above as the worst of ‘Undercover Boss.’ Where leadership has no idea.

But probably just another day at work for many people, and it’s why I spend a lot of time building a First Team mindset with my clients.

Read more about unaligned leadership teams.

Tragic?

Here are some of the ways I’ve had success in creating a First Team mindset:

Be Explicit

Be explicit about the behaviours you expect from your leaders. Be clear with my managers about their responsibility to one another, including detail of the First Team expectation in the job description and interview for how they’ve practiced it.

Treat Them Like a Cohort

If you don’t treat your leadership team like a cohort, they won’t become one. Ensure you regularly bring together your leadership team, including everything from mailing lists and slack channels to team-building exercises and social events.

Information and trust are the currencies of leadership, and demonstrating an equal distribution through shared experiences is a powerful tool.

Help Them Help Each Other

Encourage interdependence and normalization of help-seeking amongst team members.

Please encourage them to talk to one another about their problems and refer them for help.

Role-play difficult conversations with a fellow manager role play it.

Help Them Help You

Invite your First Team to help you solve your problems.

This vulnerability may feel scary, but it has proven beneficial to leverage your leaders’ capabilities to lead to better outcomes for your organization. And it is a great development opportunity because it exposes them to the types of problems they will face at the next level of their career.                   

Make it Stick

To ensure that you and your leadership team is adhering to the First Team concept, I recommend reviewing the following with your team:

• • At every opportunity, point out the priority of Team #1 before making any critical decisions.

This will put leaders in the correct frame of mind.

• • Demand that team members prioritize the executive team over all others.

When the executive team is truly cohesive and prioritized appropriately, their ability to face complex challenges with further confidence bonds the team and models unity to the organization, this requires an absolute, unwavering commitment to the First Team.

• • Explain how the team’s direct reports will be impacted.

We all know that if there is any daylight between executive team members, it ultimately results in unwinnable battles that those lower in the organization are left to fight.

Like many of the concepts I consult on, First Team is as powerful as it is simple.

Learn more about how I work with executive teams

I have seen highly educated leaders with vast experience have an “aha” moment about the First Team concept resulting in an immediate impact on their team’s cohesion and ability to succeed.

Much of success in business relies on getting everyone on the same page.

And inevitably someone has to choose to lead the charge in getting clarity. 

In the Army, we reviewed ‘comms’ (communications) procedures during pre-mission briefings to ensure that everyone would be on the “same frequency.”

In this case, gaining clarity could mean the difference between life and death.

In team sports like football and baseball, we see players and coaches using all sorts of signals and methods to achieve communications clarity to have precise execution of the play.

Without clarity things fall apart as the play unfolds; the feedback loop is immediate and obvious—from both the players and the fans.

The Challenge

At work, it is not as obvious as the fans booing you when there is a loss of alignment and focus.

I see it every day, and I understand why it’s so easy to fall into this trap.

We’re all uniquely designed and are naturally inclined to communicate in unique ways.

The goal is to understand your natural behaviour and make positive adjustments so that everyone clearly understands your message.

Clarifying Clarity Clues

Here are also two important clues to clear up the murky fog of communication and gain greater clarity –

Don’t assume that everyone hears (and visualizes) your message.

We have a natural tendency to assume that something is clear to us; we assume that it would be clear to everyone else. 

Using the sports analogy, teams usually have set plays, and they rehearse them in practice for weeks before they execute them in the game.

Work situations may not have a playbook, so when the leader calls the play, team members create their individual mental diagrams/pictures of what it’s supposed to look like.

Read about different images of the future

And,

Some are distracted and never even hear the message. 

As a leader, we must regularly and publicly clarify our expectations.  

At the top of the organization, most of these expectations are at the 37,000-foot level. 

As we move down the organization, the clarity needs to get more granular as standards more specifically to the tasks.

This is hard work because it takes mental discipline, time, and energy to clarify what is expected of our employees and to supervise the level of detail is required.

Read about expectations

Clarify Where You Are

How are you doing on clarifying standards and expectations?

Reflect on it yourself and look for times when people were not on the same frequency with you.

What happened?

Whose responsibility was it?

Get feedback from a couple of your stronger players on how well you are doing on clarity.

I often work with people who are transitioning from follower to leader.

The question always arises is: What characteristic makes a good leader?

I tell them the answer is moral courage. 

I realized I was never as concerned about my boss’s technical expertise as I was about their moral courage, honesty, and ethics.

Coincidentally, Abacus Data shared the results of a poll examining Canadians opinions of the leadership, answering the question by saying:

“Leadership can be hard to define – but … people … know what they like when they see it. We gave respondents a forced-choice question about what was most important to them in supporting a … leader. By a considerable margin, “values” (42%) were identified as the top quality to look for, followed by judgment (29%). “Ideas” (15%) and “attitude” (13%) were well back in consideration.

What Matters Most in a Leader?

For me, values and judgment add up to Moral Courage. Historically, courage hasn’t been recognized as an essential attribute for business leaders.

This is changing.

Future leaders will need the ability to act courageously.

Without question, innovation is needed in “for’ and ‘not for’ profit businesses, but courage makes change possible. 

In a recent Harvard Business Review article, Rosabeth Moss Kantor wrote:” moral courage enables people to stand up for principle rather than stand on the sidelines.” 

What is Moral Courage in Leadership?

Courage in leadership is doing what’s right despite being afraid of risking negative repercussions.

Fear is the most common reason people give when they avoid being courageous. Think about how you feel when you watch a leader who demonstrates personal courage. Most likely, you will trust that leader more.

Courage comes from being very clear about essential values and working to achieve goals that are consistent with those values.

Ultimately, every leader has the choice to either lead with courage or lead without it.

Examples of Courageous Leadership Behaviours

1. Moral courage & humility when providing honest feedback in conversations and discussions or managing your supervisors or boards
2. Allowing alternative & opposing viewpoints to be shared with the rest of the team.
3. Speaking up rather than being compliant in silence.
4. Leading through change & not settling for “we have always done it this way.”
5. Taking ownership when you are in uncharted territory, and the safe path is to do nothing.

How are you, or your organization, doing at removing the barriers to morally courageous behaviour? Try this simple exercise here to find out. 

Developing Moral Courage

1. Be very clear about your vision and values.
2. Scripting in advance what to say.
3. Anticipate those who will disagree.
4. Be honest in admitting when you have made a mistake or taken a wrong path.
5. Be willing to entertain new ideas and change your assumptions.

Courage is a learned skill, and we all can be courageous. Being brave means stepping out of your comfort zone and taking risks.

As we invest in the future and emerging leaders, isn’t it better to learn values, judgment, and moral courage in a SYSTEMATIC and PURPOSEFUL way instead of allowing them to muddle through?

Do you think fear is driving your leadership actions? Here are 7 questions to prevent fear of leadership failure. 

If you’re interested in going more profound or moving your career to the next level, you’ll also want to look at my 1-on-1 coaching services.

If you enjoyed this article, be sure to check these out, too:

How One Word Can Damage Workplace Culture

9 Stupid Management Practices (and what to do instead)

The 6T’s To Know What To Delegate

This article was originally published on January 5, 2015, and has been updated.

They say “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But words do hurt—and all too often, what they hurt is workplace culture. 

I have come to realize how important words are not only in everyday life, but in our workplace interactions as well.

And I don’t just mean poetry and prose. Simple one or two-word phrases can stop a conversation dead in its tracks. This can lead to mistrust and a toxic work environment.

I wouldn’t call myself a word nerd. But I understand words are significant so I try my best to use them as precisely as I can. 

Before I get to examples of words and phrases that can damage workplace culture, let’s look at some common terms that are often used incorrectly or made up entirely.  

Words that are commonly used incorrectly.

• Adverse and averse
• Affect and effect
• Led and lead
• I.e. and e.g.

Made up words and phrases:

• “All intents and purposes,” not “all intensive purposes”
• Enunciate, not annunciate
• Espresso, not expresso
• Cabinet, not cabnit
• Nuclear, not nucular

If the words or behaviour used at work lead to a culture of harassment, here are some ways to stop it dead in its tracks. 

Words that lead to an unhealthy workplace culture.

Now that we know some of the words and phrases that are often misused or made up, let’s get more specific. 

If you’ve noticed a dip in morale or in overall performance at work, it might be time to ask yourself about the words you use or the words you hear your team use with one another.

Here are some other questions you can ask to check up on your team. 

The following are some words and phrases that can kill trust and lead to a toxic work environment: 

• “Yeah, but.” This tells the listener that you don’t care about what they’re saying.
• “You don’t understand.” This causes the listener to feel like they are being disdained.
• “With a bit more experience…” This dismisses youth and enthusiasm. 
• “I appreciate your comments.” This tells the listener thanks, but you think he is an idiot.
• “It’s not in the budget,” or “That’s not according to policy.” This means you’re blowing the person off because you haven’t even thought about what they’re proposing.
• “Five-year strategic plan.” Usually, this just means blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

While we’re on the topic, here are 2 phrases a boss must learn to demonstrate their trust in their team. 

Words cut to the core faster than a knife. They can cause wounds that take forever to heal.

As a leader, our people are watching and listening to everything we say, ergo (and I use that word correctly), leaders must be very precise with the words we choose. Words must be applied judiciously and thoughtfully—or we risk contributing to or creating a toxic work environment.

In World War II they said ‘loose lips sink ships.’ In today’s world, loose lips can sink workplace culture.

If you’re interested in going deeper on improving the culture at work or moving your career to the next level, you’ll also want to have a look at my 1-on-1 coaching services.

Just because every organization uses these management practices, does not make them effective:

• To achieve management excellence, you need to avoid faulty management practices
• Managing individual behavior is the answer but it requires an understanding of the basic behavior-based principles that drive good performance

Here are 13 of the most commonly used and misguided management practices and what to do instead.

#1 Employee Of the Month:

What’s wrong?

A program meant to motivate all employees to deliver superior performance can only have one monthly winner. The others are left with performances that go unrecognized — violating every known principle of effective positive reinforcement.

What to do instead!

Understand what you want to achieve as a result of this kind of program, and then establish an initiative based on criteria that recognizes all employees who deliver outstanding performance.

#2 Stretch goals

What’s wrong?

It is proven that people fail to reach stretch goals 90% of the time. The primary reason: stretch goals are typically set too high.

What to do instead!

Set many, mini-goals. To get the kind of improvement an organization needs, in both people and production, managers need to ensure that positive reinforcement is delivered for the many small achievements along the way to reaching the larger, desired goal.

#3 Performance appraisals

What’s wrong?

Any system that doesn’t recognize performance as it’s happening misses the opportunity to get the most and best from employees.

What to do instead!

Set up an environment in which each employee knows how well he or she has done at the end of every working day. Evaluate each performer against what he or she is expected to do, not in relation to others.

#4 Ranking

What’s wrong?

Your competition is outside your organization, not inside. Publicly displaying how employees rank based on objective measures breeds unhealthy competition and inhibits sharing and teamwork.

What to do instead!

Evaluate individuals and units in terms of what they need to accomplish, rather than comparing their performance to others’. When the conditions are right, people will not only achieve at high rates but also assist others in doing the same.

#5 “you did a good job, but…”

What’s wrong?

It has become commonplace to provide positive and constructive feedback. While it seems efficient to do both at once, the positive statement rarely has the intended effect and employees end up focusing only on the negative.

What to do instead!

Be clear to separate the good and the bad. Give the good first, and at a later time deliver the corrective feedback. That way the good will be valued, and the employee will be more responsive to the corrective feedback.

#6 the sandwich

What goes wrong?

The sandwich practice is a cousin of the “you did a good job, but…” And creates a “waiting for the other shoe to drop” environment where attempts at social reinforcement are received with suspicion.

What to do instead!

Be direct. If behavior needs correcting, pinpoint the behavior to be stopped: tell the person the consequences of continuing the Undesirable behavior. Then discuss the behavior you want to see in its place and positively reinforce all instances of the new behavior.

#7 overvaluing smart, talented people

What’s wrong!

Smart, talented people are not in short supply. Thinking that some employees are smarter than others is harmful to all.

What to do instead!

Most of what we call talent is nothing more than unrecognized practice. Given the right environment, most people can become “smart and talented.” Create a culture where managers are rewarded for the number of “smart, talented people” they produce — not hire.

 #8 promoting people no one likes

What’s wrong?

There is a perception in leadership that managers who are well- liked are not effective at producing results. There is a correlation between ineffective managers and other operational costs: high turnover, grievances, absenteeism, training, and recruitment.

What to do instead!

Look for managers and leaders who get results the right way: those who understand behavior from a scientific perspective and can design systems, policies, and procedures that bring out the best in people every day. These folks are always well-liked.

#9 all forms of reorganizing

What’s wrong?

Financial considerations almost always trump human ones in any form of reorganization. None will be successful without the energetic, enthusiastic behavior of all employees. Yet plans for creating such behavior are usually a mere afterthought.

What to do instead!

Make decisions quickly. Incorporate the best practices of both organizations into the work of the new organization. Integrate policies, management practices, and mangers. Make sure that all managers know how to build positive reinforcement into all of the work of the new organization on the first day so that employees will see that it is and can trust that all will be okay.