Culture: The Elusive Lever

Whether we want it to be this way or not, leadership is directly linked to culture. Culture is influenced by leadership, and it is the leader(s) that actively take part in changing it.

Culture can drive behavior, change behavior, and even enable behavior. Whether we are reviewing the seminal work on culture (I will not bore you with that) or evaluating a modern-day company to assess culture, there are several notions most leadership experts, and researchers, can agree upon. My aim is to identify basic assumptions about culture, noted below. As a follow-up to this article, I will address several "culture styles." (If you do not know where you are, how will you know where you want to go?)

A culture does not live alone. It is created by shared behaviors and, my personal favorite, shared values. The culture is simply an amalgamation of norms and expectations. Dare I say: culture defines the unwritten rules. (Yet, I challenge leaders to write down the values that push culture forward.)

A culture lives on. Think of clients you have worked with, or customers to whom you have sold. Did they have a distinct culture? It is likely that culture has been in the works for some time. In fact, culture can attract people who are like-minded (see Benjamin Schneider’s model). It is the in-and-out group structuring of culture. The social pattern is present, attracts like-minded people, and the tracks becomes more engrained with each loop. Those who do not fit in tend to depart on their own free will, and the carousel goes ‘round.

A culture is a part of being human. Let us not forget our ancestors – they are our reason for being here, for surviving (yes, we can thank our ancestors for these wicked fight or flight responses – they kept us alive, albeit they are no longer needed in our lion-free cities!). Humans are meant to be with others – thus culture continuity makes all the more sense as discussed above. Just as homophily (birds of a feather flock together) is alive and well, behaviors have followed suit. [It is a bit more complex than I am making it out to be – see S. Schwartz and E.O. Wilson’s research for more detail.] Further, humans not only respond to culture, they are able to sense it. I know this much is for sure: I have been told by business professionals what their culture embodies, and have felt the opposite. But I have also been an active contributor to organizations where what they said was reality. It is in those moments I smile a smile of contentment.

Culture styles – they are up next week.

/Initially published via LinkedIn Articles/

Fear: A Silent Instigator

Of all complex situations in the workplace, fear is not often a term discussed or even considered when it comes to addressing and managing disagreements or tense situations.

I recently commenced reading a book I remind myself to open each year: Wired for Joy. The author, Laurel Mellin, helps readers understand more about how the brain functions. In brief (you should purchase the book!), there are joy circuits and stress circuits. Stress circuits are all around us – at home, in the office, on the road. Joy circuits, however, are harder to come by. And, like anything, practice makes perfect. When stress circuits are used regularly, they are more easily triggered.

OK, so what does this have to do with fear?

Picture yourself at work. You have a colleague who just wrote you a nastygram, insinuating your knowledge is inferior to their own. First, take virtual communication into consideration. This person may simply have a poor tone in email (I encourage you to pick up the phone *once you are calm* if you sense miscommunication or passive aggressive behavior). But beyond the tone or the insinuation, are your feelings. Your blood pressure rose, and your brain went straight to the stressed state.

What I described is as typical as getting water when we are thirsty. It’s not that we want to feel poor, but our brains tell us something is wrong. While I won’t try to explain the technicalities of neurotransmitters – Laurel can do that – I did consider a tactic that can help reground you and help you realize what is actually bothersome. What I realized is a lot of stress, and anger, stems from fear.

Next time you feel angry, give this method a shot:

• Ask yourself who you are angry toward. List the person or people.

• Then, ask yourself the reason. Record the reason.

• Now, consider what it effects. Self-esteem? Security? Ambitions? Personal relations?

• Finally, what are the underlying fears?

Let’s take the above example. Pretend Mark sent you the email. Mark is the person you are angry toward. The reason you are angry is that he is acting as he knows more than you do. <Enter reflective mode here.> The email made you feel less intelligent, gave you a swirl of insecurity about your job, and made you question if you are good enough. Further, you are now angry at Mark. How dare he? ... But what are you afraid of? Perhaps you are fearful you may lose your job, or you fear the project you need to work on with Mark will be a catastrophe.

Consider your feelings, and this process, the next time your blood boils. It may have less to do with the person (albeit we all have these tedious experiences!) and more to do with your fears. Once you recognize those fears, you are empowered to respond with insight – maybe even vulnerability – and not hostility. This helps ease tension and supports cohesion rather than opposition.

/Article originally published on LinkedIn./

Hacks to Increasing Team Effectiveness

Effective teams lead to greater productivity, better use of resources, sophisticated problem solving, and an increase in innovative ideas or creativity. Then, why is it, we struggle to craft these invaluable cohorts?

As you prepare for the New Year, consider the following to help you reset the stage for managing your team.  

Clarity in Goals.
I know, I keep coming back to this (but it’s essential!). Removing ambiguity and providing clarity is very powerful in management. To that point, team goals need to be just as clear. Why? First off, team members can tell whether performance objectives have been attained. Second, without clear team goals, several obstacles are likely to get in the way. These include (a) team members setting their own goals that may be in opposition to what the team needs to accomplish (b) personal agendas may get in the way of identified targets, (c) power issues can and will contribute to personality conflict and dilute time allocation.

Vague tasks leave team members questioning the details and unsure about the overall necessity of what they’re aiming to achieve. A compelling and shared purpose not only motivates team members, but it also requires full engagement of their talents.   

Competency.
It seems logical, but team members need to be made up of the right types of people. Technical aptitude cannot be replaced – each person needs to possess the right level of competency to achieve team goals. Further, members also need interpersonal and teamwork skills. A common mistake (and this goes back to clarity): an assumption is made that people have the technical and/or interpersonal skills to be effective in their assigned roles. Team leads need to not only set expectations about technical and interpersonal capability but must identify the normalcy and helpfulness in continued education. If a team member is underperforming in one of the areas above, he or she needs further direction. Make sure they understand why they need it and come up with a plan to help them get it.

Collaborative Climate.
A collaborative climate may seem like a no-brainer. If you want a capable team – you need to have collaboration. What allows a collaborative environment?

1. A space that allows for healthy but respectful debate

2. Active listening skills

3. Empathy

4. Honesty

Each team member has their uniqueness; they bring with them different perspectives, opinions, and expertise. It’s about channeling differences to ensure discussion. Team members must take ownership of wanting a collaborative environment. If collaboration is failing, it’s a two-prong failure. 1) The team needs to coordinate their individual contributions and look to items 1-4 to achieve improvement. 2) Effective team leaders can facilitate a collaborate climate by managing their own need to control, ensuring a safe space for communication, and guiding the team into this problem-solving framework by also integrating items 1-4 into group dynamics and expectations. [This framework is correlated to the need for clear norms of conduct: how are people expected to behave?]

Support and Recognition.
As discussed, a clear goal is needed to ensure accomplishment. But once accomplishment is reached, what then? New goals can be crafted and implemented, but too, recognition of success needs to take place. Take note: if the team is truly functioning as a team – team performance and accomplishment should be recognized and rewarded, not individual performance; this can cause a divide among team members.

Additionally, a widespread mistake is to assign challenging feats, but not provide adequate support to accomplish assignments. Researchers Hyatt and Ruddy found that having systems in place to support teams e.g., clear direction, data, resources, rewards, and training, enables teams to be more effective and achieve goals.

Principled Leadership.
It is up to the team leader to implement programming that supports the collective. If you’re a team leader and you are realizing the number of goals set for your team may be overwhelming, look to see what can be removed, clarified, and reintroduced to the team. Further, if you are concerned about competency, look to your leadership to ensure resources will be provided to help your cohort succeed. Ultimately, it’s up to you to create an environment that is collaborative. If you’re struggling on how to implement changes, approach the people you report to, or are generally unsure about some challenges, let’s schedule a time to speak.   

As we enter the holidays, I am going to take a several-week break. I look forward to sharing leadership and management recommendations as well as proven tactics for improvement when I return in 2019!

Bringing Ethics into Your Leadership Strategy

In recent years ethics in business have been studied more closely. With what seems to be increasing opportunity to behave unethically in business, costing credibility of the company, its individuals, and innocent bystanders, what are the checks and balances to ensure moral behavior? 

The dynamic at play is of unique consequence; laws have been implemented to insist upon certain transparencies and practices, e.g., penalizing the act of bribery or inflation of revenues. Yet, according to the National Business Ethics survey, employees – or members of the organization – on whom society relies for whistleblowing, are consistently silenced for fear of employer’s retaliation. With this knowledge, researchers seek to understand what influences individuals to behave ethically.

In sorting through the data, I think the most helpful insights are as follows: individuals rely on their judgment about an ethical issue but place more importance on social expectations. Meaning, when social consensus is high (agreement that something is unethical) individuals more often than not follow suit – e.g., charitable behavior is “good.” This shared behavior can supersede the self-view, acting as a motivator to behave ethically. (If interested in the full study by Albert, Reynolds, and Turan, 2015, I will gladly make it available to you.)

The reason this matters: societies – and micro-societies (your office) can drive and influence behavior. Knowing this, I wanted to look for how. How can we make sure we are leveraging ethics as a culture-driver?

It’s two-fold. Companies have an opportunity to incorporate their values into decision-making. Further, the company values should align with ethical expectations. In fact, researchers emphasize the importance of trust and trustworthiness as a guiding principle. After additional research by Hoover and Pepper (2015), it was found the practice of sharing ethics statements, publicly, increased approval ratings both externally and internally.

Sure, anyone can conjure up an ethics statement, but it circles back around to the essentiality of using frameworks every day. The example I often return to is the importance of a vision statement. This isn’t merely a statement. It needs to be the leading force and the guiding light behind every employees’ behavior. From an ethical perspective, leaders have an opportunity to integrate a complementary ethics statement. (Just in case there is any uncertainty about how a person should behave!)

The goal is to enable each person to take responsibility for their decisions, irrespective of the existence of a formal organizational hierarchy. This ownership mentality – guiding employees to do the right thing – helps decrease the fear of retaliation for the expectations are ubiquitous. This, in turn, creates commonality among team members and social expectation which, as the research tells us, influences others through social consensus.