If you’re in a leadership position in your organization, part of your job is noticing the way the culture in the office impacts employee satisfaction, productivity, and profitability margins.
Consider these three common cultural problems – that have a huge impact on your bottom line – but often go unchecked:
1. Encouraging Internal Competition
Does this come as a surprise? Since competition does lead to temporary spikes in performance, and since competition is encouraged in so many aspects of our larger Western culture, you might have come to believe it brings out the best in your team.
“A little healthy competition never hurt anyone, right?” Wrong.
It feels natural to us, almost intuitive even, to encourage competition for better results. But the data is so abundantly clear on this issue – it doesn’t work in the long haul! – that researchers scratch their heads as to why people won’t listen. Competition is particularly crippling for corporate environments, especially when it’s used to pit employees against each other.
At a glance, the problem with competition:
- It undermines the collaborative energy that is the basis of team cohesion
- And it precludes opportunities for organic and additive creative processes – where innovations often magically sprout
- It amps up employees’ stress past the healthy and productive level; their brains get hijacked by a chronic fight/flight stress response
2. Letting Judgments Go Un-Checked
When co-workers get in the habit of “diagnosing” each other – even if they do so silently – it makes ongoing collaboration very challenging. Little judgments, which are often held as “factual” statements, may go unexamined for years incubating a culture of criticism among teams. Judgments are both a symptom of, and a contributor to, feedback dysfunctions in an organization.
Do you ever hear folks at work use labels like these:
- Arrogant
- Controlling
- Demanding
- Entitled
- Lazy
- Reactive
- Selfish
These types of labels, or evaluations, promote finger-pointing because they all connote wrongness at the level of personality, rather than a single (or even a series of) disappointing choices.
Instead, try to focus on naming the specific behaviors that are either effective or ineffective. When you assume good-will at the level of personality, and focus on specifics separate from judgments, it transforms something inflammatory like, “You were rude during the meeting” to something much more easy to hear such as, “When I was talking during the meeting you were looking at your screen…”
Assumptions of goodwill, in the short term, support more efficient conversations about concrete issues. In the long term, they cultivate generative, collaborative work relationships because as teams learn to shift out of the tendency to judge or diagnose each other, blame dissipates and trust spontaneously deepens.
3. Strict Work-life/Personal-life Boundaries
Certain organizations require more boundaries and confidentiality than others. But when employees feel that they’re known and valued as a person and not just as another cog, research indicates they work harder, show more loyalty to the brand, and are more likely to innovate.
Here’s a snapshot of why strict boundaries can be bad for business:
- Employees who compartmentalize work too much are likely to shut down new, creative ideas that pop up into their minds during non-business hours without realizing it. They’re constantly turning parts of themselves off depending on whether they’re in “work” or “non-work” mode.
- Groups who don’t have space to cultivate some level of a personal connection struggle to coalesce. It’s hard for these teams to turn into mini work-families – and that impacts work satisfaction, motivation, and employee retention.
- When employees need help with an issue at work or at home, but don’t trust that their coworkers and managers care about them on a basic human level, they’re likely to “fake” perform and put on a show that all is well, rather than get the support they need.
The question each employer might consider is: How can we invite everyone here to be more fully themselves while at work? I like the way Kim Scott puts it in Radical Candor. To paraphrase, work/life balance is not truly a question of “balance” because it’s not a zero/sum model. Self-care, focus, healthy personal relationships – all are good for personal and professional success. The two spheres don’t compete with each other, they support each other.
