The 4 Horsemen of the Culturepocalypse
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This video is about the four horsemen of the culturepocalypse, or the things that do the most amount of damage and destruction to cultures.
In no particular order…
1. Badmouthing, gossip, spreading rumors, making other people look bad, trashing people, former employees, etc.
When you have the opportunity to open your mouth and say something to make somebody else look bad, choose not to. Whether the person is a co-worker, a leader, an employee, someone in a different department, a former employee. It does not matter.
People being intentional about this, speaking well of others, and putting others in a positive light with your words is so important.
“Redirect them back to that person or say, ‘I’m not here for that.’”
It's so detrimental to culture when trash talk is rampant inside organizations. The action to take around this is to have a zero tolerance policy, to have conversations about that, to make sure that we hold each other accountable and ourselves accountable, to not participate in gossip and to reinforce the language where you say, "In this organization, if somebody comes to you to badmouth somebody else, you need to redirect them back to that person or say, 'I'm not here for that.' We don't do that here."
2. Ignoring the importance of feedback.
I know I talk about feedback a lot.
It is so imperative to cultures that leaders ask for feedback, and that we give and receive feedback well.
“How can you expect to get better if you’re not receiving feedback from the people that you work with? It’s a no brainer.”
It is a skill, so train people in it. Make sure that people inside your organization know how to give and receive feedback well. Make sure that as an organization, you're asking for feedback from employees.
This is the simplest, cheapest, easiest way to improve, innovate, build trust, build rapport and healthy relationships on teams.
People stay in their jobs longer if they feel like their company or their leader cares about them, so you’ll end up retaining employees far longer.
“We’re investing in each other’s success that we come from a place of wanting to improve collectively and adopt that mindset, adopt those behaviors around feedback.”
Feedback is also the simplest, easiest way to improve as a team, as an organization, and as individuals. How can you expect to get better if you're not receiving feedback from the people that you work with? It's a no brainer. You must have a culture of feedback inside your organization. (I have tons of videos about this.)
To have it be part of the ethos and your culture, that feedback is sought after, it's productive, it's welcome, it's not criticism, it's coaching. We're investing in each other's success that we come from a place of wanting to improve collectively and adopt that mindset, adopt those behaviors around feedback.
3. Accountability.
You must have a high level of consistent accountability in the organization, which means a lot of different things:
Some of those things are that everybody is held to the same standard of integrity that leaders, whether they are the CEO or a frontline employee, everybody is held to the same standard of behavior, or performance. They are consistent and committed to a high bar.
Another aspect of accountability that is critical is you have to be willing to get rid of people from your organization if they are toxic, causing drama and chaos. By keeping the worst employees that you have, you will lose your best ones.
Have conversations, be clear and direct with people by giving them feedback. Say, "If this behavior doesn't change, your job is at stake," and then remove people from your organization and be committed to doing that unless they are upholding the same high standard that you set for everybody.
I don't care how long they've been there. I don't care how important they are. You have to do this. Accountability is so important for healthy teams and healthy culture.
4. Great leaders.
You have to be committed to only putting exceptional leaders into leadership positions inside your organization.
People that have high emotional intelligence, people that you know can interact, communicate with and impact a diverse set of people. You cannot put people into leadership positions that are not great leaders.
You cannot compromise on this point.
Be very clear about what are the traits and qualities. What are the things that we hire and put people into leadership positions for here? Hire, interview, and index on those skills and those traits and be committed to that.
Putting someone in a leadership position because they "deserve it" when they're not a great leader hurts that person's career, it hurts the whole team underneath them, it hurts your entire organization and ultimately what will happen is that that person will continue to move up in the organization and you have somebody who is a weak link of leadership getting higher and higher into the organization.
Leaders are important because they are every one of your employees direct connection with the experience of their job. So retention, their performance, all of those things are tied into the quality of their direct leader, for the most part. Middle level management and leaders inside your organization are the make or break of having better retention, having better performing employees, having stronger healthier teams. Those people are so important. Leaders all the way up and down the organization have to be strong.
That's it. Those are the four things I think can break culture or make culture fantastic across the board. Go be awesome.
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This article was created by Galen Emanuele for the #culturedrop. Free leadership and team culture content in less than 5 minutes a week. Check out the rest of this month's content and subscribe to the Culture Drop at https://bit.ly/culturedrop
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