Culture is NOT someone else’s job.
We are all an active participant in our cultures and subcultures just by the virtue of being there.
Company culture is about the shared norms, values, attitudes, and practices that form the collective identity of your company. At its best, it’s the invisible glue that binds your team and sets the stage for the narratives your employees play out daily, contributing to your overall organizational story.
Or the way I like to describe culture is ‘it is the vibe of the organisation’.
While we may have some choice as to how to describe it, there is no choice as to our part in it. We are all an active participant in our cultures and subcultures just by the virtue of being there. Whether we work remotely, in-situ, or in some other hybrid version we are part of our workplace culture. If we are communicating, then we are participating.
If it is our workplace then it is our workplace culture, and we all have shared responsibility for how it is shaped.
One way to quicky erode our workplace’s good culture is to take away trust, respect, and psychological safety. Culture is so much more than just our values on a poster, or a code of conduct that states that we care. It is also not something that is only practiced/expected by certain employees or only at certain times. Trust, respect, and psychological safety are built on consistency and fairness and people will notice if these are lacking or compromised.
We need to examine our workplace cultures with clear eyes, we need to not just look at what we or our organisations are doing, but look for gaps and inconsistencies.
We need to ask ourselves:
Does our workplace tolerate disrespectful behaviours? – are there any existing weak spots in our culture? Do we excuse anyone or any behaviours as ‘it’s just the way it is/they are’?
Am I caught in spirals of contagious negativity; facilitating and feeding conversations of dissatisfaction and blame? Letting off steam and looking for others to validate our feelings is one thing (if short lived and part of a process to moving forward), acts of disrespect are quite another.
Respect means valuing the qualities, skills and positive attributes of the people we work with. It means appreciating what everyone brings to the table. So, let’s ask questions of ourselves and our teams:
Was everyone as respectful as we would have liked them to be this week? Was I, were you?
Did I communicate respectfully? Was I an active listener? With everyone?
Did I appreciate and value my colleagues? Do they know that?
Did I contribute to a psychologically safe environment? Did I help others to learn and grow safely and with support?
Perhaps this quote says it best:
The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept
- David Morrison
Is everyone taking responsibility for your workplace culture? Please reach out, Respect at Work training sessions will help.