Workplace culture. It’s one of those business buzzwords that gets tossed around casually. Everyone kind of knows what it means but no one knows where it comes from or how to get the one they want. There’s a definitive link between successful leaders and strong workplace cultures. YOU decide what the culture will be, and your actions and soft skills can bring it to life.
Workplace culture is:
One of the leading authorities on organizational culture, Edgar Schein, defines it as a series of assumptions people make about the group and environment. These assumptions are based on experiences and observations, espoused beliefs and values, and basic underlying beliefs that are shared among group members. Most elements of a workplace culture are difficult to articulate or pinpoint. They exist and are taken for granted in the day-to-day work, but they are not called out and affixed to a deliberate definition.
One of the simplest definitions is that culture is “the way we do things around here.”
Most speak of culture in sweeping terms like “positive culture” or “sales culture” or “top-down culture.” Digging deeper to define the desired culture will help you understand, articulate, shape, and sustain the culture you want in your workplace. To do this, there are five aspects of the culture to consider. Ask yourself these questions to get a handle on your existing culture. You can use these same questions to envision the ideal culture and ways to create it.
Questions like these will help you get clarity about your workplace culture today. They will also equip you to make changes and shape the culture you would like to see in your workplace.
Workplace culture comes from the people in the workplace. It can be formed on purpose be the managers and executive team. Or, if managers and executives do not deliberately attend to the culture, it will be formed by other members of the team.
In many organizations, the culture is a carryover from the founder. When these companies were still small, the founder was “larger than life” and had a strong influence on culture. The founder hired people who shared his or her values and vision. They were all unified and mobilized by what they were creating. Their enthusiasm and dedication was contagious as they hired others and built out the team. The founder, in a small organization, likely played an active role and was visible. Others emulated what they saw in the founder.
As companies grow, the culture evolves. Strong, successful leaders pay attention to shaping the culture. They are mindful about codifying values and setting mission and vision. As the company expands, they preserve the culture by setting standards and, more importantly, by setting an example.
Over time, in larger organizations, sub-cultures emerge. The sales team, for example, might have a sub-culture focused on achievement and customer satisfaction with a high degree of both internal and external interaction. By contrast, the engineering or IT team might have a sub-culture focused on product development and continual improvement with little internal or external interaction.
Left unchecked, sub-cultures can supplant the overarching company culture. If there are more differences than similarities, two departments can begin to look like two entirely different companies. When this happens, it can be confusing to employees and the source of inter-departmental conflict.
A management team that is intentional leverages shared values, norms, mission, vision, practices, history and more to solidify cultural commonalities. They don’t allow culture fragmentation or siloed sub-cultures.
Cultures and sub-cultures can co-exist so long as the sub-culture is subservient to the company culture. Alignment is essential. It happens when senior executives are strong enough and intentional enough to set and sustain a culture that cascades into sub-cultures. Alignment won’t happen if senior managers abdicate this responsibility and allow pop-up sub-cultures to form independently just to fill that void.
When there is a lack of clarity about company culture, managers must step in to – at a minimum – shape the culture for their own team. Cultures that are a haphazard byproduct of team members’ own experiences usually result in confusion and low levels of employee engagement. That’s because every employee brings in experiences from somewhere else and, in the absence of a clear culture, will continue doing what they did elsewhere. Culture clash happens when there isn’t a unified, clear culture.
Ideally, senior executives take responsibility and define the company culture. They don’t delegate this to the HR team and appoint them as “Culture Keepers” or “Stewards of the Culture.” Instead, they see this as an important part of their own job AND an important part of everyone else’s job, too.
Being responsible for the culture includes:
Managers are also responsible for workplace culture. Each manager has daily opportunities to affirm the culture through their actions and decisions. As sub-cultures form, managers must maintain alignment with the company culture. When people are hired, onboarding should include a thorough representation of “how we do things around here.” Offering contextualized feedback and recognition can undergird the culture. If a manager says “We appreciate the way you handled that customer complaint because it showed how committed we are to quality…” it affirms a culture and company that is quality-driven. It means more than simply saying “Nice job handling that customer complaint.”
Individual employees are also responsible, in another way, for workplace culture. Finding a culture that fits your personal values and belief system will make you happier at work. Railing against a culture that isn’t a good match is a losing battle unless that culture is so weak or fragmented that you, alone, can influence it. What’s more likely to happen is that you will find yourself constantly at odds with the norms, practices, assumptions, beliefs, and day-to-day activities of others.
No matter what your job role, you also have a responsibility once you’ve landed in a company where the culture makes sense to you and fits your own values. In this situation, your responsibility is to continually uphold the culture. That doesn’t mean you should automatically fight for the status quo. It means that change and innovations you introduce should be in service of that culture or considerate of how changes to that culture will impact others over the long term. It means you respect the culture and understand its power to unify and influence your colleagues and customers.
Successful leaders (at any level) shape and support workplace culture. They don’t do this through rules and authority. They do it through conscious, consistent attention to the culture. They do it by aligning their actions with their professed company values and beliefs about the company’s mission and vision. And they do it by demonstrating soft skills that draw others into the culture instead of relying on hard skills alone.
As we’ve discussed throughout The Ultimate Guide to Soft Skills for Managers, a manager who demonstrates soft skills boosts employee engagement levels. That includes creating emotional connections that lead to employees exerting additional discretional effort to their work. Emotional connections come from feeling a sense of belonging and a sense of satisfaction at work. Workplace culture makes that possible.
In an atmosphere of tension or an environment that’s confusing or constantly changing, no one can feel attached or settled. It’s difficult to feel satisfied if you don’t know what to expect or if you don’t know, day to day, how you fit in. An established culture yields comfort and predictability.
The bare minimum soft skills required for both successful leaders and strong workplace cultures include:
If you’re not sure what the culture of your workplace is, you might also benefit from bringing in a neutral outsider. Getting a culture overview from someone with no personal stake can be very enlightening and helpful. If your organization has never gone through the exercise of crafting a mission statement, developing a vision that inspires others, and choosing primary corporate values, this is the first step to take. From there, you’ll want to shape a culture with mission, vision and values embedded in all you do. People First Productivity Solutions provides consulting and coaching to carry you through this process, one that will transform your organization and set you up for long-term success.