Written by Harriet Evans, Senior Client Service Manager at Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?.
Your culture as a business is shaped by the worst behaviour you as a leader are willing to tolerate. We recently explored this notion on a LinkedIn post about company culture. This highlighted our three top tips for creating the “right” culture and giving it the time and attention it needs from you as a leader. So here are my three tips for how you can start to pave the way for a better culture in your team. The first is accountability.
1). Accountability – Calling it out when something’s not right
When first reading Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? many years ago, one extract that profoundly struck me was from John Brockway, the team Boatman. He, and anyone connected to the men’s Olympic winning rowing 8, were actively told to feedback on anything they saw and heard, and this truly meant anything!
As far as Ben and the crew were concerned, by not saying what you thought or saw, you were subconsciously making a decision to help them lose! In sport, every second, every millisecond can make a difference, so the team wanted, NEEDED, feedback on absolutely everything. So, should this not be the same when striving for a high performing culture in business? Do people in your business feel comfortable enough to speak out if something doesn’t feel right?
In our ever-changing world, business competition is stronger than ever. Organisations now face growing concerns of the great attrition and quiet quitting from their workforce. A recent report from McKinsey shared a concerning statistic that 40% of employees are somewhat likely to quit their job within three to six months. If people are checked out and unengaged the likelihood of them contributing their ideas let alone giving their best performance is low. Against this backdrop, culture becomes an all the more important factor – to ensure you are hearing and harnessing your team’s best ideas. By not understanding what your employees are seeking, and responding accordingly, organisational leaders are arguably putting their businesses at risk.
As such, company culture should be viewed as fundamental to the success of an organisation. By creating a culture where every employee feels valued and safe enough to voice their concerns or suggestions, you help drive employee engagement and increase a workforce’s buy-in to the organisations overarching goal.
A great, but sad and extreme example of a workplace with a very toxic culture was Papa Johns in the US. John Schnatter, Former CEO, was found guilty of extreme toxic behaviours such as using racial slurs, spying on his workforce and sexual misconduct, just to name a few. This was a huge global empire with deep rooted issues which then fundamentally affected the entire business. Unfortunately, this is a prime example of how employees can feel unable or uncomfortable in their working environment to call out negative behaviour.
(If you do want to go down the rabbit hole, and explore the Papa Johns story: Forbes Business).
As Holly Tucker, creator and owner of Not on the High Street aptly said in a podcast in regard to recruitment:
Are you creating the right environment for your people to feedback to you and call out when needed?
The second step in the right direction for a better culture is to help your employees to develop a growth mindset.
2). Fostering a Growth Mindset:
Developing a growth mindset is often the prerequisite to people enablement and employee fulfilment within an organisation. A company’s culture is the catalyst for employee productivity and role longevity. Franklin Covey recently cited that employees working in companies who support and advocate for a growth mindset are 34% more likely to feel a strong commitment to that company.
A brilliant example of a growth mindset that comes to mind is athlete Giannis Antetokunmpo who calls out a journalist for repeatedly asking the questions “Do you view this season as a failure?”
I loved his response not only because he underlines the fundamental ideology that ‘There is no failure in sport’, but then goes on to reference the foundations of resilience, progression and ultimately the development of goals. Antetokunmpo holds his composure, delivers his response without making it deeply personal and makes it relevant to the journalist so he (we hope) goes away and reflects on what he actually asked. This is a clear example of a growth mindset (which is hugely commendable in the circumstances).
Two big things that we do at Will It? to create a growth mindset day to day are:
1) Use an evidence wall
When you reflect on yours/your team’s “success” in the last week, big and small, have you actually acknowledged these, let alone celebrated them? We do! On a weekly basis, we as a company come together to actually look for all of the “wins”, all of the steps we have made forward in pursuit of our goal.
2) Get curious about the recipe.
Which leads us into, how can you know where to improve, if you don’t get curious about what is currently going on. Are you reflecting on your own performance, your teams, are you actually asking how and why you achieved x,y and z? Are you feeding this back? Does your culture help or hinder people to get curious about their own recipe for success?
This leads us nicely onto how to deliver those messages of feedback and how you call out or speak up. Of course Antetokunmpo could have structured his answer differently, we can always improve, and there will be those instances (like Papa Johns ) where it is not so straight forward, but for us at Will It?, it comes down (ideally) to feeding back at the right time, the right setting and in the right way.
3). Normalising/ Utilising Feedback
Ultimately your delivery of feedback to someone is just as important as the information being fed back on. Feedback should always be focused with the intention of developing and improving someone’s performance. Yet if your delivery is perceived as harsh or overly critical, often the recipient can focus on the negative rather than the actions of how to improve. Therefore, we want to frame our information, in the best possible way so that it lands with the intention of making the boat go faster and ultimately making a difference etc.
In sport, athletes are constantly (or should be) seeking feedback. In business though, are we curious enough, or do we get nervous to receive and/or even avoid feedback. There are of course various models for feedback, but the main one we utilise at Will It? is the AID model:
This simple model is used consistently across our business to ensure we are giving each other GOOD feedback. When I say good, what we mean is, not just saying “you did a great job yesterday”; We mean stepping into the specifics, providing something constructive and detailed so you can learn from it or repeat it! As a result of this model becoming habit for all of us at Will It? I know if my colleagues give me any feedback, they will be clear: what they specifically saw/heard, it’s impact and then recommendations to go forward. Hearing “you did a great job yesterday; I saw you make time for and offer a junior colleague advice. I saw that by the end of your conversation that person felt more relaxed and confident. I would love you to continue to support other members of the team in this way!”. These extra few sentences can make the difference in how I actually take the feedback on board, feel valued by someone taking the time do so and ultimately how open I am to respond to it as a result.
The people that work for us, need to feel happy, valued and part of an environment/ culture that they can believe in and rally behind. This is the building block for developing relationships that allow for constructive and impactful conversations. It is well documented that if relationships are well developed and nurtured to be as strong as possible, job satisfaction often increases. The evidence is not theoretical, employee satisfaction is linked to profitability! The research actually tells us that teams who feel engaged at work correlate to 21% gains in profitability.
At Will It? all of our employees complete a quarterly engagement survey because our employees and culture, is at the heart of what we do. We want the feedback from everyone in our company to ensure we are on track for our own overarching Crazy Goal and everyone has the opportunity to share their views.
So if I can leave you with one thing, it would be to ask yourself, where can you set the tone for a better culture? After all, it was a combination of these things that lead Ben and the crew to their gold medal. How can you set the tone to help you reach your equivalent? What area can you (re)commit to in the week ahead?
- Creating the right environment for your people to feedback to you and call out when needed
- Enabling others to get curious about their own recipe for success
- Using the AID model to tell it as you see it more
