Culture Does Not Necessarily Mean Everyone in the Organization is ALWAYS Happy - Lessons from 'Bruce Almighty' and Simon Sinek.

Where to start? Bruce right? For the few of us who have somehow not watched this goofy classic, the film features the mercurial Morgan Freeman as God and Jim Carey as the human (named Bruce) who's handed God-like powers to make him learn how being God is not quite straight-forward. For this piece, we won't focus on the several times Bruce misused his transcendent powers for his selfish interests. That's for a different setting.

Here, we instead focus on the millions and millions of prayers Bruce receives upon becoming 'God.' As lazy as he is, Bruce goes ahead and accepts all the prayer requests of the 4 million prayers every hour. Unbeknownst to him, the prayers he grants means that all these people have to be offered limitless rewards by the limited economic and social capacities on earth. For instance, everyone that bought lottery tickets somehow won large sums, yet the lottery allocations are limited. Inevitably, protests erupt as people fail to be handed the sums they 'rightfully' won.

Bruce has granted impossible wishes to millions of people - just to ease his work and be agreeable. How often - as leaders - do we promise myriads of extrinsic rewards to our employees that we cannot realistically attain? That organizational operational structures do not have the budgetary or otherwise allocation for?

How often do we always want everyone to be happy within our teams? How often do we feel like employee fa?ade of happiness is the measure of our organizational health? How many cases have you seen as a leader where that cleaning lady is nervously laughing your direction to seem happy? As Bruce came to learn, God doesn't need everyone on earth walking around like laughing machines.

Not all members of your team want to see the superficial smile and delicate treatment that seems to scream "when is this interaction going to end?" (trust me, they feel the disconnect). They need to see the human you. The you that knows they exist. The you that sees their change in emotions. The you that understands and appreciates such change and does not directly or indirectly punish such changes as a deviation from your organization attempts towards agreeability.

Simon Sinek (see his TedTalk below) is one of the greatest modern-day thinkers in organizational psychology and culture. Simon's initial lectures - specifically - focused on how your employees and your organization needs humanization. He notes that humans are naturally socialized to seek safety, from external threats. As early as the ice age, humans had to seek community and shelter from the outside threats, threats of wild animals. Your organization is this community to your employees.

Simon notes the centrality of tribal leadership and psychological safety for the employees. Psychological safety basically means your employee does not get judged on that one mistake they committed last year. They are actually made to feel that the next mistake does not signal the end of their job - their job security is never hinged on isolated mistakes. Employees need to feel that they are a community - a family whose parents (the tribal leader) will be there for them when they are throwing a few tantrums. The leaders do not simply promote the laughing-gas, happy image culture in the organization. Instead, the leader promotes meaningful connections between themselves and the team members.

And for heavens sake, STOP going around superficially reassuring the employees of their job security. Human brains function weirdly. The more you verbally tell them their job is safe, the more they rationalize the possibility that losing their job is an option on the table. A persistent verbal reassurance to absence of consequence rationalizes the consequence itself. Instead, make the members feel comfortable, appreciate their role, understand the link between their personal vision and the organizational purpose.

Based on Simon Sinek's lecturers, here are some of the key insights to take away as team or organizational leaders:

1. Culture is not instilled by simply continually reminding the members to recite and cram the organizational values.
2. Culture is not merely about encouraging "say-what's-in-your-chest-no-matter-what" communication.
3. Culture is setting an environment where the communication promotes relationships, rather than deepening toxicity.
4. Culture is not merely about holding those mandatory team building sessions.
5. Culture is promoting psychological safety during the team building sessions - so much that you recognize the real and the fake happiness of even the most introverted individuals.
6. Culture is knowing your employees enough to recognize when they are struggling with something they'd rather not talk about. And not pushing them to talk about them, instead making them you are there to listen whenever they're ready
7. Culture is making sure the employees do not sense any hint of elitism and class separation within the organization. How honest is your smile towards that lowly clerical lady, sir?
8. Culture is not about recognizing employees based on their high ranking on the 'loudness' scale - this only displays how deeply disconnected you are to the overall organization or team.
9. Culture is about knowing well enough to empathetically tame the loud characters to ensure the quieter ones are equally accommodated in that Group Chat.
10. Culture is not merely holding mandatory mental health sessions for staff.
11. Culture is knowing employee mental health situations to assist each one of them during their unique mental health struggles.
12. Above all, protect the employees intrinsically, whoever acts in a way that's contrary to social norms must be made comfortable enough to promote their willingness to seek help.

Seek to always understand the reason behind the reason for specific behavior. Understand the employees' 'icebergs.'