Have you thought about this: What if your toxic culture started from a good place ???

Is it ever as simple as labelling something good or bad?

Let's be honest…even Darth Vader seemed like a nice bloke before he went to the dark side??….

?And while we're on it, was Luke Skywalker really that good?

?(I found him a bit annoying and self-serving, to be honest).

Star Wars aside, these examples show how, despite what children's TV might teach us about the world being divided into goodies and baddies,?it's really not true….

Because people, like businesses, are a mix of experiences, motivations and behaviours.

And some of these work well in certain contexts and less so in others.

Let's explore this concept of no clear 'good' and 'bad' and how it?can help with our culture change programmes….

1. It takes the sting out of needing to re-align your leadership behaviours with your business goals

?We believe it's helpful to look back and find where the leadership behaviours we currently see in our business were, at one time, functional.

Why?…

In my experience with the vast majority of senior leadership teams I've worked with over the years, their 'rubbish' leadership?isn't really rubbish.

It's just?misaligned with the current needs and goals of the business.

As we dig, we find these behaviours have a functional origin that was fit for purpose at some point.

(For example, high control might have been necessary to manage a market or financial crisis, or avoiding difficult conversations might have fostered a cosy family feel that retained employees when the talent market was right).

By helping people identify when a behaviour worked,?we can help them accept their previous role in allowing that behaviour to flourish. This creates a foundation for safer and more open conversations about moving forward.

Similarly, the origin story is used extensively in personal coaching to understand the destructive habits we carry into adulthood, as it helps us explore our experiences and understand that most behaviours are not inherently bad.

We can easily forget that our executives are humans on their own journeys with change, facing the same fears, defences, and fatigue as the rest of us.

Sometimes we need to stop and consider how to bring them along with us.

Our advice??

A pause to connect and help leaders reconsider the change needed on a personal level before pushing forward can do wonders.

2. It removes the 'blame game' on your culture change journey

So often, we get brought into businesses at the point where culture change activation is 'failing'.

Everyone is entrenched, focusing defensively on what everyone else needs to do, blaming others while aggressively agreeing that things need to change - but insisting those changes need to happen everywhere but with themselves.

Often, this situation arises because the first step in activating culture change is actually to identify and vocalise gaps between the ideal and current culture, which helps uncover pain points.?

Look, I get it.

?As HR professionals, we've watched everyone blame everyone else for the issues for years.

?However, if we ramp up our reporting on how bad things are, we inadvertently increase feelings of blame, shame, and fear: shifting our colleagues into a state of cognitive dissonance (where their self-perception doesn't align with how they like to see themselves).

?Consequently, their brains do a self-protective swerve - focusing away from that uncomfortable misalignment and towards what others are or aren't doing…. causing everything to get stuck.

?So to get them to understand their role in change, we must get them to?accept their role in the current situation playing out in the business.

?If this sounds familiar and is a topic you are grappling with - join us on Tuesday 22nd October for our new Masterclass - How the fog do I… get my culture change programme back on track?

You'll find all the details and sign up link here .

We'll send the replay out to everyone who signs up so even if you can't make it you can watch the recording at a time that suits ??.

Have a great day,

Paula