How to create a culture of joy and accountability in a post COVID world? [Part 2/2]

The first part of this series can be read here.

My boys are growing up. At times I have had to pull them aside and tell them that what they said to some friend might have offended them. And at times I am their shoulder to cry on when they come and tell me how another friend was being hurtful. At times like these, I try to paint them a picture of what their friend was actually trying to say. I can’t hope to always know the minds of preteen boys, but I try. 

And that, when I teach the kids to be mindful of another’s feelings is just half the lesson. The other part is teaching them to say what they are truly feeling without jeopardising the relationship. it’s tough for adults, but kids are far more resilient. 

In all my years as a crucial skills practitioner, the one thing that absolutely makes a work culture stand out is honest communication. I don’t mean soft communication and/ or sandwich feedback. I mean honest- where you say things are they are and believe that whoever you are saying it to will have the emotional maturity to take it in their stride. 

In this article, I will be looking at finding vital behaviours- that when tweaked will lead to greater organisational success along the parameters that you’ve decided to measure. When we try to create a culture of joy and accountability, there are different ways in which we define the two (definitions have been dealt with in the previous article) and how we can measure the two. 

Vital behaviours invariably tell us what the problems are and then help us discuss them. This is probably the most tricky part of influencing change. So I try to follow a method here. 

1. Create a process flow of what an employee’s journey looks like along the parameters that you are tracking. If to measure a part of joy, you are tracking usage of flex timing, measure along those lines. From the point that the employee decides to avail it to the point that the employee discloses their usage, what is the flow like. What is the productivity of such employees? How many of them are more engaged at work than others?
2. Look up positive deviants. There will be some employees who will be acing the joy and accountability game. What do they do differently? Their journey along those parameters should give you an idea about what the ideal journey should look like. Note their specific behaviours. 
3. Collect data and track. Unlike popular belief, the positive deviants aren’t outliers. They are regular employees who have figured out a way for what works for them. Collecting data and tracking will help test your hypotheses around which vital behaviour works.

The end game is to become literal about change. To influence change, one really has to change what they are doing and how they are doing it. The entire idea is to minimise the time between somebody not following through with a change mandate, and discussing why that happened.

For the purpose of this article, we will look at joy in two parts-  

1. For employees having better control over their timing, we will be measuring the usage of flex timing policies. It may look easy, but it is not. In my career, I have seen so many people not be upfront of their usage of flex timing. In many parts it still has a social stigma attached to it. I had one of my interns working for me from India. Virtual connect was all that we had. A couple of months later, he told me that his friends make fun of him because he works remotely. I could have let that go on childish innocence but my friend here said the same thing. That even when she’s working from home and being super focused, she is constantly stressed about answering calls from colleagues. They might start feeling that I am not working if I don't answer their calls right then and there, even if I am in the midst of some other work. 

There are two behaviours that I picked up:

• Don’t let a derisive comment slide- if another member resents that somebody is working from home and makes their displeasure known, don’t ignore it. Enquire. Get to the bottom. Understand if it is a relationship issue or a perception issue or a culture issue. Point it out and talk about it. Don’t let it fester.  
• As a leader, I communicate deadlines and timelines to my team, but I don’t get in the way of how they are achieved. However if even a single deadline is missed, I bring it up and talk to the larger team about it. Point it out and talk about it. Don’t let it fester.  

2. For employees to figure out what the organisation is upto and how they contribute to the larger picture, we will measure how many have clicked on the monthly newsletter that has details about most of the ongoing projects and read through it. Thankfully technology makes it easy to track, even the pages that people have spent the maximum time on. But the trick is to get them to open the newsletter. 

Most people defer opening the newsletter because they don’t find it engaging enough. We used a small marketing gimmick- our newsletter email titles pique curiosity. They are titled “Wanna know what Angela has been up to?” 

The whole story pull of it, and the gossipy element to it gets it word of mouth publicity. Every newsletter we come up with something snarky. When somebody says this is all for show, they are asked to talk about why they think that way and what would make them feel that their work mattered. 

Accountability in terms of the what, completing projects on time and meeting deadlines is easier to measure and manage. Tracking the how though, measuring the vital behaviours is more challenging.

1. If you find a team member slipping up, offer help. If they refuse, let your concerns be known to the manager. You can only be successfully accountable if others are accountable too. 
2. Once somebody comes clean that they are slipping or need more time or need help, kick into place a process that quickly allots them help. This doesn’t mean that you need to have one person constantly benched. It simply means that the person best suited to help rises up to the occasion. 

We often assume that being nice about people’s feelings makes them feel safe. But to actually be safe, one needs to be upfront about what they are feeling. When we encourage people to practice new behaviours, a safe environment plays a key role. They can’t be penalised for learning to adapt. It has to be a judgement free zone and it has to be given due time. 

Figuring out the vital behaviours is crucial to influencing large scale “culture driven” behaviour. You want to draw forth behaviour that you think will benefit your organisation and your teams. I say influence and not persuade, because really you don’t want to stealthily exert your will over others. Culture building is an ‘infinite game’ – we start seeing results based on what we focus on and measure.  

The next part of this series will talk about finding ways and means to enable and encourage people to enact these vital behaviours.

More from the author in this series.

About the author:

My passion is to create opportunities and catalyse relationships that help us thrive! I believe that personal, organisational and societal change is an interactive development process and through my interventions I seek to build awareness and action across all. I have had the privilege to have trained leaders and management teams in 40 plus countries globally and on all continents.

Over the last two decades, I have engaged with leadership development, L&D and talent management across the entire spectrum from diagnosis to design to implementation. Currently I run my own leadership consulting practice which is at the intersection of Strategy, Leadership and Change.

Drop me a message at [email protected] or to schedule a call with me please use : calendly.com/shivangi/15-mins-call

Here are 2 initiatives I have founded : www.thrivewithmentoring.com, a non-profit that catalyses women to women mentoring (currently present in 5 countries) and www.xponential.cc (through which I bring award winning leadership trainings such as Crucial Conversations).