How (not) to destroy your company culture
What company culture even is can vary greatly depending on who you ask , but we all agree on something : ultimately, company culture isn't only what you say you do and perhaps do, it is also, in many ways, who you are. In this sense, employees (and their overlings) are expected to present a set of attributes and behaviours at work, and, to some extent, embody them privately as well. Despite frequent discussions on privacy, some companies actively expect people to embody whatever passes for company culture in their mind 24/7, and they will even try to push to achieve that at times. (A kind reminder - in many countries, it is actually legally questionable to snoop into private lives of your team. Yes, all the time. It's called stalking, not leading.) Whatever you personally think company culture is, it is fair to say that "living it" for real doesn't necessarily come easily; hierarchies of power, which allow a part of the team, an overling or underling, to exercise different rules where they are concerned but expect them to apply to the rest of the team, for instance, are frequent wreckers of company culture, but also things like psychological safety and human interaction at work . And yet, they are often considered a perk of sorts, and those who think so will be very unwilling to stop using them.
Above all, company culture is, like any other interaction, a give and get ; not only in the sense of leading by example, but in providing the abstracts such as trust in flesh. If you took time (or intend to) to look at the links I provided, you will read some very good discussions of practice vs talk; the discussions of bad behaviours, as well as the meaning of recognising humanity of ourselves and others (such as the article on empowering female workforce); as well as what abstract notions really mean on day-to-day basis. For me, this is where the chief problem lies - we all like using abstracts to signify our identity within the scope of socio-cultural behaviours : we like to present ourselves and the work we embody as a socially recognised "good", so we use words such as "trust". But we rarely if ever consider what it means on day-to-day basis.
The first question to ask is this : who is this trust for?
Are we saying that we trust each other? Or are we saying that we seek to be professionally trustworthy? What is professional trustworthiness...and how do other cultural practices impact it? (Tip - you may come from a culture where giving gifts is a strict no-no and would quickly be considered an act of corruption. What happens when you work with a cross-cultural partner to whom gift giving is an act of respect?) Does trust mean that we can trust team members? Does that apply to believing them when they tell us they are experiencing a problem? Or how does it apply to how we feel about them doing their job - being observant is one thing, but micromanaging is another. How does it feature when they come to us with misgivings, or a story of abuse by someone else within the team? Do we consider trust to be something we want so badly we'll look away if we don't see it, and force people into silence and scared compliance, or is it something that extends to hearing complaints as well?
Day-to-day life is messy. None of us truly know what will happen to us during the course of a day; we may or may not, to be utterly dramatic, make it out alive. We may lose someone dear to us. We may experience an unexpected success that will turn our life around in unexpected ways. Does an abstract notion such as trust live up to day-to-day experiences, and what can we do to make sure it does?
Well, the first thing to consider is that we should at least try. Being considered fully human, not merely a fleshy automaton for the use of a boss or team leader in the worst senses of the phrase, certainly does have benefits, and they are financial benefits as much as human benefits. (See especially the Forbes link at the start of the article.) Lacking this can have long shadows that go way past just the employee/employer situation. Consider the word "trust" from the perspective of a 5-year-old. Trust, at that age, is embodied through the parental figures in their lives; it is having a worry or fear and believing, often implicitly, that the grownups can solve it. And oftentimes, we can. We possess the knowledge, mobility and social position (for most parts; this may not be true for minorities) that creates a real difference in how a problem plays out. We are observed providing physical and emotional shelter for the child themselves; we provide it for others, such as pets and ailing grandparents. Trust may be shattered if we renege on our part of the bargain (actually bothering to provide reason for it ie solve a solvable problem) or in those hopefully rare situations when we really cannot do anything...such as when someone is very ill, dies or moves away (although, in 21st century, this last should be merely a detail for most people). How we behave in trust testing situations will shape how our child, the future employee, will perceive trust in general and trust between people at work as well as in intimate context such as personal relationships. Say a grandparent is neglected because our boss won't let us stop working when we are officially done, but wants "just one more thing"; or a sick pet dies because they needed urgent care, which we could not provide, because the human element lacks from our company culture. What have we just experienced?
On our own level, we were forced to commit neglect of another living being, which, in the second case, has ended in a death that might have been avoidable. Not only were we not accorded the trust that says, I believe you really need to do things differently right now, the trust that we would be willing and able to continue doing our job as worthy employees if we could just adapt to the crisis we are experiencing was never even in the picture...whether or not it has ever been mentioned as part of the company culture. On our child's level, we not only just showcased that trust can be broken for no reason but whim, we also showcased that trust isn't down to interpersonal relations at all, because it can be impacted by someone else.
There are a million such stories in the world. They happen to real people, every day. We profess disgust if they make it into papers as astounding tragedies or neglect. And yet, we often enable versions of them to happen on our watch. What would our clients, our work partners, think of our application of the word trust if they knew what it looked like in practice?
Team leaders and bosses who forget the human side often rely on fear and necessity to keep people at their workplace; they know that jobs are often hard to get, that quitting may look bad elsewhere, so employees won't necessarily leave. (They aren't always right, thankfully. Many employees do leave.) In other words, they rely on the same strategies we see in abusive partners : building on fear and on being cut off from others and often from finances makes the spouse or partner stick around long after they should have packed up and left. Nothing about this behaviour embodies trust...in any shape and form.
Let's switch focus to cultural matters now for a moment. If human interactions involve being recognised as human, being recognised as a human within our unique cultural context in multicultural environment is yet another way to build appreciative culture rather than a dismissive one. And funnily, it often still comes down to trust. I sometimes get speechless when I encounter people who treat holidays that are different from their own as suspicious absence. As if they are thinking, well, they had a few days off at Christmas (which they do not celebrate, but the company does not offer an alternative), why do they need a few days off at Diwali?
As if, in fact, people were making up an entire socio-cultural system, complete with religious holidays, to slip away from work?
It sounds crazy when you put it into words. And often, people start thinking when you do. But in practice, they may still struggle to put into action any different reaction to what they are used to having.
Company culture, like so many other things, starts and ends with one very simple recognition : our humanity. It is the thread that binds us. It is the immutable. Destroying, creating or saving company culture, even understanding what company culture is, is down to whether or not this humanity is recognised, embraced and respected. These are great words. In practice, they require adaptability; understanding; communication; empathy; and the recognition of what each day's new challenge means they look like today. It is up to us whether we will recognise their value in full. But "up to us" means a choice...including recognition that we chose not to do what's better and what's right in favour of something else.