How You Can Protect Culture

Over at the Snowfly blog I write a lot about organizational culture, mostly to managers, leaders, owners, etc.

A recent experience made me wake up this morning thinking about everyone else's role in building, nurturing, and protecting culture. Yes, organizational leadership should do a lot of things, like firing bad leaders . I think about that kind of stuff all the time.

But this morning I woke up thinking about the role individuals can play in helping their culture remain something they want to be a part of. While it's not your culture to craft and strategize, you can certainly help reinforce the good things your leaders are doing, or trying to do. Participate in things, like the employee recognition program they bought, and the employee engagement surveys. Go to events and smile. Be nice, be pleasant, be a "team player."

All that is good.

And, I'll share perhaps the one thing that is most important to build, preserve, and protect your organizational culture that you have a huge influence on:

Speak nicely about others.

Or maybe it is:

Don't talk trash about others.

They are two sides to the same coin, really.

I'm sure you have worked in an office where someone talks trash about someone else. Perhaps you've had the distinct displeasure of working with someone who only talks trash about everyone. If that's the case I promise they talked trash about you when you weren't around.

I was talking about this to my kids yesterday. Talking trash can be a habit. You get in this rut and can't get out. You talk trash because it takes time away from facing your own issues, and doesn't leave a lot of room for others to talk about you. You talk trash because you get attention. You talk trash because of whatever perceived injustices you see.

All the while, you destroy any bit of good culture in your organization. You introduce a great deal of distrust and insecurity. People wonder what you are saying about them. People wonder if anyone or any effort is good enough. Others join in, hoping that doing so will make you an ally, which means you won't talk bad about them (you will).

If there's a spectrum for this, on the one end you have all-things-Pollyanna. If you haven't seen the old Pollyanna movie, I recommend it. You've heard the descriptor "Pollyanna," go watch why we use it in today's language. The young girl, Pollyanna, was so optimistic and benefit-of-the-doubt she seemed oblivious to reality. She was too optimistic and happy. She annoyed some people.

On the other end of the spectrum you have... hm.... who is super negative all the time? I don't know, maybe Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh. Poor donkey. Just about everything out of his mouth was down. Nothing could go right. Even things that went right were poo-pooed by Eeyore.

Now, imagine what Pollyanna would say about your coworkers, and what Eeyore would say about them. Where do YOU fall on this spectrum? Hopefully at least towards Pollyanna!

I'm not saying you can't be real, and identify and call out bad things. I am suggestion that you figure out how to best talk about your colleagues and issues you are dealing with.

Talk to the right people about your issues. Usually, the right people are not your colleagues who have no authority to address changes that should be made. Talking to colleagues is more about getting personal validation than it is addressing a problem. And it opens a big can of worms.

Usually, you want to figure out a boss or some authority to talk to. And usually, this should be done in private. This is a sign of maturity at work. This can help preserve dignity and have problems handled by the right people in the right way. You can protect your own name and the people you need to talk about.

And, you'll help preserve and protect your organizational culture. This means you can help make your workplace a place you actually want to be, with people you want to be around.

This might be one of the most important characteristics you are known for: trust, dignity, respect.