Influencing Your Company Culture

by Krista dela Rosa

Post-pandemic, leaders are struggling to adapt to the seismic changes wrought not just by the pandemic, but also by the mass (or soon to be mass) exodus of baby boomers from the workforce and the influx of Gen Z employees who seem to have very different attitudes and expectations towards work than their parents or grandparents.?

Throw in the complications of late-stage capitalism, deeply polarized political opinions, climate change, economic unrest, global conflicts, influencer culture, and the sudden prevalence of Artificial Intelligence and it’s a wonder anyone is able to figure out how to lead well - or, let’s be honest, be led well.?

It can feel impossible to cultivate a workplace culture of collaboration and empathy in the midst of all of the above, but here’s a good place to start:

1) Think Long Term

Changing culture is more like a marathon than a sprint. All change takes time. Culture changes take much longer. (Unless you can sync everyone’s TikTok For You Pages, in which case you might all find yourselves thinking the same fairly quickly! Yay algorithms!)

I’ll offer a real-life example here. My business partner, Heather Plett , attended the same church as me. It’s where we met, in fact. She served as an elder at this church for about three years and worked hard to influence the culture towards empathy, inclusivity, and better ways of listening to each other (using circle practices for leadership conversations, for example). Some of those efforts were met with resistance and push-back, and after some time, she realized she was no longer able to serve or attend our church.?

Meanwhile, I stayed on and eventually took on a variety of different leadership roles. I began re-introducing some of the meeting practices she had attempted and began to be successful. Not only that, but I was also able to help facilitate conversations about important issues with the congregation that she had been stymied by. This was not, in fact, a failure of leadership on her part. Heather was the seed-planter, and at that time, those seeds were not at all ready to begin growing. When I came along later, those seeds had time to germinate and the soil had begun to soften enough that I could help coax the new growth out of the ground.?

This took years to happen, and neither of us really recognized the through-line? until years after the fact. Both our roles were necessary for the process of change, but we participated in different parts of it at different times.?

We don’t always get to see the results of the changes we are facilitating, but that doesn’t mean our work is fruitless. Have patience. Trust that you are doing your part, even if the soil you’re working with doesn’t seem particularly receptive. And don’t be afraid to move on when you sense your part of the story is finished. If it is good work, it is very likely it will be picked up and carried on by someone else who sees what was started. And if not, then let it go. It may be that the soil will never be receptive and it’s okay to accept that and move on.

2) Work at Becoming A Good Example

A. First, start with you. Literally. Learn how to Hold Space for yourself (the first two modules of our How to Hold Space Foundation Program can give you tools for this). Your life cannot begin and end with work. Work can give you meaning and purpose and make use of all your many skills and abilities, but it is only part of what makes you you. Capitalism tells us that our worth is determined by how much we contribute to a system built on competition and scarcity. This is not true. You have worth simply by existing. And so does everyone else. Treat everyone with dignity - including yourself.? If you notice that your opinion of people gets better or worsens depending on their perceived ‘value’ as a ‘resource’, check yourself. A person may or may not be a good fit for your team, but that is not a measure of their worth as a human being.

B. Second, develop good boundaries around your work time and the rest-of-your-life time. If you struggle with this, ask a trusted friend or mentor to help you figure out where to start.

C. Third, build a good community outside of work. Have multiple communities of support that meet your emotional needs. Do not rely on your employees, your bosses, or your family to meet all your emotional needs. Be intentional about building up peer friendships, mentorships (have a mentor and also be a mentor!), get a therapist if you need one, and join a group that shares a common interest (religious, athletic, or otherwise). No one does life alone, whether they feel alone or not. Become aware of who is already around you, and do what you can to cultivate those relationships. Start small. One close friend counts as community!

D. Get off the Drama Triangle! The very best thing you can do for those you lead is to not get sucked into the Victim-Rescuer-Persecutor triangle. Not only is it exhausting for you, it will unfortunately be modelled by those you lead. Instead, learn about The Empowerment Dynamic and begin to get curious about how you can start to shift some of your own tendencies towards becoming a Creator, Coach, or Challenger.

3) Is it a People Problem or a Process Problem?

This is the one question my husband (who has managed many teams over the years) always asks at any new workplace and it requires two things:

1) Review the person’s job description and ensure they have a good understanding of what their role is, the tasks they are required to do, and whether they have the knowledge and resources to be able to do those things well. If you discover that they are unclear about their role, or under-resourced to do it well, then you have the opportunity to help remove those obstacles.?

If, however, you discover that they are clear about their role and have the resources to get their job done, then it’s possible that this person isn’t a great fit for the role. However, before you conclude that, be sure to do the next step first.

2) Listen to the whole of the person’s story in order to get a fuller picture not just of their work life, but their overall life. Are there things going on with them personally that may have an impact on their ability to do their job well? This isn’t about asking probing or inappropriate questions in order to penalize or hold things against someone (that’s a very scarcity minded, capitalistic thing to do, friend). This is simply listening to understand and to build relationships with those you are leading. Leaders underestimate how powerful it is to listen deeply to those they lead. Most people, at their core, simply want to be seen and heard. Just like when we are kids, having someone’s undivided attention, even for a time, is a deeply validating experience.

You do not need to become a therapist for those you lead (remember the boundaries thing from above), but if there is one thing AI cannot yet do, it’s look at a person eye to eye and really connect with them, human to human. Don’t underestimate the power of this simple practice. Need help learning to listen deeply?

Our Holding Space Master Practitioner, Lucy Karnani , specializes in helping folks learn this skill. You can hire her for coaching for this specific practice!

4) Don’t be Afraid of a Little Strategic Subversion and Over-Explaining

Though I’m not a huge fan of Tony Robbins (for many and varied reasons), I do think his quote: “Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change,” holds true. Despite the fact that we are constantly changing (take ageing, for example), we resist it. It feels uncomfortable, unstable, messy, and often unsafe. But it is, unfortunately, inevitable.

We grow, we age, our interests change, our families change, our employment situations change, our current state of physical ability can change, and our health changes. We don’t always have control over many of these changes, which is why, I think, we resist change so much. People want to feel in control and our sympathetic nervous system (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) can be activated whenever we feel that control disappearing.

This is where strategic subversion and over explaining come in. Don’t change everything all at once, make every change an experiment to see if it works (allowing for change if it doesn’t), and make sure you always give the ‘why’ of what you’re doing - multiple times if it’s needed. It may feel silly or even slightly patronizing, but most folks are terrible at retaining information and need to hear about a thing seven to twelve times to actually hold onto it. And truly, the ‘why’ of a change is sometimes all folks need in order to become more agreeable in participating in said change.

For example, if your intention is to foster more collaboration and empathy, think about your specific team and the methods that might work best for them. Perhaps it’s changing up your meeting space to take away the big table that separates you all and sit in a circle in the room instead. Perhaps it’s leaving the table, but inviting everyone to ‘check in’ with how they’re doing before the meeting starts. Perhaps you have a weekly ‘check-in’, in person or online, where all you do is ask how everyone is doing. Perhaps it’s introducing a talking piece in the form of a playful item like a stress ball, stuffed animal or bean bag and telling folks that they may only speak when in possession of that item. Perhaps you ask someone to co-lead the meeting with you. Perhaps it’s assigning people ‘work buddies’ that are committed to helping with tasks or holding each other accountable (make sure you have one for yourself, too!). Be creative and don’t hesitate to invite suggestions from your team.

5) Create Personalized Conflict Transformation Processes

It’s likely your company will have some kind of conflict-resolution process in place, but I’d like to suggest something that takes a bit of work at the outset, but can be a game-changer down the road.

One of the most important things Heather and I did when we became business partners was to talk about how we wanted to handle conflict when it arose. (We used the Blueprint of We as a guide.) But we didn’t just talk about how we would handle the conflict, we talked about how we each tended to react when conflict arose - the things that set us off, the behaviours that usually arose in us, and what we generally needed in order to calm our nervous systems so that we could have a productive conversation. I tend to get very quiet when conflict arises, and hyper-focused on what to do with the problem at hand. I feel especially disrupted when I am angry and my ability to be rational starts to decrease, especially if I am angry on behalf of myself. What I usually need to help calm my nervous system is a trusted, somewhat neutral third party to talk me through all the things that are going through my mind. Heather, while she has many of the same responses as I do, needs time to write out her thoughts in her journal and be in nature in order to help calm her nervous system. Knowing these things about each other doesn’t mean we never run into conflict, but it does help us be more aware of what is going on for the other person and be able to take things like silence or a need for space less seriously when either of us has those responses to a conflict. We also developed a Peace Covenant, which outlines the process we have committed to take should we ever run into a conflict that we absolutely can’t work out on our own.

Heather and I also worked through this process with our teaching team (again using the Blueprint of We as a guide), so that we could all better understand each other and come to an agreement about how we wanted to be in relationship with each other. We have even tried to make it a point to review the document and our answers whenever we have changes to our team.

It’s a lot of work to get this done, but it has been so useful (not to mention relationship solidifying) to come to a better understanding of each other as individuals who have unique responses to conflict and who have different needs that need to be attended to before we can transform the conflict together. It’s also reassuring to know that we have a process in place that we have all agreed upon to engage in should we ever bump up against something that we simply can’t talk through on our own.

If you are able to engage in a process like this, I really can’t recommend it enough. Most people who work together never really get a chance to talk about the things that set them off, or what they might need in order to calm down enough to actually talk through a conflict. Having the space to not just share those things, but to hear from each other as well is a rare practice in empathy building that can result in greater compassion, collaboration, and yes, even productivity! (Check out these Forbes articles: Why Collaboration Yields Improved Productivity (And The Science Behind It), New Study Finds That Collaboration Drives Workplace Performance; this article from the NeuroLeadership Institute: In a Hybrid World, Should You Collaborate or Compete?’; and this article on LinkedIn: Collaboration vs. Competition: Why Working Together is More Effective)

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, nor will everything work in every situation or environment. If you are interested in influencing your work culture, you will need to be in a position to do that, or have a willing ally in someone who is.?

Need more information or help? The Centre for Holding Space (Heather, myself, and our team) are available as consultants to help leaders do culture-building work, or to deliver workshops for you and your team. You can reach out to us via our website.

What would you add to my list? What have you done that’s worked? What hasn’t worked for you? What else would you like to know? Comment below!