Is lack of appreciation stalling your Culture change process?

“Treat employees like they make a difference and they would”-? Jim Goodnight, CEO, SAS

I was talking to a senior leader (and her team) who had been driving a Culture change in her company for close to two years.

The leadership team had aggressively driven the Culture change.. pushing, communicating, training and monitoring the core values….Performance metrics showing significant success. But there was a challenge…the real force driving it was ‘fear of punishment’… most employees were on a ‘need to do’ basis, a compliance mindset…requiring a constant ‘push down the hierarchy’. We all were realizing that the change was not sustainable. It had to be moved to the next level so that leaders could slowly withdraw their ‘iron hand’ and allow a strong value mindset (among employees) and social forces to sustain the change. It was becoming frustrating and fatiguing.

‘What should we do differently now?’…. was her question

Cultural changes are about shifting mindsets. This process goes through various stages till a large part of the organisation embraces the new value, behaviour and approach to doing work.

At each stage, the leaders have to slowly shift their approach, their priorities, allowing the maturity to build up.

In the initial stages the leadership is forcing the new paradigms on the organisation…Disciplining, directive leadership, persistent communication, building competency and pushing the ‘new behavior’. ?A ‘Fear of punishment’ kickstarts the change. Leader’s role model and talk about it. Violators are counselled and disciplined.

Gradually, as the new value starts getting established, there is a slow shift from ‘fear’ to ‘responsibility for self’. Leaders balance between directive vs collaborative engagement. More leaders role model, centers of excellence are created. ‘Early adopters’ lead the change, influencing others. Yet, there is a ‘competitive’ mindset…the underlying question is…’how does the new behavior get my next promotion?’…. employees focus on themselves.. they are not bothered about others.? Here, leaders need to calibrate the ‘discipline vs appreciate’ balance. Create enough noise around ‘value performers’.

Eventually, we reach a stage when a larger proportion of employees are now shifting their mindset, embracing the new value and are engaging socially. This is the point when Leaders need to emphatically appreciate the willing employees who are embracing the change.

At this stage, the employee just wants to be noticed and appreciated. The value is well established and she is convinced of it’s benefits. When a leader recognises her efforts, she feels empowered to continue doing it.

I am using the word ‘appreciate’ instead of ‘reward’…. The intention is to differentiate between a regular, routine rewarding process and on the other hand, a verbal engagement (private or public), where the leader shows appreciation and/or admiration for some good work that the employee has done. The verbal appreciation may be followed by some financial reward or a promotion, but the focus is on the interaction which may even be offhand or casual, probably done on the spur of the moment.

From the perspective of a Culture Transformation, there is a stage where genuine appreciation becomes critical to advance the change. At this stage, a silent but powerful ‘social upheaval’ is taking place and recognition of good work catalyses the change.

Frustratingly, leaders are slow in making this shift from ‘pushing’? to ‘appreciating’. Individual/ team efforts to shift to new behaviour are ignored, while the focus is on ‘what is not being done’ and a 'make it happen!' mode.

When coaching organisations through Cultural transformations, I am usually surprised by the inability of leaders to make this transition.

In many cases it’s a blind spot.They have no clue that they are missing a powerful tool

There are many ‘wrong’ ways to appreciate people.

·??Shower praise/appreciation on too large a team, for the individuals to feel charged up.

·??Do not clarify how or why you feel it is worth the appreciation

·??Random appreciation: which is not connected to core/important values of the organisation.

·??Inconsistent appreciation: A specific behaviour was ignored the last time, but profusely appreciated this time. Or two very opposing behaviors are appreciated without proper explanation to resolve the conflict.

·??Stingy with appreciation. Refuse to appreciate good behavior due to the fear that the employee will become relaxed or that others will become insecure.

·??Talk down to employees while appreciating them

Usually, when we are not clear about the Organisational core values, we muddle up which actions are worthy of appreciation, and which are not.

Eventually, there comes a stage when the organisation is desiring to surge forward to new levels of Cultural maturity, but the leader’s myopic approach (and need to keep disciplining/ pushing) slows down the change, as they are unable to artfully appreciate the positive behaviour of the transformed Culture.

Comments are welcome!

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