By Declan Noone
In today’s highly complex and competitive workplace, are we constructing a culture that strives for and rewards perfection to the detriment of honest and authentic endeavour and the risks associated with that? Well, in 2017, the NHS reported that one third of all work-related sick certificates were for mental health issues,[1]and a 2017 online study[2]conducted by Ipsos on behalf of One Medical found that, amongst Americans, when thinking about their professional lives, a majority agree that there are some things about their job/work environment that cause them stress, anxiety or sleeplessness (55%). In fact, 24% stated that they feel more stressed this year compared to last year. So the answer would appear to be ‘yes’.
CONSEQUENCES OF A RISK-AVERSE CULTURE
There are 5 immediate consequences as a result of a risk-averse culture.
MICRO MANAGEMENT
As a leader, you are aware that if your team makes mistakes it reflects badly on you. There is a perceived and sometimes very real sense that your value as a leader is measured not only by the successes of your team, but also by the lack of problems arising from your team. As one former boss would tell me, ‘a pat on the back is only a foot and a half from a kick in the bum’. Consequently, you tend to pay far more attention to the minutiae, saving your team from themselves by standing over their work. You end up making it your mission to stop your team from making mistakes. As a result, large portions of your day are spent looking at other people’s work rather than your own, and you are continuously assessing issues as they arise from a risk mitigation perspective. Micro-management generates an environment of fear and anxiety, not just among team members but for the leader themselves.
A CLOSED AND TENSE WORKING ENVIRONMENT
Individuals become solely focused on their own workload when the fear of making mistakes and suffering the consequences is at such a high level. Work flows slow as each person spends time checking and rechecking their work. Fear prevails, to the point that even simple decisions are pushed up to the leader for their action. The components of intrinsic motivation – autonomy, mastery and relatedness – are directly and significantly affected. This will ensure that team members can be easily attracted by other potential opportunities elsewhere both internal and external to the organisation.
LACK OF TRUST
With increased levels of micro management and a closed and tense working environment, survival is the priority. Individuals are less likely to share opportunities or seek advice for fear that it may be used against them or held over them. Interactions with the leader are viewed as potentially high-risk, and as a result avoided unless absolutely necessary. The absence of trust generates a downward spiral of behaviours, high levels of disengagement and in turn poor levels of productivity.
POOR CREATIVITY
Creativity requires the creation of a safe and positive workspace which generates a greater frequency of positive emotions. In a risk-averse environment with an absence of trust, employees are less likely to share potential solutions to the challenges the team and organisation face.
LACK OF SITUATIONAL AWARENESS
In work cultures where fear is pervasive, individuals will spend more of their energies hiding the mistakes they have made rather than confronting them and dealing with them. Consequently, a realistic appraisal of the current situation is extremely difficult for a leader to gauge. They will only receive information on where things are going well and without issue, while potential problems are hidden from view. Your situational awareness as a leader is critical in enabling you to best position the team or organisation to deal with any future challenges before they arise. Poor situational awareness results in crisis management situations where you can only attempt to address the issues as they land on your desk. How much of your day do you spend firefighting these types of issues? How many could have been foreseen?
CHANGING A RISK-AVERSE CULTURE
Initiating a change and the evolution from a risk-averse culture to one where people are encouraged to acknowledge and learn from their mistakes takes time. There are a number of steps that should be taken, but they are not mutually exclusive and can be integrated to run concurrently.
CREATE A POSITIVE AND GENERATIVE WORKPLACE CULTURE
Understanding the components of both human flourishing (PERMA: Positive Emotions, Engagement, Positive Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment) and intrinsic motivation are critical to establishing a work culture that is positive and generative. Integrating these components with your company values requires a measured and ‘deep dive’ into your organisational practices including rewards and recognition, performance appraisals and to employee feedback sessions. An organisation can only truly generate a sense of ‘living its values’ if they connect with the reality of the day-to-day work life of its employees. A positive and generative workplace culture creates an uplifting atmosphere which motivates individuals to actively engage and participate in work. Some areas where you can focus on, include:
Positivity: I am paraphrasing Barbara Fredrickson here, but ‘Positivity is the realistic assessment of the current situation and identifying the positive actions required to move forward’. In other words, we acknowledge the real-world challenges that the business and its employees face, but we place them in a realistic context, and using our strengths rather than weaknesses, we identify what needs to be done to move forward. Positivity is not the absence of negativity, rather it is acknowledging the situation, reframing the challenge and engaging as many stakeholders as possible to deal with it. Doing so enables the creation of a greater frequency of positive emotions which in turn have an impact on individuals’ performance levels, memory and creativity.
Open and Transparent Communications: Proximity and access to important information is an enabler of a continued ‘power over’ hierarchical power dynamic in the workplace. However, with the breath of internal communication technologies, it is now more critical than ever to adopt an open and transparent communications policy throughout the organisation. The absence of information leads to increasing levels of gossip. Gossip is rarely positive, accordingly in small and larger groups with the telling of each snippet of gossip you have new embellishments (the poetic licence of the storyteller) that can paint a more damaging picture than what is actually going on. Consequently, you end up with a downward spiral of negative emotions in the workplace from anxiety and fear to anger. Sharing information achieves clarity and enables individuals and teams to process the reality of the current situation while also encouraging them to identify actions required to address any challenges.
Acknowledgement and Recognition: As leaders are ever more engaged in a larger volume of both operational and strategic obligations, they have less time to pause and acknowledge the work and successes of their team. We all require, to a greater or lesser extent, some form of external recognition for the work we are doing. This goes beyond the extrinsic factors of improved pay and bonuses, and focuses more on the recognition of their efforts and successes to the individuals and the larger team or organisation. Doing so reinforces the individual’s sense of worth and belonging, building positive relationships. It helps build trust and set the conditions for an individual to actively increase their levels of discretionary effort. A 2015 Gallup survey found that a direct manager can influence as much as 76% of an employee’s discretionary effort and commitment to the company.[3]
Embracing New Ideas: We will be faced with new and unique challenges, ones we have never confronted before. Some will arise as a result of mistakes, others as a result of external influences. However, we need to be able to draw on the collective knowledge and experience of those around us. Shooting down new ideas because they are ‘not the way we usually do things’, or ‘you can’t do it that way’, only limit the options available. Start your meetings with a fix rule where ‘but’, ‘should’ and ‘can’t’ are banned. Open the floor to new ideas, embrace them, analyse them and then make a decision.
ENCOURAGE A POSITIVE LEARNING CULTURE
It is inevitable that mistakes will be made by you and by others. It is human. Some will have a greater effect than others, and may require some remedial action to be taken with the individual responsible. Even difficult situations like that can also provide a learning environment for everyone. This requires a mindset change to one where you can relabel failure as learning, adopt learning as a daily habit, and allow and acknowledge mistakes. In fact, some say it is important sometimes to celebrate them.
Actions you can take as a leader are:
- Conduct pre-mortems before commencing any projects. Identify problem areas and mistakes made previously and address them in the project plan before you commence any action.
- Conduct after action reviews which focus on both the positive and negative actions and outcomes from a project or process. Challenge both the positive and negative to confirm or refute the initial assessments.
- Apply the lessons learned immediately and share them with a wider audience.
- Make time to have a regular review of lessons learned with the wider team so that all experiences can be captured i.e. every quarter.
EMPOWER OTHERS TO TAKE CORRECTIVE ACTION
This will require some time for mentoring. If you are enabling individuals to highlight and share their mistakes, you will need to provide them with the skills and knowledge to avoid making the same mistakes again. Engage them in a conversation, identify the challenges and then mentor them through the actions that are required to address the issue. This encourages them to bring issues to your attention while also empowering them to identify the solution required.
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Leaders need to enhance their awareness of positive psychology, behavioural decision making and behavioural fitness to be in a position from a personal perspective, where they can take the actions listed above, recognise their and others’ behaviours, and not to be confrontational or indeed defensive when confronted with failings and mistakes.
CONCLUSION
Change is never easy, it takes time. However, acknowledging the reality that mistakes will be made and generating a work culture that is positive and encourages a learning mindset is critical to individual and organisational wellbeing. Ultimately, it enables a constant improvement of your employee and customer experience.
[1]https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/31/one-three-sick-notes-mental-health-problems-alarming-report/
[2]https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/mental-health-survey-2017
[3]https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/182792/managers-account-variance-employee-engagement.aspx
