Premise:
Let’s talk about culture. What is it? How is it built? Who is responsible for it? How to change it? There is a multi-million-dollar consulting industry that exists to solely answer these questions.
Every leader worth following grapples with these questions constantly. They are trying to get the culture just right for their teams, so that they can perform at their absolute best, without burning themselves out.
There are some who believe that the culture of any organization is created by their leaders. It mimics the leader and the value system of the leader.
Some believe that culture is built bottom-up, with every interaction and emerges organically.
Some others believe that culture is all about defining the values of the organization, arrived at by consensus.
However, I believe that culture is an ever changing, ever evolving entity. It is influenced by the most foundational element of engagement – ongoing conversations among the people of the organization.
I believe that there are 4 types of conversations that form the foundation from which the culture of the organization evolves.
They are as follows:
- Expectation Conversations that set the expectations
- Feedback Conversations that provide ongoing feedback
- Constraints Conversations that introduce the operational constraints
- Resources Conversations that provide the resources available
Let’s look at each one of them in a bit more detail:
The Expectation’s Conversation:
One of the most foundational roles of a leader is to set clear expectations. This also means that their understanding of what good looks like and their teams understanding of what good looks like is aligned.
While this may sound very basic and one that is most likely addressed through the goal setting process, you will be surprised by how many times you will find that the team’s version of what is expected is very different from the leader’s version of what is expected.
The goals may have the metrics that need to be hit, but the way those metrics are measured and achieved leave a lot to interpretations. Mismatched expectations lead to friction and in most cases loss of productivity, trust and morale, which in turn leads to burnout.
The Feedback Conversation:
The way we can address the issue of mismatched expectations is through the feedback conversations. These conversations are crucial for navigating performance and clarifying expectations and leading to the next set of conversations around constraints and resources.
Usually, when we talk about feedback conversations, people usually tend to think about ongoing feedback on the performance of the team members, appraised by their leaders. However, that is only one half of the conversation.
The feedback from the team members on how the leaders are supporting them in achieving their goals is equally if not more important. However, most organizations only capture the progress of the team members as measured by their leaders and not vice versa. This is a blind spot that leaders worth following are always trying to avoid, by constantly asking their team the simple question – How can I help you succeed?
The Constraints Conversation:
Every organization operates under constraints. These could be around money, time or attention. The constraints conversation is the least likely to happen in most organizations. This conversation is about setting the boundary conditions with-in which a team is supposed to operate under.
This conversation clearly lays out what is acceptable behavior and what is not, what kinds of resources are available and what are not, what kind of support can they expect from their leaders.
The Resources Conversation:
Every organization has a set of resources that are available for the teams to use to meet or exceed the expectations set for them. These could be in the form of resources – monetary or otherwise, management attention, competitive position, creativity of the team, etc.
Most teams tend to focus on one kind of resource – budgetary, either in the form of headcounts or in the form of monetary budgets. As mentioned above there are many more forms of resources that are available for the teams that they can lean on to fulfil the expectations from them.
These conversations are all about ensuring that the teams look at all the resources that are available for them without missing out on any form of resources. It is the responsibility of the leader to ensure that the team has all the available resources at their behest to meet or exceed the expectations from them.
Conclusion:
When you look at any conversation or interaction that happens within any given team, you can find that it is one of these four types and usually it covers at least two of these four kinds of conversations. However, these are implicit in nature.
However, if we can make these explicit and have each one of these four conversations, by calling them out, for example, calling a conversation a resource conversation or a constraints conversation, we are able to focus on each one of these individually and address each one of them individually and not let anything fall to the level of assumptions.
The way we stitch these conversations has an impact on the overall performance of the team or the organization. Leaders’ worth following understand this implicitly and are always looking to have these conversations with their teams.
However, true power of this understanding is unleased, when all interactions, not just between leaders and their teams but even among team members is clearly called out, when any team member can ask for a specific type of conversation to be held with any one on the team.
This level of clarity helps unleash the true potential of the entire team, within the established constraints and the available resources, leading to a culture that leads to high performance.
We are able to change any culture by changing one or all of conversations that happen among the teams. These conversations are key in curating the kind of culture that would work best for our teams. Each team, based on their function, requires a different kind of culture. The organization itself needs an overall or overarching culture.
We can curate the culture at each level, within the organization by changing these conversations, by changing how and how often and in what sequence they are held.
