Your Culture Questions Answered

On this episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast we are answering your questions. The issues that people face differ from industry to industry and business to business, so we look at the most pressing issues and provide insights into the things that you can do.

Specifically we look at:

• How you measure belonging
• What employee engagement really means
• What boards need to do differently with regards to culture
• What you need to do differently when practising active listening and empathy
• Whether you need a vision or a purpose

Don't forget that you can submit your questions for our next questions episode by using the email address below.

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Join us as we reveal strategies to close the gap and craft a workplace where values are not just spoken, but lived and breathed, paving the way for a more authentic and engaging organisational culture.

Instagram: @insideoutculture

Email your questions to: insideoutculture@gmail.com

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Chapters

• 0:02 Exploring Workplace Culture and Mindfulness
• 5:20 Measuring Belonging and Employee Engagement
• 12:58 Transforming Organizational Engagement and Culture
• 16:41 Navigating Board Oversight and Culture Understanding
• 29:28 Podcast Appreciation and Future Expectations

Transcript

Colin: 0:02

Welcome to the Inside Out Culture Podcast, where we look at insides of working culture and provide ideas, insights and actions for you to take on the outside. I'm Colin Ellis.

Cath: 0:12

And I'm Cath Bishop, and in each episode we'll examine a different question or a different organization, and we'll use case studies, research and our own insights and experiences to help you change the way things get done in your world.

Colin: 0:27

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please like, subscribe and, of course, let us know what you think. Hello everybody and welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture Podcast. And today Cath and I are in a studio together, buried somewhere underneath kind of North London at the end of Oxford Street, somewhere we got shepherded down here. I literally have no idea where we are.

Cath: 0:49

I know we're in a cellar in Soho, Like you say. We're finding that could mean so many things.

Colin: 0:54

So many things, so many things. Yeah, I don't want to move any of the furniture, just in case. How?

Cath: 0:58

have you been All good, all good, yeah, good, all good, yeah. So much interest in all the things that we talk about, think about, and so, yeah, we've just been catching up, haven't we ahead of this, with all the different things we're seeing across sport, across business. So lots going on, lots going on. And how are you enjoying being in the UK?

Colin: 1:19

Yes, good, I mean, the planning to move back here, which is start of next year now is moving the pace and it's increasing the stress. So I, the planning to move back here, which is the start of next year, now is moving the pace and it's increasing the stress. So I find myself having to follow my own advice, Cath or not, about burnout and you know, making time for oneself and actually, you know, kind of spending some time just kind of relaxing and reading. So yeah, it's been nice to do that.

Cath: 1:42

As well as your own book, which I'm sure you're rereading, but hopefully lots of others are reading. What else? Yeah, what's been on your reading list? What else has got you thinking?

Colin: 1:51

Yes, I'm here to promote the book Detox your Culture, but that doesn't mean you stop reading other people's books. So I've been reading Caitlin Moran. Caitlin Moran's book what About Men? And this comes up in our work a lot.

Colin: 2:05

Cath is kind of male behaviors and obviously we see a lot of this in the papers and the media, particularly with regards to our last episode was on the military we covered a little bit about male behavior and so she kind of delves into the psychology of men and how they're different for women, obviously physiologically different, but also I think the key message is just how differently boys are raised than girls. Now this is changing because parents are changing. I see this with our own children and certainly the conversations I have with my son. I never had with my dad like ever, but it's going to take a while for that to filter into the workplace. So, yeah, that's been really interesting to read. It's again a completely different perspective. I like to read books that really challenge me, challenge my way of thinking, but also educate me as well. How about you, Cath?

Cath: 2:54

Yeah, I'm actually going to put that on my list. I'm quite intrigued about that as a parent to a boy and a girl. So I've just read the latest book that Oliver Berkman wrote. I was really struck about a year ago, actually, I read 4,000 Weeks, which I found very powerful this whole concept that life on average lasts 4,000 weeks, and it really plays with our perceptions of time, how we're always trying to be more productive and the more productivity tools we use, the busier and more stressed out we get and the less productive we are.

Cath: 3:28

And I think this conundrum I see everywhere this desperation to manage time better so I can squeeze more in, and, yeah, it never seems to make the quality of work better, certainly doesn't seem to make people healthier or able to think freely with their own ideas and to really become anything other than robots, and so I feel this yeah, lots of people want the answer.

Cath: 3:52

Tell me how to do this, how to arrange my life, how to get more done, how to be a better leader, and they just accumulate more tasks. And it's madness. We can't do this. We're all actually becoming less clever, less smart because of how we're working, and so I find his books really thought-provoking, and the last one is called Meditations for Mortals, and again he sort of prods in our habits lots of ways of the workplace which are actually making us less smart and less well, and I increasingly feel, through my work, the True Athlete Project in Sport, the power of mindfulness to help athletes become better teammates, better aware of what they can do through sport, who they're becoming through sport, rather than just some sporting machine for a short period of time. And so I think there is so much scope for us to be thinking about how we become more mindful in the workplace as well.

Colin: 4:41

Fabulous. Well, today's episode is all about questions and we've got plenty to get stuck into, so let's get started with the first one, Cath, so interesting one. We talked a lot about belonging on the podcast and we talked about Owen Eastwood's book on belonging, and the question is how do we measure belonging?

Cath: 4:59

Yeah, it's an interesting one and it comes back to the theme of constantly wanting to measure something and this sense of culture. How do I get my hands on it in some sort of tangible way? I correctly mentioned Owen Eastwood's brilliant book on belonging, which I completely recommend again to anyone. I think first of all, before you want to sort of come out with what's the spreadsheet that I want to use, rather than start with a measuring template, I think we first of all, before you, want to sort of come out with what's the spreadsheet that I want to use, rather than start with a measuring template, I think we need to go back and think about what does belonging mean? It's a term that's used quite a lot in the inclusion world because inclusion feels a little bit of an abstract word, it's not very warm and don't really connect with it, often not very human, and so it's crept into. Often people talk about diversity, inclusion and belonging. In a sense, I think we can all connect to a moment when in our lives we thought we belonged and a moment when we probably thought we didn't belong, and then we need to start breaking down. But in our context, what does it mean for our team to belong. I think people would define it as something slightly different depending on the work, the wider culture around them, but it is very much about an experience of belonging. Therefore, we have to understand that experiences can't be captured in a few numbers. We can definitely start to understand them by getting people's views, by listening, by telling stories and being alert to what are the stories that people tell in your team and thinking about what is that experience like? What does it feel like to be part of our team, getting those sorts of qualitative inputs and a sense of the values? What are the things that connect us to the team? And that gets us away from thinking about the task list as well.

Cath: 6:45

But the first thing is really what does belonging mean? What do we want people to feel? Does it mean like we're happy every day? No, does it mean that everything's going well all the time? No, we sort of usually have to dispel a few myths along the way. What does it mean? What are the things that are going to connect us? What, if we all, of course, with our diverse backgrounds, are going to be having slightly different experiences, what's the common thread that will connect us? And from that, once you start to define what it means and test it out a bit. Actually, your measures come from that. You can then say how much do we feel like this, how much are we seeing these sorts of behaviors, how much are we hearing these sorts of stories? And so once you start to define it and evolve it, I think that's where your qualitative measures will come from. But you don't start with the measure sort of just pulled out of a template. What do you think?

Colin: 7:33

Yeah, I mean I agree with all of that. I know what the research shows, Cath, is that when people feel a sense of connectedness to something that's kind of bigger than themselves, and then it increases productivity, it increases trust, it strengthens the social bonds between people, I think whenever people say, well, how do I create it? Let's start with the relationships that people need to build with each other. I don't think many organizations are deliberate about the way that they do that. Yes, they might think about it when they're hiring people, but then they just throw everybody together Now I have one offsite and hope for the best. Or they'll do some kind of personality profile and then think, okay, well, we've all shared our profiles. Well, that's that Not really. I mean, it's part of the process, but it's not the complete process, and so I think people are always keen for different ways to measure culture, and I think, certainly in my experience, belonging you would measure through connectedness to the people around you how much you can trust others. And I think you know trust depends a lot on things like authenticity, reliability, accountability, responsibility, all of those kind of great behaviors.

Colin: 8:46

Inclusion you mentioned 100%, I think, if people feel that they have a voice and that their opinion is valued. Does that mean your opinion is right? No, does that mean your opinion will be used? No, but if you feel that it's value, then you feel a sense of connectedness and you feel a sense of belonging. I think, certainly, for me, assured vision is key to belonging, because if there's a sense of aspiration within the group and it acts as a north star, a guiding light, and you all then know where you're going, where you're aiming, where you're heading for, and I think that really strengthens that sense of here we are, we are connected, we are in pursuit for want of a better word of that vision. That's where we're, you know, that's where we're. Ultimately, that's our collective aspiration. And I think if people know what the vision is and understand how their work connects to that vision, now that's a really good way of measuring belonging.

Cath: 9:49

So belonging is a social, collective concept. You can't do it on your own and so in itself it starts to bind us. When we think about what it is and you draw on Owen Neeswood's principles there it's about being connected to others and connected to something greater than ourselves. That sense of purpose, those two things are really important, and the more you do to strengthen, deepen those, then the belonging comes. But you don't sort of create belonging in a day. It's almost, yeah, as you say, that connectedness that leads there.

Cath: 10:18

And this is very connected, wasn't it, to another question about what does employee engagement mean? And within that belonging is a really big part of it. And I think for me this sense of employee engagement is about an emotional commitment to the work and I think sometimes people don't really understand it's a deeper connection to what we do. And then discretionary effort comes from that, when I can make a choice myself about whether I think this is worth me putting some more effort into it, about whether I think this is worth me putting some more effort into it. And engagement is often very much connected to, therefore, the intrinsic motivators. Of course, belonging being part of a group is part of our intrinsic motivation. So if you're thinking about employee engagement yeah, it's a huge part of it. What's the strength of the group and how connected we feel to it? It's, then, about our sense of purpose, which is what we also, then you know we need.

Cath: 11:13

It connects into that belonging as well. It's about autonomy, my voice. Am I heard Again something we talked about in connection with belonging and this mastery? Am I learning, am I growing through being part of this work life, the job I do, the team I'm in, the company I'm in, you know? Am I growing as a person? Not just purely in knowledge, but you know in character and who I am and the leader I'm becoming and the teammate I'm becoming, and so you know, for me, that's what engagement is about.

Cath: 11:43

Now, often I find engagement surveys reduce things to a number and you know thousands of questions that often make it quite hard and people stay at quite a tactical level of how do I just get my score up a percent next year, when I think actually, the best way to improve your engagement is to come back to do this deeper work, and if you're investing in that sense of purpose, autonomy, mastery and this social belonging, if that's part of what it feels like to do your work, not an extra at the end of the day, but just it's part of the work that you do the conversations you have, the meetings you have then that's a way to improving your engagement scores over time. But what's your thought when people say, oh, how do I get better employee engagement?

Colin: 12:25

I'm so glad you mentioned the emphasis on self there, because I think that's almost always missing from engagement surveys. They're too busy asking, and not that it's incorrect to say you know, kind of, do you get on with your boss? Do you like your boss, you know? Do you know what the values are? Do you know where you're going? All that stuff's important, but you've got to feel a sense of progression. I think it was Decky and Ryan who did the research, maybe early 2000, about self-determination, which was about, as you mentioned, Cath, autonomy, competence, that sense of growth and then relatedness. And certainly, when I reflect on myself, when I was most engaged in my job my last job here in the UK was with Littlewood Shop Direct Group, probably the most engaged that I've been because not only was I invested in the vision that the organization had, the fact that they involved us in the definition of culture, the fact that we had leaders who were role models, actually had a pathway for growth I recognized that if I wanted to be part of this success, I had to bring the right attitude to my work every single day, and this is a key part of engagement and we forget that I felt that I was in control of my destiny. But I was also supported within that as well. Even when I left, they did everything that they could to make sure that I left in the right way. I was emigrating to New Zealand and they were so helpful to me and that's all part of that engagement process.

Colin: 13:47

Too many questions drain, sorry, too many engagement. Surveys actually drain engagement, because they ask 30, 40 questions when a simple six to eight would do and it's you know kind of. How much do you care about the organization? How much do you care about where we're going? How much do you know about it? But also, how much do you care about your job? How supported do you feel to achieve? Are you in control of decisions you make? Do you have the support from the people around you? These are all really, really important. As you say, belonging plays a part in this, because they determine attitude, they determine mindset and of course the culture of the organization is driven by the prevailing mindset of its group. And if that mindset is one of growth, then the engagement is always going to be high.

Cath: 14:28

You point out one of these situations that happens in corporate life where you set out to improve engagement and actually the very process you use to find that out and to try and improve engagement disengages people. And the same thing we see with performance management and appraisals where in fact the kind of overriding response is demoralization and demotivation from an appraisal experience which some companies are starting to move away from, but it still dominates in the majority.

Colin: 14:53

It still does. I'll give you a very good example. I worked for one organization and their engagement was much, much lower than they expected. So they employed one of the big four consulting firms to come in, who immediately put about 12 graduates on the floor and it absolutely killed engagement. They did a pulse check and it got worse. No disrespect to the graduates, but it just wasn't what people wanted to see from the management.

Cath: 15:18

Yeah, all the way it was done, of course, the way it was experienced, the framing the environment for them to come into no, it didn't work on either side, I'm sure. Yeah, so I think I find quite a lot that because we get numbers with these engagement surveys and people are desperate for some numbers about cultures and we can treat it like we do our financial P&L, we actually get drawn away from hang on what really matters. What should we be looking for? And if you do an engagement survey, that's fine, but actually that should just be the beginning of then saying let me find out more about what's behind this. They're only really telling about the surface. They might be giving an idea of some areas you want to research and find out more. Go and hear the stories that lead to the scores that you get. Yeah, that's where the work needs to be done.

Colin: 16:06

Okay, next question what do boards need to do differently to govern culture?

Cath: 16:13

Yeah. So we have talked about this, haven't we, a couple of times. Just this question, and it's a deep question. It's a very complex question because I think boards are in transition from sort of some of the old fashioned, fairly rigid ways in which they would govern, you know, again focusing on the numbers, the finance, the profit, the sales, the sort of hard metrics, and then find that their company actually is ruined by some retributional crisis that comes along that they weren't kind of ready for, or they're not retaining talent.

Cath: 16:41

I think you first of all have to look at what's happening at the moment in the board and how you are managing culture, and does it even come up and how does it come up? And if it's coming up in the same way that you might be discussing other issues, then it doesn't automatically mean that's appropriate. So the way you discuss the financial health of an organization isn't going to necessarily translate across directly to how you are going to discuss the culture. We're back to metrics. As always, we're never far away from that. What is it that will help the board to have an idea of what it's like to be in the workplace? Can you really get that on just a document?

Cath: 17:16

So for me it's really important that boards don't just sit in the room now.

Cath: 17:19

They actually need to have a sense of the company that they're governing, to know what it feels like on the front line, whatever it is that company does, that you can start to get your own feel for the experiences, that perhaps different parts of this organization, different environments that are there, so that you've got something yourself.

Cath: 17:36

You're not blindly just looking at whatever information comes to you. It's going to be too narrow and we've never finished governing culture or understanding it. And I think one of the problems is, as governance generally increases, the amount of documents that go to a board increases and there's a danger that the space for culture decreases if it's even on the agenda all the time and you just can't discuss culture in 10 minutes. So I think this is a reason for boards to be doing meetings in a different way, to be actually making sure they're on site somewhere, that actually, rather than look at a document, they might be meeting a group of employees just having a chat, or that actually part of the meeting is spending an hour just getting a feel for what's happening, getting a bit of a deeper insight into some of the challenges and some of the opportunities that staff are enjoying or struggling with, to then bring that back to whatever the sort of latest report might be telling you.

Colin: 18:34

Yeah, I read a report from Ernst Young that said a quarter of boards never or rarely discuss culture, and it'd be very easy to view that in negative light and go, wow, a quarter still aren't talking about culture. I was surprised that 75% are, and so I saw that as a positive. I'm like great, 75% of boards are now actively talking about culture, and the UK governance code is really really clear on this. It said that boards should monitor and assess culture, and where it doesn't feel that there is a culture, that there's been a culture built to deliver the strategy, they should seek assurance from management that they're going to address this. And so what should they do differently?

Colin: 19:14

Well, if they're one of the quarter, they should monitor and assess culture, and if they don't feel that they're getting the right information from management because often senior leaders in those board meetings there's a tendency sometimes to tell the board what they want to hear, and then something that we talked about in a previous podcast is, you know, have a voice of the employees at the table, just so that they can kind of hear it from the coalface. So I think my advice for what could they do differently is ensure that there is money in the budget to spend on culture. Ultimately, they're the ones that have to approve budgets right as presented to them by the senior leadership team. I'd be wanting to see where's my line on culture, because culture is the thing that's always underinvested in, despite all of the evidence that demonstrates its importance to the delivery of strategy.

Cath: 20:01

Yeah, do you know, I'm just going to jump in because I'm uncomfortable with monitoring and assessing culture, because that feels to me, you know, this is like putting videos on people and kind of watching, and it's quite a punitive sort of language. We're assessing culture. I think we need to be understanding the culture, and often where we've had errors coming up or big crises coming up, and whether that's Volkswagen, whether that's at the CBI last year, whether that's sort of in the MOD, I think people thought they knew what was happening and they just didn't know the deeper culture. So I think if you come at this with a, we've got to monitor and make sure it's okay. People will feed the information that tells you it's okay, but they won't feed you the information of where people are feeling oppressed or where abuse is happening, and so I think we have to be really careful about what we're looking for, because otherwise we're just going to get the information that tells us that and then we get surprised by something.

Cath: 20:54

We actually want to understand what's difficult in the culture, where there's less engagement, where there is perhaps, where there are retention issues. We actually want those to understand those. No, culture is ever perfect, so we've also never sort of finished it. So for me, the aim of a board is to understand that company's culture at an ever deeper level in order to be able to then steer and guide. I think if you monitor and assess, you only get fed the figures that people want you to see and you're not really seeing what's happening at the deeper level of what people believe, what they experience and where the problems lie.

Colin: 21:30

Yeah, okay. So our viewpoints differ here. We don't often disagree on things. I don't think it's enough anymore for boards to take a back seat. I think that they have to get beneath the skin if they don't feel that they're getting the full story. And the UK Post Office is a great example. Cbi is a great example of where they are all culpable. They are all culpable for presiding over that. So I think, Cath, it's kind of evolving and I think this is the challenge that boards have right now is what's the balance? It's not about walking the floor. It's not about getting involved in day-to-day operations Of course it's not but it's asking different questions to get the different answers that maybe they've got in the past.

Colin: 22:10

I think they can read engagement surveys, you know. That's something that they can ask for the detail of to really fully understand. It's not something they've done in the past. Boards is asked for the detail. Often they'll just get the top line, the executive summary. They can get the detailed reports, I mean, and then if senior leaders choose to sanitize it, then it's their integrity, it's their reputation at stake and the board have asked the right question. So I think you're right. I think it's emerging. I think boards should educate themselves more on culture. That's definitely what they should do. And maybe what are the different questions that I can ask to maybe provide the answers that I'm looking for, rather than get into that deep monitoring of day-to-day operations and find out what's going on?

Cath: 22:52

Yeah, interesting one, because I think it's hard to do it quickly. It's hard to get a sort of really kind of quick sense of a culture. Otherwise you really only look at the surface. But it's a never-ending job for board and it's really important they don't only look in a crisis as well, because these things you know the flags come very early. If you're alert to those and noticing those, even just how the information is presented to you will tell you quite a lot whether the executive is sort of trying to reassure and show you everything's good. Actually, that always makes me suspicious, because there's sort of almost no culture that doesn't have some slightly difficult challenges in certain places. And those are the interesting areas for you to think yeah, this is how we strengthen our culture, this is what we need next to get it to be an even better culture. Good, okay.

Cath: 23:39

So the next one. There's a question I got asked recently about if we start being more empathetic leaders, if we start listening to colleagues and you know to check on how they're doing in a way that we haven't before, if we start listening to colleagues and you know to check on how they're doing in a way that we haven't before, if we care for others in the workplace. How do we then manage what might unfold from that, what we might unleash, I think, sort of in brackets or sort of unspoken? You know the emotions that I might then be faced with and I then don't know what to do with. You know, how do we, how can we manage this?

Colin: 24:13

Oh my gosh, what a great question. And so immediately I thought oh my gosh, this is what I do with my kids. I never asked them how their day was, just in case I get 30 minutes of just blah this teacher, this teacher and it's a legitimate question. For me, it comes back to the fact that we don't really teach people how to manage because there's a fundamental skill of active listening. I think too often what we do is we listen to respond. You know kind of, rather than to think deeply about what's required, and often the response is not what the person's looking for.

Colin: 24:46

I had this conversation with somebody recently. I said sometimes when people open up to you, they're not looking for you to fix what's wrong. In some instances they just want to tell you, they just want to know that they've been heard. So I think you know kind of the process of active listening, which is something that was developed by Tanya Drollinger again in the early 2000s. This sense you know, sense process, respond, you know kind of what someone's saying to me and how are they saying to it. Then processing that against what you know about that individual should then inform the response, and that response is one based on understanding.

Colin: 25:22

So often we're listening, to respond, not to understand, and so, for me, empathy is about recognizing what that person needs in that moment. So it comes back to the fundamental of building really strong relationships, and managers need almost an enhanced toolkit, certainly, than that that they have right now. I still think we may mention this on the podcast in the back that we promote people based on technical expertise or length of tenure rather than leadership capability, and too often people will get into those roles and they don't really know how to be vulnerable, how to be empathetic, how to be collaborative Some of those core skills you need to actually lead teams. What do you think?

Cath: 26:08

Yeah, I agree with that. Lead teams what do you think? Yeah, I agree with that. I think that there's a fear of, as you said, not not having the right answer and not knowing what to say, and I don't think that should be what you're focusing on. And so for me, it's think less about what's the right answer to whatever I'm faced with, and just more about how can you show up to that conversation. What do you want to bring to that conversation in terms of, yeah, yeah, listening, empathy, just valuing that person, giving them your time and I think there is a fear of this time business as well that, oh my God, I haven't got time for this, and that in itself is going to hurt you. If you haven't got time for other people, if you haven't got time for people in your team, they're going to be engaged less, you're going to get less from them. They're going to be less able to sort of share all their best ideas. So it's a short-term win on the time front. That was going to hurt you in the long term. So I think you're right. Just quality of listening goes such a long way.

Cath: 27:05

Thinking about, perhaps, in this conversation, what do we each need for this conversation. So what does the other person want? Let's focus on the listening. What do I need to be able to do that? I need to be able to let go of some things in my mind. I need to be able to handle the uncertainty and the fact that I haven't got an answer for it and I don't need an answer for it. And I'm going to have to let go of perhaps some discomfort if I'm faced with emotions and therefore tap into a few of my own.

Cath: 27:29

I think there's a big fear of emotions here because we've gone so long sort of suppressing them, not having them as part of the workplace and thinking about what will make this a useful conversation on both sides. If it's not about the answer, what is it? It's, then, about that environment you set the conversation up in and how you both show up to it, and the respect, the listening that comes from that can be very powerful. But it's about a different mindset than how am I going to solve this problem, how am I going to deliver something to the client? That's just not helpful anymore. So we have to switch our mindset and be aware and adaptable enough to do that and to sit with some of our own discomfort that might come from what we hear as well, so it's actually a fantastic learning opportunity. To put yourself in that situation and caring for your employees, I think is always going to be a part of what makes you a great leader and a great person to work with.

Colin: 28:22

Good, okay. Last question, short, sharp Do we really need a vision or a purpose?

Cath: 28:28

I think we've actually answered that, haven't we in the course of various other questions, because you know, as you said, part of belonging is that we belong, we're connected to each other and we're connected to a greater purpose. If you want to work in a team, if you want to do any work that requires collaboration, that requires the sharing of different ideas and perspectives and skills, then yes, you do. It's what brings you together, it's what brings meaning to your work, it's what brings joy to your work, it's what will help you get the best out of people and feel that you're spending your time doing something worthwhile. So it's a big yes.

Colin: 29:05

It's a huge yes. The purpose is the role that the company exists to fill in the world or the country, wherever it might be, and a vision is a sense of aspiration. This is what we want to become, this is where we're going to, and if you want to ignite joy, as Cath said, if you want to light a fire inside people and really get them excited about what the future holds, you definitely need one. All right, fabulous episode Answered, loads of questions, great chat. Kat Looking forward to next time?

Cath: 29:33

Yeah, me too. Thanks, very much Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out Culture.

Colin: 29:39

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