Inside Out Culture

The exercises we use to help organisations build vibrant cultures

• Inside Out Culture • Season 1 • Episode 26

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We are constantly asked how we do what we do, so in this episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast, we share some of our workshop exercises as well as talking about what a good culture workshop experience looks (and sounds!) like.

Specifically we talk about:

  • Personality surveys
  • Developing cultural norms
  • Articulating a vision
  • Lego Serious Play®

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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.

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Colin:

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:

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:

We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Please like, subscribe and, of course, let us know what you think.

Cath:

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Inside Out Culture podcast, and today we're going to talk about some of the exercises that we do when we're building culture with teams, some of the activities, some of the examples that we do when we're building culture with teams, some of the activities, some of the examples of how we help other teams, because we thought there's probably lots of interest in that and we're always chatting and swapping stories and tools and we're really keen, through this podcast, to help others get more competent and confident about being really proactive in building positive culture in the workplace. So, yeah, we're going to be doing some sharing. We've had to sort of think through our lists of all the stuff that we just do and distill a few of the things that are perhaps most useful. Colin, where are you going to start?

Colin:

Well, I'm going to start with personality surveys and interestingly, Cath, I had the good fortune, in promoting my new book, detox your Culture, to speak to Bruce Daisley recently of the Eat Sleep Work Repeat I hope I got that in the right order podcast, which I highly recommend. You know, we're always recommending other people's podcasts, and Bruce had listened to one of our podcasts and he talked about or he said you know, you talk about the fact that you can change engagement. How do you do that? And so I think it's a useful tool to be able to share some of the exercises that we do. So I'm going to start with the much maligned personality survey, because now I love a good personality survey, but then I would, as a high extrovert, I love it and someone who's fascinated by human dynamics and always have been, and so I love to know how I have personally evolved.

Colin:

I always say that your goal as a human is not to stay the same. Your goal as a human is to learn, is to grow, is to make mistakes, is to learn, is to grow, is to make mistakes. It's kind of a never-ending cycle, and what I like most about the personality survey is that it gives you an insight into who you are and what you're about. Now, the reason that it's much maligned is that, firstly, there's some scientists who cross swords over whether it's factual or not, and I think if it's presented as factual, that's when it becomes problematic, because essentially it's a computer algorithm that's processing how you answer questions to give you some kind of scoring. So you know much.

Colin:

Like we say with an engagement survey, it's not an exact science. The same is true as a personality survey. However, that's not to decry the work of Carl Jung, who you know, who's very much the grandfather of the personality survey. He segment forward, of course, with his theory around ego and super ego. It's malign, though, because too often what people try and do is to jam you in a box and go. You're one of those. That's you do. You see this color, that's your color, and I remember doing myers-briggs and it's fascinating. So we don't have time to go into it, but it's fascinating story about how this first came to be my Myers-Briggs. Basically, catherine Myers I think it was was a big fan of Carl Jung's work and decided to create a survey on how mothers could improve their relationships with their children.

Colin:

It's still used today, but I remember doing it in New Zealand in 2007. When I just arrived there, I I came out as an ENTJ and I was told that's who you are, here's what people like you do. And I read this thing and I'm like, nope, that's not exactly what I am. Listen, was it broadly right? It was about 90% right, but I didn't like the way that it put me into a box. Also, the exercise made it all about me, and we know that self-awareness is really, really important for culture. In fact, self-aware individuals are the building blocks of great teams. Right? Self-awareness, self-management is crucially important. All right, and this is what leads to those fantastic human traits like empathy and vulnerability and all these other things.

Colin:

When I do personality surveys, which I always do at the start of my workshops, I've got a tool that I use myself or I leverage what the organization has already done. I make sure that people know that it's an insight into some of the traits that they may have. I always get people to talk about their reports or their results and talk about what they agreed with, but also what they disagree with, because I what they disagree with, because I want to make sure that they understand that it's not an exact science and actually, as human beings. No one can ever put us in a box. Of course, the goal of the exercise is not to identify you as a particular color, although that is a byproduct of it and the goal of the exercise is to get people talking about their preferences.

Colin:

And so the whole you know, when I do two day culture workshops I ran one recently the whole first half day is all about building relationships and talking to people about who you are, how you like to communicate, how you like to work, what your preferences are, which may or may not actually be in the report.

Colin:

So I remember one HR manager said to me once she was like oh, so you're using a personality survey as a bit of a cloak and it's about what's under the cloak. I'm like well, kind of. But essentially it's a tool that I use to help people build relationships and also to understand themselves a little bit better. So I think a personality survey, used in the right way, can help inform oneself about your own personal evolution journey and maybe what you're good at so you can help other people, maybe what your personality is not so good at, so maybe it's something that you need to work on, but fundamentally it's a way of helping people to talk about how they feel who they are and strengthen the bonds between those people such that they can work together better in the future. So, yeah, that's always where I start my culture workshops.

Cath:

Yeah, interesting. I worry about personality service for all the reasons that you laid out. I particularly worry when people use it for hiring and firing. And yeah, if the goal is deepening understanding, then anything that helps a conversation is good and sometimes people need something sort of tangible to start that with. But it's really important that that information isn't kind of abused or taken into sort of other processes it's just not appropriate for. So that's yeah, I agree.

Colin:

Yeah, one team I work with. One of the suggestions was oh, let's get badges made. I was like no, absolutely not. Don't do that under any circumstances. It's not about a label.

Cath:

Yeah, the labeling piece, the boxing. We're so desperate to put people in boxes and labels and things and that's that's the danger. But yeah, so, as with all of these tools, it's actually how you use them, how you frame them and the conversation that you use them to stimulate. Yeah, I, I sort of like to use sometimes just really simple questions and to get teams to think about things from different perspectives. So you might kind of go into the future and ask what do you want people, what do you want to be known for in five years time as a team? What are the things that you want to look back on when you know, when you leave this team, or when you finish this big project you're working on? Or you know, in 10 years time? Or what are the things that you want to be remembered for, because often it's not sort of you know, getting all our metrics right or working really long hours. So sometimes I use questions to take people into sort of like a future retrospective mode. Also use questions around metaphors. So how would you describe your team in terms of a type of boat and maybe you might say what type of boat would you like to become? And metaphors are really powerful because they sum up really quickly in a common language how we feel about the team.

Cath:

If you ask someone in words simply, how do you feel your team describe it, it's often quite difficult to get at that deeper level. If you ask them what sort of boat are you? Of course you can ask any kind of metaphor question People will use animals, people will use all sorts of things Then they'll immediately say, yeah, well, we're a bit of a tanker. Or we're definitely not a speedboat, but we'd like to be a little bit more agile. Or yeah, it's a sailing boat. We've all got lots of roles and I find that the descriptions that come after they give that so they say it's a rowing boat, because blah, blah, blah are beautiful and that's what I'm looking to get and that really gives me a sense of what it's like to be in this team. That if I simply ask what's it like to be in this team, I just don't get that same precision and it's also something that we can all relate to. I can see the difference between a sailing boat and a tanker and visually immediately we're speaking the same language and then it's quite fun and it becomes a little bit more tangible and then together you might create the sort of boat you want to become. So it helps us to talk about deep culture in a way that is often quite difficult to just describe.

Cath:

And the other thing that's quite a good question to ask is what are the unspoken rules around here? You know what are the sort of 10 commandments that aren't written down in the HR handbook, but you know. That's things like you know when the most senior person in the room speaks first. Never be the first to leave in the afternoon. These sorts of things are really powerful indicators of what your culture is like. Nobody's written them on the wall, with good reason, but they govern how we behave, and that's what we're trying to understand what's happening currently and then shape. Actually, what would we like the unspoken rules to be? Are we happy with those ones? Let's get them out in the open and then let's reshape them. So different questions that get to that that unlock the deeper piece. When you can't ask what's the deep culture like around here? Yeah, you just won't get that. What are the unspoken rules around here? What are the things that you need to know or that you pick up within two days when you're new here that nobody tells you in your induction.

Colin:

Those are the sorts of things we all know them that I want to get to, to get to that serious sense of the lived experience, the deeper culture and do those questions then, Cath, do they help to shape I think you mentioned it, but to help to shape the new, what we would call cultural norms within a team? Is that the goal to move away from one, to evolve into something else?

Cath:

Yeah, to articulate where you are now at the deeper level, and then to go, oh, do we want to keep those, what do we want to be, and what are we going to need to change then in order to do that? So, yeah, it helps teams to have a sense of where they're at now and then, where do we want to get to? And then there's this journey that's going all the time, that's happening through everything we do. But you can have that sense of, oh, am I behaving? That's kind of going to make us a bit more like a tanker, or am I really using this next project challenge to help us become a bit more agile, become a bit more of a speedboat? It gives you a quick common language to call things out and to build norms around that.

Cath:

If we want to be a more agile speedboat, what does that actually require for us? And then people go well, hang on, maybe we don't need to be that fast for a speedboat because we also need some stability. So actually you can just sort of shape it the whole time, co-create together what you want to be, and obviously the behaviors then kind of connect to that quite, uh, quite nicely, but behaviors in isolation to discuss. I find it's often really difficult to do?

Colin:

yeah, they have that. Yeah, the behaviors have to connect. For for when I'm um getting teams to agree new behaviors, I've like a little card deck that we, that we produce and we update it every year with what are the new behaviors expected of individuals in the workplace, and it has. All of those things have to connect to something. You know we connect it. I in my workshop, I'm connected to the vision yeah, what's the vision?

Colin:

and what behaviors do we need to demonstrate in order to achieve the vision, and then that then informs the, the shared vision. And actually, can you even articulate that to people? Can they connect their? And what behaviors do we need to demonstrate in order to achieve the vision and then that then?

Cath:

informs the norms, the shared vision, and actually, can you even articulate that to people? Can they connect their own roles to that? What do people think it is? And often we have quite a mixture of mission statements and vision statements and purpose statements, and you're more particular than I am about what each one has to be. I just want to make sure there's something that everyone feels connected to and makes sense and is about not just a number of 10% growth or something like that. It's actually about what's that 10% growth going to enable, what's the impact on others outside of your team, that you're going to have that bigger sense of why you do the jobs that you do. That's essential.

Colin:

Yeah, and that's true. I'm very, very particular, but only for the point that you made there. It has to make sense. Too often what I'll see is a vision statement that's like five sentences long. That makes no sense. It's not memorable in the, in the slightest, and the exercises that I run around. Vision it might be a good time to share this actually is.

Colin:

I'll put a good old post-it notes on everybody's table and get them to write out aspirational words that they then use to shape a vision statement. I get each table to come up with about 10 vision statements based on these aspirational words and I literally move table to table and I'll pick up words that I don't believe are aspirational and, to make a point, I'll screw the post-it up and throw it on the floor. It's a sense of good fun. I'm not treading on anyone's ideas, I'm saying no, this is what. This is kind of what we're looking for.

Colin:

So these aspirational words are very much words, that kind of light, a fire, that they tend to be bigger than the transactional words that we use. Things like gold, you know, one of the one of the words that I always, you know, kind of reject is, is anything that you can't actually define. So you know, people are always looking to to remember the exact word that I'm looking for at the minute, but they're always trying to. You know, look for a goal and it's always woolly and it's never specific enough and people are like, yeah, we, you know we've got to get, oh, efficiency. There's a word. Anything that's more efficient is like. What does that mean in practice? That's not an aspirational word making something more efficient. So people will use. They'll come up with like 20 different words and then I get them to use the words to shape vision statements, usually no more than six to eight words, because after that it's very hard to remember a sentence about using post-its.

Cath:

It's very interactive, there's a lot of movement in the room, and that's really important. I think people always have this oh God, here the facilitators come. That means we're going to have flip charts and post-its and all that, but it's so important and I always make a point of saying why am I getting you to move around? Why am I asking you to use post-its? It's not for me. I don't need post-its in my life, although you know, perhaps at times I might feel a bit addicted to them. I've always got a few down the bottom of my bag just in case you turn up and there aren't any there, and then I finally got them with me all the time. You know sometimes write my notes on them, and so I think it's about we want everyone to have a voice in this process, and a lot of the time, meetings, which is how most work gets done, is really poor in terms of engaging people, in terms of getting their ideas and having a voice. I mean, it's too slow most of the time for a meeting. If everyone speaks, it's just going to take too long, and so therefore, people opt out. We don't hear their views because we haven't got time, and so, actually, postnet is fantastic for giving everyone a voice at the same time, and even if there are things you don't immediately capture and pick up, it's there, it's recorded and, again, I always make a point of being sure I've read everything that's gone up, in case there's a little gem, as there often is, that maybe didn't get spoken aloud. That is really helpful to move things on or to add a different dimension to the thinking or to challenge the thinking. It's much harder to say it out loud into a room than it is to write down. What about this? So I love that because it gives us those checks on. Oh, we're all getting a bit carried away over here, but what about this? You know we want those sort of elephants brought into the room. So interactivity is a crucial part of how we do everything. I think it makes it fun as well, so that increases the engagement, the connection. Drawn into wanting to do some more training on that is because I saw it being used in other situations as being a really great tool that involves everyone.

Cath:

By the way, you don't have to like Lego. I personally have never played with Lego. It's actually a slightly different kit often, yeah, and my kids don't even really like it. It's probably because I've never really been that enthusiastic, but I was always slightly relieved. But I actually really enjoy doing this and the way it's very clever, the way it's sort of set up and it helps you to actually sort of go against rules that you might think exist about how things, how the blocks and how the different shapes fit together, and it really helps you to be quite creative. But it gives everyone a voice without needing to speak and that everyone will build and everyone a voice without needing to speak and that everyone will build.

Cath:

And it also is a way of expressing some really complex concepts like psychological safety. What does it mean to you? And putting that into a little something that you build is a really great way for everyone to explain what it means to them, to help them to formulate their own thinking about a topic that if you just rely on words, it's often quite difficult for everyone to kind of feel comfortable doing that and it sometimes becomes a bit what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? But the way people build their models, and then you have to also be able to describe what each bit means.

Cath:

So I've used this here and that represents this, and anything can represent anything on your model. So it's really creative. It's very democratic. Everybody builds and then you can do some shared builds, drawing on the individual builds to create a shared model, and so it's just been a really lovely way of having a different tool that can bring some quite complex concepts, and I saw someone else using a lot for helping people understand what a psychological safety mean and in our workplace what's it going to to look like and then to be working that out together, so that's been quite a kind of interesting learning for me. I'm still feel like I'm learning all the time how to use it better, watching other little videos of how people are doing it, but, um, it's been a really great tool to add into my toolkit.

Colin:

I've never used Lego myself. I've been part of a workshop that uses Lego but I imagine one of the good things that it adds, as well as the interaction and the noise, which is always good. I think you know, whenever I start a workshop, I get people talking to each other as soon as I possibly can. I've been to too many workshops myself as an employee where the facilitator made it all about themselves for the first hour. It's like you know, as a facilitator, actually your job is to help other people talk to each other, not for them just to listen to you. If I'm doing a keynote speech for an hour, then people are paying to listen to me. I totally get that, but as a facilitator, I'm facilitating conversations. But the other good thing I imagine with Lego is color, and what color does, is it really unlocks the brain, as well as the exercise as well.

Colin:

And again, based on my own past experiences, and something that I do all of the time in my workshops is my the slide, because someone asked me not so long ago do you use PowerPoint? I was like I do, but not in the way that other people use it. There's no, there's not loads of bullet points, it's not in black and white. I use colorful images. I'll embed TED Talks in my presentation. Everything's got to be specific, everything's got to have a point, it's got to neatly link to the next thing. But the use of color, I think, is crucially important because it just unlocks something in the brain. Also, for anybody who's read my books, you'll know that at the end of my books often the most popular bit is my music list, and so I use music. If you use music, Cath, I use music in my workshops and for my two-day workshops people can suggest music. So I end up becoming part facilitator, part DJ, part keynote speaker.

Colin:

It's exhausting, but that for me, is all part of the experience. And, of course, by the second half of the first day it's always a little bit nervy. First half of the day people are requesting music, people are singing, which is great, which is what you want, because at that stage people are relaxed, they're comfortable, and I imagine that's why I'm saying I imagine the same with Lego. Is there not a childishness? But we unlock the inner child, where all of a sudden play becomes a good thing. And yes, that's a serious business of defining our culture and that's the end point. And, as facilitators, that's where we're taking people. But actually, if they can get into a mode of play or kind of relaxed engagement, it's going to enhance the outcome 100%.

Cath:

It's great, yeah, it's really great for that. It's about playful learning, learning through playing. And you're right, there's colour, there's shapes, there's texture, there's touch. So you know, you're really tapping into all of our senses and there's a huge listening involved Possibly one of the most powerful things, because, as you're describing your model, you're telling a story and everybody's really engaged and we often have a sort of whoever's speaking has this little Lego stick and everyone was listening to that because also, they might. Then, when we build the shared model, they're going to go oh, I like that, I'm going to steal this bit and we'll put this bit together. And how do we? How about we take this and this and put them together? And so you actually get fantastic listening because people are telling a story. It's easier, it's just fascinating to. Oh, how creative. So you learn, yeah, you learn so much. It's been a really great tool.

Colin:

I'm looking forward to experimenting with more groups with that. For sure, and I think you know if you can take anything from this. What Cath and I are talking about is building an experience in and of itself that people will talk about, and so I always say the best outcome from one of my workshops yeah, listen, we always measure them. I always want to see the culture improve, but if people immediately go back to wherever their place of work is regardless of whether it's home or the office or the field wherever they work the next day and they're talking about the experience they had, then already the workshop has added something.

Colin:

Somebody asked me not so long ago I can't remember whether it was an interview or podcast or something and they said well, where did you get the format from your workshops? I said, well, it's an accumulation of things over time. I was like I've done some really, really terrible workshops as an employee, and no fault of the facilitator. They either misread the room, they were employed to do something that you know wasn't required. I was like but I took that knowledge.

Colin:

But I've also done some really great things in 2010 with this guy whose name escapes now. His first name is Rich, he's an American guy and he used music throughout, and I'd never, ever, been to a workshop where there was music ever in my professional life. Up to that point, and ever since I used to have this book, which I've talked about in the past, I used to write all these ideas down and ever since then I've used music, and the way that he used it was so dynamic and it was so great, and so there's as much to learn from poor experiences as there is from good ones, but if you can create something that generates a story in and of itself, then it immediately contributes to a change in condition.

Cath:

Yeah, that's lovely, isn't it?

Cath:

And that's the thing that these workshops evolve all the time.

Cath:

We are accruing new tools and people need different things in different organizations at a different point of maturity, and that's key for us, isn't it? Is to understand where they're at and what will help them to move on. And you can't just apply, you know you've got to do this vision thing, you've got to do that thing next, you know, actually, it's having all of those tools and kind of getting a sense of this is what will help you next, and these are the building blocks. And so, yeah, I always feel every, every workshop is unique and that helps me to be really present and focusing and adapting all the time and thinking how else can I, can I, you know, get more out of people to to really mean they, they've got something really useful to to kind of build on and hopefully also we've got more than one go, because culture doesn't happen in a workshop, doesn't happen in three hours or one day, that you need to leave enough that there are also some clear sense of how that gets continued and deepened and strengthened and built on all the time.

Colin:

Yeah, I think, possibly a good place to end. This is a good reminder that, whatever exercises that you undertake to strengthen your culture, remember you're only building the foundations. That's all you're building. You're building the foundations and then it's up to the team to start building on top of those and, yes, you might see an immediate jump in engagement and productivity. Often I do, but it's the long tail of activity that really generates that sense of togetherness, connectedness, belonging, and that's where you'll see the gains over the long term. And so, for Cath and I and I hope you've enjoyed today, I've enjoyed talking about it is our job is to help you to build those foundations, and you can do likewise.

Cath:

Yeah, I do know. I'm really struck. That reminds me of all the sort of sporting examples where actually you don't have fancy workshops, Maybe you get together a little bit at the beginning. But it is so fundamental. How do we want to turn up day in, day out, on the really difficult days, on the days we lose a match? How are we going to show up in those moments and holding ourselves to that? It's all about the lived culture and the workshops, as you say, they set you up, they give you a little extra momentum, some clarity, bringing people together, setting off. So we're on the same track. But it's then.

Cath:

What happens the next day is absolutely critical and I often think people put less into that. That's sort of the bigger problem with training more generally, leadership development and culture and all of these elements, that it's all about the content on the day, the content of the program, but it's not. It's all about the translation of that workshop into your workplace. So that's really critical and I keep thinking that's where the learning development world is going to move more. It needs to for it to be really impactful and make sense. But you know, therefore, you want more of a coaching approach and you want people to be able to go into the workplace afterwards to help some of that translation as well. So, yeah, there's a lot to make sure people are thinking about not just what can I get in one workshop and then have finished it, but actually how does this then connect into everyday life and the infinite game?

Colin:

of building culture. So culture, as I always say, cultures evolve over time. They don't change in two days. Well, Cath, it's been really interesting to talk about some of the work that we do. I hope others take something from them.

Cath:

Great to chat, as always. Thanks very much. Thanks for listening to today's Inside Out Culture.

Colin:

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Cath Bishop

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Colin D Ellis

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