Are you unknowingly letting your team culture crumble? In today's episode, we dissect the five common behaviors that are, quite frankly, sabotaging your team culture. We all fall prey to being excessively polite or avoiding conflict, but it's time we address these issues. I'll share some personal encounters and how I navigated through them to build a healthier, more productive team.
Then, we switch gears to talk about becoming more intentional in your leadership and fostering a robust team culture. We've all been in those aimlessly long meetings and experienced the frustration of inconsistent communication. Let's change that. I'll share strategies on how you can assess and amend these behaviors. Tune in to transform your team culture from just a nice idea to a truly inspired reality. Don't forget to join my free webinar to delve deeper into this discussion and connect with us on social media to share your insights!
Register for the Webinar
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Are you unknowingly letting your team culture crumble? In today's episode, we dissect the five common behaviors that are, quite frankly, sabotaging your team culture. We all fall prey to being excessively polite or avoiding conflict, but it's time we address these issues. I'll share some personal encounters and how I navigated through them to build a healthier, more productive team.
Then, we switch gears to talk about becoming more intentional in your leadership and fostering a robust team culture. We've all been in those aimlessly long meetings and experienced the frustration of inconsistent communication. Let's change that. I'll share strategies on how you can assess and amend these behaviors. Tune in to transform your team culture from just a nice idea to a truly inspired reality. Don't forget to join my free webinar to delve deeper into this discussion and connect with us on social media to share your insights!
Register for the Webinar
We need your help to get the Lead Culture podcasts in front of more leaders! There are three simple things you can do that truly help us:
Hey leaders, welcome to the Lead Culture Podcast, part of the Art of Leadership Network. I'm your host, Jenni Catron. Each week, I'll be your guide as we explore powerful insights and practical strategies to equip you with the tools you need to lead with clarity and confidence and build a thriving team. My mission is to be your trusted coach, empowering you to master the art of self-leadership so you'll learn to lead yourself well, so you can lead others better. Each week, we'll take a deep dive on a leadership or a culture topic. You'll hear stories from amazing guests and leaders like you who are committed to leading well. So let's get started on this leadership adventure together.
Speaker 1:Leaders, did you know that a recent Gallup poll revealed that only two in 10 employees feel connected to their company culture? Two in 10 employees 20% of your team feel connected to your culture. So, with numbers like that, it's no surprise that organizations are struggling with things like just lack of ownership, quiet quitting, high turnover and disengaged team members. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. Every leader longs for an engaged team, but rarely do we know what to do when we've lost that connection in camaraderie that are the result of a healthy team culture. The solution. Healthy organizational culture is not blissful agreement aka kumbaya. It's intentional commitment to values and behaviors that define how we work together to achieve our mission.
Speaker 1:This week I'm doing a free webinar called Less Kumbaya and More Systems how to Move Culture from a Nice Idea to a Practical Reality. In this webinar, I will share the practical steps to build a system that fosters employee engagement, protects alignment and accelerates growth. Every leader should be able to unleash the true potential of your team. So are you ready to take culture from a nice idea to an inspired reality? If so, I want you to join me this Thursday, November 2nd, at 1 pm central. So hopefully you're listening to this in real time as it releases, because there is still time to join me for this webinar. You can register at the link in our show notes or just email us at podcast@ get4sight. com that's podcast at get4sight g-e-t, the number four s-i-g-h-t. com, and put webinar in the subject line and we will get you registered. I can't wait to see you all there.
Speaker 1:Well, friends, speaking of making culture actionable, today I'm going to talk about five common behaviors eroding your culture. See, sometimes I struggle to communicate culture succinctly. I bet you can relate to that. Maybe that's why this is such a challenging topic for so many leaders, because we just don't know where to start. Everything feels like culture, doesn't it in some shape or form? And perhaps to some degree that's true.
Speaker 1:Personally, I define culture for teams as who we are and how we work together to achieve our mission, so kind of basically everything we do. No wonder it's a bit overwhelming. Right, we hold our breath and we cross our fingers when our team is thriving, like we're so excited to see them working well together, and we just hope beyond hope it'll stay that way. But if we're honest, we're not really sure how we got there and we're afraid that one wrong move could topple it all. We're often unsure of what makes it go well and really what makes it go poorly. Then you layer on the myriad of other responsibilities we're juggling to keep the organization moving.
Speaker 1:Culture just gets relegated to the back burner. It's not on fire, so hopefully it will just be okay. But as the familiar adage goes, hope, my friends, is not a strategy, and that's the problem I see too many leaders making, hoping that their culture will be okay and just work itself out. And if we sniff a few problems, we usually delegate it to HR and hope it gets better. But, friends, it doesn't go away. Culture exists, whether you acknowledge it or not, and it doesn't get better on its own. Healthy, sustainable, scalable culture needs a strategy and it needs a system. Just like every other organizational initiative, great culture needs a plan. You're not going to accidentally arrive at your desired destination. You have to define it to achieve it.
Speaker 1:So today I'm sharing five common behaviors that erode your team culture. Now, this is by no means an exhaustive list, but there are five common issues I see the best teams struggle with. So let's dive into these five behaviors. Now here's the first one You're too polite. Did that perk your curiosity a little bit? You're too polite. I see teams like this all the time. I will go in and we will do a workshop together, I'll do a training day together and everybody's on their best behavior. Everybody's polite, nobody wants to disagree, and here's the thing it's out of a desire to be kind.
Speaker 1:So we avoid conflict. We agree when we actually don't. We not approval when we're really not sure. We avoid discussions with coworkers for fear of disagreement. We just want to keep the peace right and, particularly in Christian organizations, we think we're supposed to be nice and agreeable, and so we play nice in the room, but there's no telling the conversations that are happening, the whispers in the hallways. Now, I'm not suggesting that we be insensitive jerks, but good teams are marked by healthy conflict. They know how to debate. If we don't agree, we respectfully speak up, we ask more questions, we seek understanding and we work through difficult issues together. Those are the hallmarks of a great team. They actually know how to have healthy, engaged debate and conflict.
Speaker 1:Now let me tell you a story. Number of years ago I was working on a church staff team and one of my exec team members and myself were in my office having a pretty heated conversation about something we disagreed about One of the girls who sat outside of my office. Her cubicle was outside of my office, she was brand new to the team and this other leader and I had probably not realized that she was so close by, and so he and I have this pretty heated conversation. We very much disagreed on an issue. We worked through it, our voices were a little intense, the volume was a little raised and we talked through it and we opened the door and we're like high-fiving and leaving the room united. And this other coworker who was sitting outside the door. She came into my office and she said I have never seen anything like that. She said I heard you guys in here. I could tell the conversation was heated and I thought like something bad was going to happen because other cultures she had been a part of. That was like an unhealthy sign and she was like I was so shocked to see you walk out like high-fiving and aligned, walking out the door. She said I've never seen anything like that. And so, guys, that's the kind of like able to dig in respectfully, with intention, but be able to walk out unified.
Speaker 1:See, conflict avoidance creates false harmony which ultimately becomes toxic. So, leaders, you want to teach your team to be honest and respectful rather than passive and polite. So number one is a common behavior eroding your culture. Is your two polite. Number two you lack clear direction and expectations. So here's where this comes from.
Speaker 1:It's typically for us as leaders, it's out of a fear of micromanaging that we don't provide enough clarity for things like direction, goals and expectations. Now, oftentimes we'll give the really big, like 30,000 foot picture or vision, but we fail to give the clear direction and expectations for, like, the next week, the next month, the next quarter, and often we perceive that kind of directiveness as micromanagement. So we avoid it because we don't want to be that micromanager. Well, what we do is we create frustration and confusion for our team because we're not giving them enough direction for them to know where to focus and, funny enough, it ultimately often leads us to needing to micromanage because things have gone off course. So then we end up circling back around and we have to do the very thing we were trying to avoid because we didn't give enough direction or goals or clear expectations on the front.
Speaker 1:I say this over and over and over Clarity is a hallmark of good culture. Your team needs direction. They need clarity to keep them aligned. They're looking to you to provide it so that they can take action and be on mission with you. They want to be with you, like if you've set that 30,000-foot vision for the future. They want to know okay, what does that mean for today? What does that mean for next week? What does that mean for next month? You want to keep giving that direction and the expectation. You want to be giving them the expectation, the outcome, and then letting them figure out how to fill it in along the way. But what happens is we leave some of those details to chance and then we have to come back and be more hands-on, which actually is where we become the micromanager. So clarity is a hallmark of good culture. Where does your team need direction? Where do you need to set clearer expectations so that they can align with those? All right?
Speaker 1:Number three you don't have peer accountability. You don't have peer accountability. Now, what do I mean by this? I mean team members being able to go to one another to check in on work. Hey, john, you had mentioned that you were going to have that marketing plan finished by Friday, but I haven't seen it yet. Is that ready? That's peer accountability, because John committed to having the plan ready by Friday. It's Tuesday and it's not ready. So you're asking John hey, you said you'd have this ready a couple of days ago. Is it ready yet? I haven't seen it. That's peer accountability.
Speaker 1:But out of a desire to be helpful and supportive, leaders often overfunction and you resolve things that your team should have resolved themselves. So instead of going to John directly, susie comes to you, her boss, and says you know what? I haven't seen that report from John. Then you go to John and so you start triangulating. There's no reason Susie couldn't have talked to John directly. But we overfunction and we play mediator between team members or referee in some extreme situations. Here's what I want you to pay attention to. If all roads lead back to you as a leader, if you're the hub of the wheel and everybody comes back to you, everything comes to you and comes through you, you're probably inhibiting peer-to-peer accountability and interactions. Here's why team members do this. It's easier to go to you and say, hey, I thought John was supposed to have that report done, but I haven't seen it. It's more uncomfortable to go directly to John and say hey, john, you said you were going to have that report ready. I haven't seen it. You see the difference there. It's easier for the team member to come to you as the leader, as the more senior authority, and hope that you will fix it or hope you'll follow up with John. But it's a better organizational behavior when peers are holding one another accountable.
Speaker 1:Great teams need to be able to work cross-functionally across teams and hierarchy to get things done. Again, if it's an agreed upon expectation like we are working out a plan in a meeting together and you know John's supposed to have this done at this time. You're supposed to have this done at this time. You're supposed to have this done here. And if one of us doesn't come through on that agreement, then it is absolutely appropriate for us to go to one another to check on that. But some teams get in the habit of just going back to the leader and expecting the leader will resolve it, and so I want you to push back against that. And so simple thing you do. If Susie comes to you and says hey, I haven't seen that report from John, do you know if he hasn't done yet? I don't know, have you checked with John yet? Go check with him and I'm sure he's got an answer for you, and that's it. You encourage them to go back to one another. And then there are very rare cases where you actually need to get into the conversation, and when you do, bring both parties into the room with you. That would be my other encouragement, but that's another topic for another day.
Speaker 1:Okay, so so far we've talked about number one you're too polite. Number two you lack clear direction and expectations. Number three you don't have peer accountability. Here's number four your meetings don't have a clear purpose. Now, guys, bad meetings waste time and they create complacency within your team. Now, I have done a lot of conversations around this topic and so I won't belabor it today. Bad meetings waste time and create complacency.
Speaker 1:When you lead a bad meeting, when your meeting doesn't have a clear purpose, there's not a clear agenda, there's not a clear takeaway and action, steps and follow-up, you're unintentionally communicating that you don't value your team's time. You're teaching them how to value time by how you conduct meetings. Does that make sense? Kind of sounds crazy, but you're actually teaching your team how to value their time and how to actually lead other meetings by how you lead them. So meetings give you, as a leader, the opportunity to bring clarity, vision, direction, alignment and accountability. They allow you to move things forward at a faster pace because you've got everybody in the room aligned and in the conversation together.
Speaker 1:But if your meetings are not purposeful, you're setting a culture that lacks purpose and communicates that that lack of purpose is actually okay. Hey, it's okay to spend an hour in a room having a conversation with no clear outcome. I'm pretty sure you would never say that, and yet that's the impression we give our team sometimes, by the way we host meetings. So I want you to think about? Do your meetings have a clear purpose? Are you being intentional with them? Don't be lazy with your meetings. Don't use it just as a time to sit around the table and just chit chat Like. Have clear purpose, because it is informing your culture.
Speaker 1:And now, number five your communication is poor or inconsistent. Guys, I'm going to be honest with you, this is one of the hardest ones for me. We rarely communicate as well as we think we do. It takes a tremendous amount of intentionality to anticipate what our team needs and then to purposefully communicate those details to them. So we have to be anticipatory as leaders, trying to think of what is my team going to need so that they are equipped to do the work that they need to do.
Speaker 1:The consistent part of communication is the issue that frequently trips me up, that consistency piece. And for me, because I travel so much for work, the weeks that I'm traveling become really inconsistent. My communication is more episodic and sporadic, because I might be on site all day with the team. Right now I've spent two weeks working in England, so I'm on a completely different time zone, and so my communication is a lot more erratic. And I know that that creates frustration for the team because they're not getting the same level of consistency in communication from me, and so I want you to think about your communication habits.
Speaker 1:Meetings are one opportunity for communication, but I want you to consider the various avenues that you use for communication email, slack, texting, phone whatever resources you use for communication channels in your organization. I want to challenge you to be more consistent and more frequent, even knowing what is your team actually need from you, and the key to good communication is anticipation, and here's the real clincher on this Is that good communication is respecting your team enough to think ahead and anticipate what they need, so that you know how to equip them to do their best work. Good, consistent communication is really an act of respect for your team, and so that's what I want you to be thinking about when it related to communication. It's both the intent and it's the delivery, and it's huge as far as shaping culture. Okay, so here are these five things again. Number one you're too polite. Number two, you lack clear direction and expectations. Number three, you don't have peer accountability. Number four, your meetings don't have a clear purpose. And number five, your communication is poor or inconsistent. So I wanna encourage you. I hope this wasn't too discouraging today.
Speaker 1:These are just the five common behaviors, really easy ones for us to slip into as teams. It's not an exhaustive list, but it just gives you a couple of things to be thinking about, things that erode your culture, that you might not even be realizing. And I want you to take a minute and I want you to rate yourself on them. Right, just okay, how am I doing on these? You know red, yellow, green.
Speaker 1:Rate them one to five, I don't care, you can pick the scale, but take a minute and rate yourself on them and then maybe discuss them with your team to get their perspective right. This might be a great conversation. To sit around to the team and go, hey, are we too polite? Are we, like you know, kind of creating false harmony? We're not really ready, really willing to engage. So rate each of the five and have a discussion about it. And then I want you to look at them and pick which one of the five could you intentionally work on this week. You don't need to do all of them, that's gonna be overwhelmed. I just want you to pick a couple that you're gonna focus on and say I'm gonna give extra attention to this this week. I'm gonna be clear with my direction and expectations and that's where I'm gonna focus this week. You pick yours, but that's what I want you to think about this week. Also, don't forget to register for my free webinar Less, kumbaya and More Systems. Let's figure out how to build a system that really supports our culture, and you can either click the link in the show notes or email podcast at getforsightcom. Just put webinar in the subject line and we will get you all the details.
Speaker 1:All right, friends, that's it for this week. I hope that that was helpful to you. I hope it keeps helping you lead yourself well so you can lead others better. Connect with us on social media. We're at Get4 sight. Let us know what is helpful to you, how we can serve you better. I would love it if you would share the episode with another leader. Maybe this got you thinking. Maybe you wanna share the episode with your team and say, okay, listen to this. Then let's talk about it, because I think there's some things we can do to help our culture be healthier and stronger. And then, if we can help you in any way, be sure to check us out at get4sight. com. That's G-E-T, the number four, s-i-g-h-t. com. All right, friends, thanks for listening today. Lead well this week and I will see you next week.