Creating Conscious Hybrid Cultures
How do you retain (or better still) strengthen your team culture when you're no longer co-located 5 days each week?
Now that we've been experimenting with Hybrid WorkPlace rhythms and routines, the conversation is turning to Culture.
How do we retain it or better still, improve it?
You may be familiar with the 'ice block model of change', where a significant catalyst temporarily unfreezes the status quo, and creates a unique opportunity to re-create it in a new form.
Rather than leave it to chance, it's wise to give conscious consideration to the culture which will serve you best in our new world.
We know there's a small window of opportunity to create team cultures uniquely fit for the new Hybrid world.
And... the opportunity won't last forever!
A New Culture for a New World of Work
Prior to covid, it was becoming clear there was a long overdue transition required in leadership and team practices, to create cultures better able to support optimal performance and reduce the likelihood of burnout and psychological distress in our modern workplace.
This was further highlighted during covid, with the blurring of the work / home boundary, social isolation and increased demands on carers, cumulatively creating an endemic of exhaustion*.
Together with new International Standards resetting expectations for physically and psychologically safe modern WorkPlaces, it's evident the need for 2-dimensional leadership (which optimises personal and professional performance) is no longer 'nice to have', it's a 'must have'.
Today's modern workforce crave 2-dimensional leaders who optimise a clear focus on cultural and emotional inputs, with tangible results and outcomes.
As the Value of Culture Continuum confirms, there are some hard outcomes associated with what has been traditionally perceived a 'soft' metric or secondary leadership skill.
Leaders who balance Cultures of Care with a Clear focus on Performance, are what's required now, more than ever.
The Essence of Modern Leadership
To identify which leadership traits optimise thriving team cultures and performance focussed humans, we can combine insights from the research and real life. Google captured the essence of modern leadership when they identified their most effective leaders cared personally about their people, and clearly supported their performance.
When McKinsey decoded the 4 leadership behaviours which account for 89% of leadership effectiveness, care and clarity also featured.
Care with Clarity were the 2 leadership traits which separated Google's best leaders from the rest.
MIT Sloan confirmed cultures high in clarity and candour (with bosses, peers and external stakeholders) have an outsized impact on performance, but "are relatively rare because of the associated risks".
The Risk Reward Equation
Individuals and teams typically perform an unconscious mental calculation about what degree of candour is appropriate for the context.
If the reward for speaking up is higher than the risk, people will be more willing to take the "career, social, professional or personal risks"* associated with clear but caring candour.
The risk of speaking up has to be lower than the potential reward.
Both research and real life confirm the best leaders exhibit a high degree of personal courage which pays dividends in the form of:
Exceeding stakeholder performance expectations;
Fostering team cohesion & growth, and
Supporting individual learning & wellbeing.
Companies with consciously clear and caring cultures experience a 'culture and performance dividend'.
And when leaders lead with this approach, they make it psychologically safe for others in the team to do the same, which magnifies the ‘care with clarity’ culture beyond the team.
The Value of Psychological Safety
Perhaps it's not surprising, Google also discovered Psychological Safety was the #1 factor in their highest performing teams. Whilst Psychological Safety has been around since the 1950s, it's Clark's research which confirms there's a continuum of Psychological Safety rather than it being a binary state.
Teams achieve the highest degree of Psychological Safety (ie. level 4), when they constructively and productively challenge one another. Before they can do this, however, they must build strong foundations by:
creating strong inclusive team connections;
being willing to make mistakes, unlearn & relearn, and
embracing curiosity and collaboration to capture the collective intelligence of the team.
Psychological Safety is a team sport which is leadership led.
If leaders wish team members to reach the highest level of Psychological Safety, constructively and productively challenging one another, they have to enable and reward the foundational 3 behaviours.
The Leadership Traits of Psychologically Safe Teams
Just as teams need to build strong relationships to earn the trust to challenge one another, leaders do too.
As this graphic from McKinsey shows, it's the Consultative and Supportive Leadership approaches which create a mature culture of Psychological Safety in teams.
Traditional authoritarian leadership traits with high clarity / candour and lower care / collaboration, reduce Psychological Safety. The top down, tell / talk behaviours serve to reduce inclusion and belonging, which diminishes a team's thrive factor.
Consultative leadership behaviours which are more collaborative, ask / listen focussed and Supportive behaviours which are higher in care, enhance a team’s psychological safety. Despite increasing inclusion and belonging and earning teams 'the right' to challenge one another, these behaviours are practiced by fewer than 41% of leaders*.
It's the Challenger leadership style which enables teams to question the status quo and create an environment where individuals and teams can exceed expectations and thrive personally and professionally.
Nuances Matter
The best leaders have the emotional intelligence to know when a team's culture is sufficiently robust to inject intense clarity and candour. The best leaders consciously flex between making deposits into the 'cultural account' which increases psychological safety and the 'performance account'.
What does this mean for the Hybrid WorkPlace?
Culture is created through communication.
The most effective communication is face-to-face.
Communication occurs leveraging different modes; ie. face to face, remote or a blend; or through varying mediums; verbal, written or video.
As communication is more effective face to face*, it's important to prioritise the face to face mode for particularly important topics or when high degrees of collaboration are required.
The mode or medium matters less than the content itself.
Communication which balances 'candour with care' creates conscious High Performance Cultures
Creating Competitive Advantage through Culture
Whilst policies and pay are easy for competitors to replicate and may go some way to reducing the exodus of talent many companies are currently experiencing, one of the primary reasons team members are leaving is culture.*
As cultures are much harder for competitors to replicate and there are significant rewards for leaders and teams who optimise culture and performance, my advice is to sweat the content of your communication, more than the work location.
Culture is more about what we 'say and do', than it is about WorkPlace Location.
As there is a unique window of opportunity before the culture ice block refreezes, no matter whether you're co-located or remote, I recommend quickly adjusting your focus to co-creating a conscious culture of care with candour in your team.
At I LEAD Consulting we’re on a mission to simplify Diversity and Inclusion for Leaders and Teams.
PRACTICE INCLUSION | EMBRACE DIVERSITY | ACTIVATE ALLIES
*McKinsey; MIT Behaviour Lab
