This Conversation Stopped Me In My Tracks
Last week, in the middle of a crowded department store, I overheard a telephone conversation between a man and his wife that stopped me in my tracks. I realized that it was a private conversation so I did what anyone else would do….I continued shopping and listened. Sorry. Judge me later. Here was his side of the conversation:
“OK. So today, after everything else, your manager threw a pen at you and was screaming at you? And HR was aware of the situation? Did they do anything about it? Why not? Have you called the police? OK. Let me get in touch with the attorney. But don’t leave. If you leave before the end of your shift, they can fire you and we won’t have a case.”
I was really curious about the events that were unfolding and, over the next five minutes, I listened as the conversation continued. It was obvious that this manager’s style had been a problem for some time. Before hanging up and walking away, my fellow shopper had given his wife specific instructions on what she should do and say to make sure they were in the best position to take legal action. It was clear that trouble was brewing.
I thought about the advice that I would give to the owners of that business and their Human Resources team if given the opportunity.
Your Workplace Culture Should Be Intentionally Created and Carefully Guarded
As I mentioned, I only heard one side of the conversation, but when he asked his wife if Human Resources had done anything about the situation, his follow-up question, “Why not?” gave me the impression that the problem had not been addressed.
One of the core responsibilities of a business owner or HR leader is ensuring that the work environment and culture is conducive for employees to perform their jobs well. It was clear that the issues she was experiencing with her manager were nothing new. A situation like this creates a ripple effect throughout the business unit or organization, damaging trust, inhibiting teamwork, disrupting workflow, and, as I’ll discuss later, creating a huge financial risk.
As a business leader, if a member of your leadership team has to resort to throwing pens and screaming to get the desired level of performance (regardless of how bad the current performance is) they simply have no business leading. They're damaging to the business and destroy your efforts to engage and retain high-quality talent.
Popular recruiting websites such as GlassDoor actively encourage employees to post candid comments about their workplace experiences, positive or negative, for everyone to see. Negative comments on sites like this deter high-quality candidates from applying to your open positions. Situations like this can cause long-term damage.
What is Workplace Culture, Anyway?
Loosely defined, workplace culture is the environment in which you and your employees work. It’s the manner in which things get done, the behaviors that are rewarded, the stories that illustrate what the company stands for. It’s the operating tone of the company and the image that it portrays to its employees and customers.
The Practical Value of a Strong (and Positive) Workplace Culture
Highly successful companies typically have a strong and intentionally crafted workplace culture that's closely tied to their core values. Effective leaders make a consistent effort to demonstrate the core values and make sure they're clearly understood and embraced by employees.
A positive and "effective" culture offers consistency and encourages behaviors that lead to the growth of the organization. It’s a competitive advantage as it’s difficult to replicate, it creates greater alignment throughout the organization, and leads to higher levels of trust, engagement, teamwork, retention, and loyalty. These, in turn, tend to lead to better performance and financial results.
Creating an Effective Workplace Culture
If you want your workplace culture to drive great results, here are a few things to consider.
Companies that excel in the marketplace do not leave their cultures to chance. They craft them carefully and focus constant energy on driving them, communicating, modeling, and molding behavioral experiences and the physical environment. If the characteristics truly drive successful performance, they need to be taken seriously and continually demonstrated, especially by leadership.
First, be very intentional about the characteristics and behaviors that you want to see. And, for that matter, the behaviors that you don’t want to see. The characteristics should support your core values. Whether it’s teamwork, professionalism, personal accountability, creativity, or any other attribute that will enable you to deliver on your brand promise, figure out the behaviors that would make it happen. Think about situations where your team was operating at its best. What was happening? Who was involved and how were they acting? Once you have a list of the key behaviors, review your processes, policies, and practices to make sure they support them.
It’s also important to remember that small businesses have a limited amount of time to establish their cultures. As they grow, culture becomes increasingly difficult to change.
Second, make sure that your hiring practices are yielding candidates who can operate in and support that culture. Let me be clear on this…do not hire an applicant who has great technical skill but is a bad culture fit. You can build technical skills. It is much harder to shape personality traits and behaviors.
Your interview process and questions need to reveal whether the candidate possesses not only the technical skill but the behaviors necessary to be successful with the team and your customers. Your on-boarding process should include very clear references to the desired culture and behaviors that are conducive to success. Your performance management practices? Yep. That too. Performance reviews need to focus not only to what gets done but the manner in which it gets done.
Finally, promote it. Talk about it. This is where many employers miss a significant opportunity. Make sure that employees clearly understand your vision of how business should get done. This requires coaching. When there is a disconnect between the desired and displayed behaviors, address it. When behaviors are clearly aligned with those you want to see, recognize and reinforce them. Remember that, in the absence of reinforcement, employees will revert to their natural tendencies which may or may not be aligned.
Today, focus on creating a culture where employees feel heard, valued, and respected. You can still have high-performance expectations but creating the right culture is like preparing good soil before you plant a seed. The resulting growth can be incredible.
One Final Point About the Phone Conversation
Just a final point to consider. As an employer, you are, in many cases, responsible for the actions of your employees, particularly when those actions are taking place in the course and scope of work activities. It’s called vicarious liability. If the employee mentioned above files a charge, the cost for the employer to defend it could easily reach $100,000. If the employee prevails, the judgment will far exceed that figure.
The financial risk of an unprofessional or potentially “hostile” work environment is real enough. But the damage caused by this type of behavior extends far beyond anything financial. It impacts both the customer experience and the employment brand.
There is a strong correlation between the treatment employees receive and their ability to deliver a great customer experience. Employees who are treated with dignity and respect are likely to treat others in a similar fashion.
HR Strategies Now is about helping small- to mid-sized businesses thrive through the development of solid Human Resource practices. Don’t leave your company culture to chance. Let’s prepare to win. Contact HR Strategies Now.
July 12, 2021
From Theory to Execution - Building a Culture That Demands Leadership If leadership excellence isn’t about knowledge, then what is it about? It’s about building an environment where leadership is required, visible, and unavoidable. Most organizations never get there. Here’s how the ones that do think differently. Step 1: Define Leadership in Behavioral Terms “Be a better leader” is meaningless. Instead, define leadership like this: “Addresses performance issues within 48 hours” “Delegates decisions with clear ownership and authority” “Drives clarity by aligning team priorities weekly” If you can’t see it, you can’t manage it. Step 2: Make Leadership Measurable What gets measured gets managed. Ask: Are decisions being pushed down or pulled up? Are leaders developing successors or creating dependency? Is accountability consistent across teams? Are new ideas being generated? If leadership isn’t measured, it becomes subjective - and subjective standards don’t scale. Step 3: Align Consequences with Expectations This is where most organizations fail. They say leadership matters, but they tolerate: avoidance of difficult conversations inconsistent accountability leaders who produce results but damage culture siloed and self-optimizing behavior You can’t have leadership excellence without consequences for non-leadership behavior . Step 4: Build Leadership into the Operating System Leadership isn’t a program. It’s how the business runs. It shows up in: how meetings are conducted how decisions are made how performance is reviewed how feedback is delivered If leadership only shows up in training sessions, it won’t stick. Step 5: Create Cultural Pressure for Leadership The strongest cultures don’t rely on top-down enforcement. They create peer-level expectations. Leaders hold each other accountable, teams expect clarity and ownership, and underperformance is addressed quickly and directly Leadership becomes the norm, rather than the exception. The Payoff When leadership becomes part of the system, execution speeds up, decision-making improves, teams take ownership, and senior leaders get out of the weeds. And the organization finally operates at the level its strategy demands. Final Thought Most companies are trying to teach leadership. The best companies build environments where leadership is the only way to succeed . That’s the shift. And once it happens, everything else gets easier.
Let’s address the uncomfortable truth: Most leaders already know what they should be doing. They just don’t do it consistently. Not because they’re incapable - but because something is working against them. What’s Really Holding Leaders Back? It’s not a lack of awareness. It’s a combination of three forces that quietly shape behavior: 1. Success Has Trained Them to Stay the Same Leaders are promoted because they deliver results. So they double down on what got them there: solving problems themselves moving quickly by making decisions solo stepping in when things go sideways The problem? Those behaviors don’t scale. But letting go of them feels risky. So they don’t. 2. Short-Term Pressure Overrides Long-Term Discipline In theory, leaders know they should: coach instead of direct develop instead of fix empower instead of control But in reality? Deadlines hit. Clients escalate. Revenue matters. So they revert to speed and control because it’s faster right now. And just like that, long-term leadership development loses to short-term execution pressure. 3. The Organization Quietly Rewards the Wrong Behavior Watch closely and you’ll see it - the leader who “jumps in and saves the day” gets praised. Or the leader who builds a self-sufficient team gets overlooked. Or perhaps the leader who avoids conflict keeps the peace and avoids backlash. Organizations say they want leadership excellence. But their reward systems often reinforce the opposite. Why This Matters More Than You Think When leaders don’t change: their teams don’t grow decision-making stays centralized innovation slows burnout increases at the top And eventually, the business hits a ceiling that no strategy can fix. The Real Work of Leadership Development If you want leaders to change, you have to change the environment around them. That means: redefining what “good leadership” looks like aligning incentives with the behaviors you want creating consequences for avoiding leadership responsibilities Because people don’t rise to expectations. They rise to what the system reinforces .
Most companies don’t lack leadership knowledge—they lack execution. Discover why leadership fails and what it takes to turn insight into results.
