Riddle Me This

I was here before you arrived and I’ll be here when you’re gone.

I’m hard to see, yet, I’m always present.

Whether you know it or not, you’re constantly changing and shaping me.

Who am I?

I am your workplace culture.

Culture is elusive. It’s hard to grasp and harder to shape. Too many organizations tout benefits that they claim as culture—free beer, food, concerts, etc. Or they say things like we encourage everyone to speak up and make sure they’re included! Those things sound great, but they aren’t workplace culture. Culture is shaped and reflected through the ways we interact, collaborate, meet, celebrate, reflect, hire, and more.

In other words, culture is shaped through the ways we work.

If you aren’t being intentional, then the ways you work WON’T create or support the culture you want.
If you are being intentional, then the ways you work WILL create and support the culture you want.
This means identifying the ways you’re working that aren’t serving you and experimenting with new ways of working to drive the behaviors that will bring about your desired culture.

Example:

Inclusion goals for staff meetings: To build trust, connection, and a sense of community within the team while aligning on and moving work forward.

In Unintentional (typical) Staff Meetings: 
👎 Meetings start late or whenever the leader joins
😡 Meetings are typically dominated by the leader, extroverts, and/or men
🙅‍♀️ Agendas are curated by the leader, assuming what the team needs
💣 Decisions are made without inviting the perspectives of all attendees

In Intentional Staff Meeting: 
❤️ Meeting starts with a Check-In to get present, share air-space, and build connection
🙌 The team curates the agenda together in order to “get what they need”
🎯 Decisions are made using an agreed upon and repeatable process
🪞Shared learning and reflection are embedded into the meeting structure

🔥🔥If you want your meetings to run like the intentional one above, Try out an Action Meeting. Make sure to give it at least 10 tries before deciding if it works or not, that way you can get past the “this is stupid” or “this will never work” phases of resisting change.

Are you intentional in the ways you build culture in your organization? If so, how?