Free your culture from blame | Issue #247
Six proven ways to create a blame-free culture in your growing business
Think back to the last time someone made a mistake in your business. How did they react? Did they get defensive? Did they try and hide it? Or blame someone else? And how did you respond to the mistake? Did you show your irritation? Was there judgement or punishment?
This will tell you everything you need to know about the health of your business culture and whether it’s blame-free. If there’s psychological safety in the team, people will be comfortable owning up to their mistakes. Fundamentally, there will be no fear of negative consequences.
Fear is an interesting thing. We know from rat experiments how this feeling affects the brain. Rats are put into a maze that they’ve solved before. The researchers then introduce a protein found in cat saliva into the air. The fear this induces causes the rats to lose their creativity. Their problem-solving abilities disappear.
The same thing happens in the human brain. Not only does creativity drop, but inertia kicks in. People have a lower risk tolerance if they’re worried and resist putting their heads above the parapet. Productivity drops like a stone.
All of these are reasons why creating a blame-free culture is important. It’s the only way to ensure that your teams are high performing. So how do you do it?
E252 | The Science of Engagement and Successful Management with Jim Harter
This week we learned from the Chief Workplace Scientist at Gallup, Jim Harter. Jim is also the co-author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Wellbeing at Work and the No. 1 Wall Street Journal and Washington Post bestseller, It’s the Manager. Now, he’s written another book, Culture Shock, where he explores how organisations adapting to this culture shock will determine whether they thrive or even survive and whether U.S. and global productivity will go up or down.
Jim has been studying human behaviour in organisations for 37 years and really gets a kick out of studying what happens inside them. His work at Gallup is to study what happens in the populace at large and to do massive polls of the world and workplaces around the world and understand what’s going on in people’s work and lives.
In this episode, we learned how many days in the office drive engagement. Also, do higher levels of engagement translate into better financial performance? How do we make business more productive and outperform our competitors? We also dig into the data about working from home versus in the office, and we find out what are the five things that drive wellbeing as humans, how to structure one-to-one meetings, and how often they should be. And finally, what are the top five things that we should talk about with our teams every week to drive high levels of engagement
An absolutely fantastic conversation. Download and listen to learn more.
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Culture Shock by Jim Clifton and Jim Harter
Culture Shock offers a solution that outlines a better world of work and life―one with far higher productivity, greater customer retention and better wellbeing. It’s Gallup’s solution to the biggest leadership issue of our time.
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Quote of the week
“The best single question for testing an organisation’s character is: What happens when people make mistakes?”
Robert L. Sutton
MIND YOUR F**KING BUSINESS
Chapter 8. Office Need To Reflect Your Company Culture
Your office space should reflect your company culture. It has to facilitate your employee’s best work, offering functional purpose and creative opportunity. an office space that doesn’t work for them doesn’t work for your business. It has to work better for them than their homes or Starbucks.
Get your copy of Mind Your F**king Business to learn more
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Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.