130. How do I reboot company culture after a long year?

Transcript – Episode 130: How do I reboot company culture after a long year?

Joe: There are a couple of things you should be thinking about doing right now at the end of the year to ensure that next year gets off to a great start for your team.

Joe: Welcome to the Boss Better Now podcast sponsored by Boss Hero School where we teach leaders and business owners how to activate employee commitment in today’s everchanging workplace. And congratulations, you made it. You’ve gotten to the end of yet another year. It’s time to celebrate. And maybe you are. Maybe you’re doing a couple of things with your team at work. You’re winding some things down. Maybe there’s a retreat or a holiday party planned. And maybe you’re starting to think, how do I reboot our company culture after a long year? It’s a conversation that’s worth having right now because the end of one year and the beginning of another is of course the most natural of times to reflect on what was and to think ahead to what will be. And the truth is that as a leader in the workplace, anytime you’re trying to move the needle on anything, anytime you’re trying to influence what people think or how they show up, it really does come down to both the message and the actions that you take in support of that message. We know that communication from leaders is one of the most sought-after qualities from teams. In fact, when you ask teams in the workplace, uh, what is something we could do better at? One of the top answers that you hear from employees again and again and again is this idea of communication. And at the end of the year, there’s a really opportune time to do some messaging. And if you want to reboot company culture, if you want to put a bow on the end of this year and get off on the right foot for next year, there are a couple of things that I want you to think about in a message that you share with your team. And what I want you to keep in mind is that this message is going to be multi-channel. Maybe you share this message at the holiday party or the end of the year retreat, but you’re also going to share this message in individual conversations that you’re going to have with team members. And maybe you also put it into an email that goes out to everybody in the organization at the end of the year. And what I want you to do in this message is two things. I want you to acknowledge what you’ve accomplished this year and then I want you to start to lay out some hope and some vision for next year. We have to acknowledge what you have accomplished and overcome this year because your team probably did some really great things and they probably fought through some struggles or some obstacles. And so, I want you to take a few minutes to look back on and make explicit what they did and how they did it. describe the impact that they’ve made. This is not taking an inventory of everything that was hard. It’s pointing at them and saying, “Look what you did. Look what you fought through. If you had struggles or difficulties this year, if your team was dealing with uh over booked schedules or understaffing, if they were navigating difficult customers or um outdated equipment, say that. say, “Hey, we had some challenges that we had to face this year, but what I want you to know is you had a tremendous impact.” And then I want you to describe that impact. If you built 14 new homes in your community because you’re a homebuilder, I want you to talk about those 14 families who are waking up on New Year’s Day in their new home. If you took care of 10,000 patients in your clinic this year, I want you to talk about the warmth and the support and the care that all of those folks received at the hands of your team. Remember, this is not about what they overcame. It’s about the impact that they had. And I don’t want you to rush through this. I want you to frame it as achievement, not difficulty. And then as you share this message, you’re going to pivot. You’re going to pivot to a conversation about the hope you have for the year ahead. What we know is that hope is actually the most sought-after quality in leaders from followers. It’s true. Gallup actually had research that came out this year about the most sought-after qualities in leadership. And number one is hope. Hope is a fundamental need that we have as human beings. We have to believe that the future is positive. And if you want people to show up with effort and caring, we’ve got to give them some hope. Now, this doesn’t mean that you believe and naively describe a perfect scenario for the year ahead. That’s very unlikely to be true. You’ve got to keep it real, as they say. If the challenges that you’ve dealt with this year are still going to be present next year, well, let’s talk about that, but let’s also talk about what we’re doing to help them navigate those challenges. Let’s talk about the improvements that you’re making. If we know that they’re going to be dealing with really difficult customers, then let’s talk about some additional training and coaching and support that we’re going to be giving to folks to navigate those conversations. if they’re still going to have to deal with outdated equipment, then let’s talk about the path that you’re on to try to get new equipment or to do repairs more often on the equipment that you do have. What I want you to do in this conversation that projects forward into the future is I want you to talk about what you care about, what your values are, and what you’re working to improve for the year ahead. And I want you to talk about the potential impact that your team will have in the year ahead. It’s a chance for you to remind them about what matters and why we do what we do. So, this is the first part of how you reboot company culture after a long year is I want you to think about the message and I want you to acknowledge what people have accomplished and what they’ve overcome and I want you to start to talk about the hope that you have for the year ahead and paint that picture for them. Now, the second part of what you have to do is what comes after the message. It’s action. Right? If you deliver this message and you talk about all these things that you’re hopeful about in the year ahead and all the improvements that you’re trying to make and all the ways that you’re going to support them going forward and then they don’t see or experience anything after that, you’re going to get the opposite of hope. You’re going to get despair because that’s what happens when people hear a message that doesn’t line up with their experiences. If you watched one of my episodes a couple of weeks ago about company culture, you heard me describe that culture is the way we do things around here. And that culture really is not some big ethereal idea, but culture is a collection of experiences. And so if you want to reboot your company culture and you want a different experience for your customers or your employees in the year ahead, I need you to be thinking about what experiences those employees need to have to show up differently and what experiences do they need to have that will reinforce the message that you shared about the positive things that are coming in the year ahead. If you said you were going to make improvements to equipment, then you’ve got to actually do that. If you’ve said that you’re going to try to ease the burden on their time or their capacity, then what changes are you making to staffing or schedules that makes that happen? If you talked in that message about your core values, is how they are experiencing their workplace and their leadership lining up with those values? For example, if you say one of our core values is family, but your employees never get any flexibility when unexpected family things crop up, then that isn’t what you value, and you will damage morale if you don’t have that alignment. So, these are the things that I want you to be thinking about. What experiences do your people on your team need to have in the year ahead to have a different kind of culture to have different experiences and how can you engineer those for them? You can actually invite their input on this. I’m a big fan of a periodic team retreat where we stop the work for a day. We zoom out. We get everybody together and we start to have some conversations and get their input about what’s working and what’s not. Now, if you decide to do this, and by the way, January is a terrific time to do it. We get through the holidays, we start a new year, and you can get everyone together and have this conversation in a way that feels fresh and invigorating. But these kinds of retreats should not be an information dump. It’s not you presenting to them. It’s pulling people together and saying, “Let’s have a conversation about what’s working, what we can improve, and let’s have a conversation about this work that we do together and why it matters.” It’s an opportunity for you to connect them to the larger purpose or meaning behind your work. And we know that supercharges hope and supercharges commitment when we have those conversations. So, if you’re going to plan a retreat like this, zoom out, have a dialogue, get their input, and it might be a good idea to bake in a little bit of fun along the way. If you can get people laughing together and smiling and connecting at a human level, that goes a long way to helping with culture, too. Finally, let me share one more note with you about burnout. If you’re getting to the end of this year and you look at your team and it feels to you like people are really burned out, then we have to understand that that’s not something that you can fix with a culture reboot, right? You can’t message your way out of exhaustion. If your team is overworked, if they’re dealing with the chronic and persistent stress that has not been managed well because of capacity or because of an inability to get time away or because resources aren’t allowing them to operate uh as at a level where they are not constantly overworking or overextending themselves, then something’s got to change. The truth is that the only remedy for burnout is less work and more time away. And so, if you’re sitting there at this moment and it’s clear to you that your team is burned out, then that’s your charge. What do I need to do? What resources do I need to put into place? What adjustments do I need to make to how we staff and how we delegate work to give people less work and more time away? Now, some of you watching this may feel like I just asked you to cure cancer at the dinner table. You might say, “That feels impossible, Joe.” But just treat it as a thought exercise. If you’ve got a team that’s burned out, take a step back and say, “If we had to give people less work and more time away, how would we do it?” Pull a couple of leaders together. The beginning of that conversation is going to feel fruitless but give yourself time to get up and running. And if you end up with 40 ideas on a piece of scratch paper or a flip chart, yeah, 35 of them might be junk, but there might be five ideas on there that are really worth your time and attention. And there may be one idea on there that transforms your employee experience in the year ahead. So, there you have it. If you want to reboot company culture after a long year, I want you to think about a message that acknowledges what people have accomplished and overcome and then describes the hope that you have for the year ahead. And I want you to make sure that you are designing employee experiences that they will have in the year ahead that reinforces that hopeful message and improves on the culture they’ve experienced to date. I’d love to hear what you think. If you’re watching this episode on YouTube, then drop a comment in the box below. And if you’re listening on your favorite podcast channel, shoot me an email at bossbetternow@gmail.com. This is also the way that you can ask questions that we’ll answer on future episodes of the podcast. Thanks for being here. See you next time.

Joe: It’s rooms like this one where when we gather together for a couple of days at a time to really understand what it takes to activate employee commitment in the workplace that leaders experience profound transformation. If you’ve been wondering how to take your leadership knowledge and skills to the next level. If you want to go deeper on what it takes to be successful at leading people in today’s everchanging workplace, then you should check out Boss Hero School. Over 3 days, I’m going to teach you both the methods and the mindset for activating employee commitment in the workplace. This is not theory. We are getting into the weeds. We are upleveling your skills. We are giving you scripts. We are giving you blueprints and frameworks that you can take back to your workplaces to meet people where they are and propel them forward doing whatever it is you’re asking them to do on the job. For more information, visit bossheroschool.com.