SuperManager
SuperManager
SuperManager: Building a Community at Work
Wouldn't it be great if everyone in the office got along? Tune in to SuperManager for this week's episode "Building a Community at Work" in which we'll discuss ways to make the office a place that works for everyone.
Find out, by being a fly on the wall in this podcast discussion with:
Samantha Naes – CN Video Production
Kim Baker – Vivid Performance Group
Mary Kutheis – MCK Coaching
Christine Lawrence: 0:00
You're listening to SuperManager, the podcast for people who manage people and business. With ideas, trends and expert interviews to help you be a super manager!
: 0:02
Sam Naes: 0:13
I have noticed that when I interview people. I'm kind of trying to get to how are you going to fit in with the company culture? When it's a small business or a small department, one bad apple can really ruin the mood and so I really want to get a feel for what are you like it work and what are your expectations? And so I always ask "So you're really moving forward on your career? That's very exciting. What are you looking for? What's important to you in that type of environment? And what are you hoping to avoid? What's the one thing that you've heard about in an office environment that you don't want to find yourself in that situation?" And 100% of the time it has to do with my co workers, I want to be like family with my co workers. I want to get along with the people that I'm working with. Situations I don't want to be in. Oh, I don't want to not fit in. You never hear people talk about "Oh I don't want the work to be too hard or the hours to be too long." It's never about the work. It's always about the culture when you ask what's important to you and what are you looking for. So this week we're gonna be talking about building a community at work, and I have my team of experts with me.
Kim Baker: 1:19
Kim Baker with Vivid Performance Group and I help companies be able to align and synergize their culture, human capital and organizational agility.
: 0:16
Mary Kutheis: 1:27
And I'm Mary Kutheis with MCK Coaching and I'm an executive coach. And I work with leaders who want to improve leadership skills, communication skills, conflict management, time management and the like.
Sam Naes: 1:38
And I'm Samantha Naes with CN Video, we do corporate video production, video on boarding, training, and company culture / scouting videos.
Sam Naes: 1:46
So having that community at work is clearly very important.
Mary Kutheis: 1:51
It makes sense because when you think about it, I did a presentation recently and I asked the audience at the beginning. "how many people in this room think you should be happy at work?" And everybody raise their hand thank goodness!" I said, "If you don't raise your hand, I want to talk to you afterwards." But you spend so much time there. At least 40 hours a week I mean most of your waking hours during the week, and often people are spending a lot more, and sometimes they're thinking about it on the weekend. If you are around people who are miserable, how awful is that going to be? I mean you're going to be spending so much time there. That's why people want to like the people they work with, and even if they don't want beers with him afterward. That's okay!
: 2:24
Sam Naes: 2:28
Right?
Kim Baker: 0:00
You still want to like the people you work with.
: 0:00
Sam Naes: 2:31
I don't think it's the work that makes you miserable.
: 2:31
Mary Kutheis: 2:32
Right I think it's the people.
Mary Kutheis: 2:34
Yeah,
Kim Baker: 0:00
Typically not, I had a friend who was an actuary and said he hated the work. He would cry in the morning before he went to work.
: 2:41
Mary Kutheis: 2:42
Then that person is in the wrong field,
: 0:00
Kim Baker: 0:00
Oh my God and he's in the right one now! But I'm with you. It's the culture, and it gets down to the way we act and behave around each other, and our behavior can reflect what we see is being okay, or acceptable, or can reflect who we are. So one of the workshops I do has to do with helping employees understand what motivates you? Of these 10 motivators, what are you higher or lower in? Because they show up at work? So if you're somebody who is high affiliation, let's say you're probably gonna love being with people and really having closer connection. If you're very social, you probably gonna want to get together after work with folks. If you're high in interpersonal, I probably want to hear about your fears and tears, right? But what if I'm not that kind of person? How do we make allowances for somebody who's more reserved right? So that's where...
: 0:00
Sam Naes: 3:35
Yeah has to feel like they fit in...
: 0:00
Kim Baker: 4:00
Right, I work doing assessments on sales people, and it's pretty common that we find that somebody is not quite the right fit from a value or a culture perspective. Maybe they're more affiliation. They be great managing account. But they're not someone who's really power driven or commerce driven to be really great sales person. So again understanding what the values are in the organization and...
Sam Naes: 4:01
That brought up a question for me though, again slight difference. You talked a little bit it sounded like you were kind of hitting on being able to accommodate different personality types. And I totally agree with that. Everybody, no matter how weird you are, no matter how different you are, needs to feel like they fit in. And hopefully you have a company culture that can accommodate different personality types. But it's defining the difference between personality types and values. Because where is that point where you switch over from, "Okay? We need to make sure that we're accommodating everybody. We want to make sure that we're making everybody feel comfortable." To this person is not a good fit?
: 4:35
: 4:37
Mary Kutheis: 4:37
I think one of the things, and I love, the fact that you're bringing up the motivations for why people behave. Most people are familiar, a lot of people are familiar with the disc assessment, which looks at behaviors. What is your behavioral style? What people observe? It doesn't go far enough. It's a really good assessment, but not by itself. What you need to know beyond that is why do people do that and what happens then, when you find that someone is driven by something? It makes it clear why they're doing it, because when people are bugged by someone else's behavior, invariably they think the other person is doing it to bug them. And the truth is, they're not. The truth is, they're kind of in most cases, they're just doing what they do, and it's just something you don't like. And once you realized...
Sam Naes: 5:21
So, whose fault is that?
Mary Kutheis: 5:22
Well, once you realize... it's not being aware... many times once people are aware, "Oh, that's why you do that." It changes everything, because then they can still be how they are, but they realize it has nothing to do with me. It's just what drives them. I could even tell someone. "Hey, I tend to be fairly quiet in meetings. Doesn't mean I don't have ideas. It doesn't mean that I don't like what's going on. It means that I'm processing internally. So please know that." And then people go "Oh, okay, you just processed differently. That's fine." Because we all have to give and take a little bit in the way we work. Everybody has to just know this is how I am! I wrote a blog post Once that said "This is just how I am stinks as an excuse". We need to adjust. So if you're a person...
Sam Naes: 6:07
I like that! I read that!
: 6:08
: 6:09
Mary Kutheis: 6:09
If you're a person who tends to take over the meetings, know that that's probably not appreciated and back off a little. And maybe the leader, if they know someone is a little bit quieter, give them a good amount of time. And then say, "Kim, what do you think about that?" Ask them, because maybe if they've been sitting listening and you give him a chance to have the floor, they'll want to talk.
Kim Baker: 6:29
What I'm hearing the question is, where do differences become damaging or detrimental?
Sam Naes: 6:35
If you have a personality conflict in the example that you gave. Where one person thinks this person is doing it just to bug them? But person A is being person A and person B is being person B, then obviously, that's something that you can work on through communication. But at what point do you say this person is just does not fit? Their values aren't the same as our values, and I'm going to be just spinning my wheels, trying to get this person to feel like they're part of the community?
Mary Kutheis: 7:01
You have to really be able to define the impact, how is this a negative impact? So, for instance, there are some values that tend to fit where certain roles. Like a sales person is probably more commerce driven, power driven right? We may see someone who's a financial analyst who may be a little bit more about security or tradition. So at some point you have to say, "OK, does the value impact their ability, technically, to do the job, like for some reason, they just technically aren't doing the job? Is the impact around people? Can they just not get along?" At some point if somebody can't get along with others, then, yeah, you can have a discussion. You could work on coaching before that could do a 360 so they get feedback from the team. First and foremost, technically, can they do the job? If they technically can't do the job, then you need to get rid of him. You should not even be looking at the values issue right? So we should first hire based upon a technical capability, the minimum that you need, and then fulfill that requirement in the interview process, right? Because you can fit the culture all day long I think. But if you technically can't do the job, this isn't gonna work out right. So you start with the technical capability. Then you look at the soft capabilities, if you will, the soft skills. So they're needs to be a process, if nothing else, because you need to have a progressive discipline process before you would accept somebody from the organization. That's just common sense from a legal perspective. That's all how we'd want to be treated we'd all want have the opportunity to get feedback. It's so common that I have an employer say, "Well, they just should know!" Well I said "So they just should know they should do this or not do that" and I said, "Let me ask you in the interview process. Did you ask them about their divining skills or their mind reading skills?" That is the biggest ah ha for people. I said, "Of course you didn't ask somebody, Are you good at reading minds? Can you divine what I'm thinking?" And so how should somebody are?
: 8:51
Sam Naes: 8:51
There are some things that some people should know that
Kim Baker: 8:54
These, these, I'll give you some examples.
Mary Kutheis: 8:57
Can I cut in just before your example? I just wanna say one thing. Sometimes the problem is the leader. If people just keep turning over and turning over and turning over, the leader needs to look at themselves and say, "What's going on here? Maybe they're hiring bad? Or maybe they're a really bad leader, and maybe they need to fix some things and they'd be able to keep good talent. That's possible, too.
: 9:16
Kim Baker: 9:16
Oh yeah, yeah, it's multifactorial definitely. So doing something illegally, criminal behavior, shouting, and yelling at people. Believe it or not, you would say, "Well, somebody should just know that." Well, guess what If I grew up in a family that's very loud and boisterous, and I've been in environments in the work that that's how we talk, not in an aggressive way, but we handle conflict with loud and boisterousness. If that's what I know. That's what I'm gonna bring to the job. Now. If you would...
Sam Naes: 9:43
So you would actually say to someone, like, if someone is screaming and yelling even profanities, you'd actually sit them down and say," You may not understand this, but in this office environment, you really shouldn't raise your voice or use curse words or..."
Mary Kutheis: 9:57
Yeah I would
: 9:56
: 9:57
Kim Baker: 9:58
Oh, yeah
Sam Naes: 9:58
That's really something you need to tell someone?
Mary Kutheis: 9:59
And It's and I wouldn't start by telling. I'd say I'd ask questions like, "Tell me what happened?'" We get into rules of engagement. So I do a lot of work with five dysfunctions of the team, and one of things we do is rules of engagement for communication and for meetings. One of our human blind spots is thinking everybody else thinks like us, right? So when I just said this, you were physically surprised. I saw it on your face because...
Sam Naes: 10:23
Who does that at work?
Kim Baker: 10:24
Exactly! But it happens, it happens, because if I've grown up in a family and so they're certain cultures that are very boisterous and I tell you what I think there's certain cultures that are very quiet, and I would not tell you what I think. I would just absorb it right? So if I grow up in an environment like that, if I choose friends that are like that, if I go into work environment, maybe my first job out of school was like that. Maybe I go into a second job that's normal to me. That's how I think you do it.
Mary Kutheis: 10:53
This is not work related, but our family didn't grow up watching any sports on Thanksgiving and Christmas. We just didn't, we never had a TV on and one of my siblings got married to someone and we went over to their house for Thanksgiving or Christmas or something. And they had a couple of TV's blaring almost all day and no one thought a thing of it. We were obviously polite about it, and it wasn't like we thought they were horrible people, but we walked away going, "We've never experienced anything like that! Oh my gosh!"And people will say, "Did you watch the game on Thanksgiving?' I said, "You know, we never watch any sports."
: 11:07
Sam Naes: 11:25
Let me kind of qualify why I was so surprised by that. I have never managed or worked for a company that didn't have some sort of on boarding employee handbook that really lays those things out for you. Like if you take a look at our employee handbook, there's a section on what's appropriate behavior of work and what isn't. And I think maybe what surprised me about that is if you were given any level of appropriate on boarding when you started the position. Then there are things that you should know, and I would think part of on boarding would be what's appropriate behaviour in the office, just like what's appropriate dress code in the office and...
Mary Kutheis: 12:00
I don't work with really large companies. I prefer smaller and medium sized companies, and it's amazing how many of them do not have a on boarding process. A lot of them do not, and a lot of times it's because the company kind of grew organically. It was just the owner, and then they brought on a couple of people. Then they brought in a few more. Pretty soon they have 45 people, and I built on boarding processes is for companies like that because they didn't intentionally not create one. They just thought, "Oh, I guess these new people don't really know how we do things here." So that's part of the problem is when they don't have won many large companies like that have the on boarding for legal reasons. Certainly.
Sam Naes: 12:35
Right, you have to kind of tell people these are the guidelines for appropriate behavior when you're in the office and then you could have a certain expectation.
Kim Baker: 12:43
So a couple things about that, if any one of us who signed that company handbook, the day we started the job were asked if we were tested on even a week later, we'd fail. It's a CYA for companies there's a good point to it. Don't get me wrong. Employee handbooks are necessary. Certainly large organizations, everybody should have it. Most people not gonna remember, the other part of that is this gets to be in. This is a whole nother can of worms is perceptions. So if I raise my voice and say certain things as a female, am I perceived differently than a male? So that's a whole nother can of worms. Another example, though, is how frequently we follow up. So if you're in a culture that says we have either in writing or we just have informal that when you get an email internally, we follow up within 24 hours or sooner. If you bring somebody new in the organization and they don't do that, then you may start to have an opinion. "Well, they're lazy. They're not conscientious." Well, why are you drawing that conclusion? Well, because they don't send an email in 24 hours. Is there a process that says they're supposed to do that? "No, but they should know that." How should they know that? These are more insidious things that people do or don't do that we expect them to do. And then when they fail to meet our unspoken expectations And this is in life in general, you know, personal and professional, then we start drawing conclusions. So that's why when I get this pushed back or I get this input from an employer or a coworker, someone so does or doesn't do something. First of all, have you told them that you want them to do this? Is there some sort of standard or process that says they're supposed to?
Sam Naes: 14:13
So I have two quick responses to what you just said. I had one. And then, as you were talking, I came up with another one. First of all, I don't know if you guys were familiar. There was a television show that was on a couple of years ago. It was intended to be kind of a candid camera type thing where they would put teenagers and children into certain situations where some of them were aware they were on camera. And then there were the innocent victims who weren't aware. And then they had their parents in another room watching. And it would be a situation where, like somebody would start bullying someone else. And they wanted to know if the unsuspecting child would chime in or stand up for them, that sort of situation. And they did one with small children and learning about gun safety. And they put the children into a classroom. And they said, "What do you do when you see a gun?" " Don't touch it!" "And what do you do next?" "Go get an adult!" And they all said that and then they released the children into a room with candy and cookies and soda pop and a fake gun that looked real and a hidden camera. And to their dismay, the kids discovered the gun and what did they do? They touched it. One of the kids picked it up, was playing with it. They then had a second control group where they did the same thing. Only instead of just telling them they showed them a video of what a child should do when they see a gun, and the children saw a video of them spotting a gun and one child saying, "Don't touch it!" and another child saying, "I'm gonna go get my mom," And then they set them loose in the room and what did they do? They found the gun. One child stood guard and wouldn't let anybody ever touch it while the other child went and got an adult because they saw exactly how this behavior was supposed to happen. So that is why, in handbooks we actually do video on boarding from the hand book. Where we show you, this is an example of appropriate behavior. This is an example of what's not appropriate behavior, so they actually see what you mean, and it makes a little bit more memorable. And Katie Magoon brought up a while ago. I can't remember what we were talking about on the podcast, but she talked about always giving people the benefit of the doubt and not coming in hot. If you're trying to get someone to behave a certain way or you're looking for a certain outcome, if you go into the conversation assuming that they're doing it to annoy you that they're doing it because... you are never going to get the outcome that you want. But like you said, if you go into it saying, "Hey, can I ask you about this? I want to understand what happened here?" You're much more likely to get a better outcome.
Kim Baker: 16:38
Yep, yeah, You know, we talk a lot about listening to connect, not judge, reject, or respond. So asking questions and listening to connect with that person's answer with their feeling with their thoughts and so that means essentially suspending judgment.
Sam Naes: 16:58
That's tough. I think a lot of people don't do that,
Kim Baker: 17:01
and I think as coaches, it's easier.
Mary Kutheis: 17:03
It's easier, but it's something we've learned and practiced. I mean, I think sometimes is a coach. I think coaching comes naturally to me. It's what my gift is I guess? Everybody has one. But other people can learn the listening for connection. You just have to practice it. And people say, "Well, I took that class and I forgot." Well, that makes sense. We don't necessarily just have this new behavior as a habit. Now this is the way we do things because we took a class. Keep practicing, keep practicing, keep practicing and pretty soon it starts to feel more natural.
Kim Baker: 17:34
Yeah, yeah, One of the things that we do when we're training sales people on skill development, and I do a lot of primarily with medical device industry, and we'll be doing a role play and we will stop them midstream. And they have to paraphrase. So the sales rep back to the surgeon has to paraphrase what they heard. And we put them through that exercise as a skill builder. And we tell him what's going to happen because it forces them to listen, to connect, to really understand what that surgeon is saying, and not to respond because they know they're going to have to paraphrase. And then they have to paraphrase it back till they get it right.
Sam Naes: 18:09
What's interesting about that is, sometimes the responses that you get back you wonder if they were in the same room together or not.
Kim Baker: 18:16
I can tell you why, from neuroscience. When we have a conversation, we do not recall what was said. We recall what we thought about it. So when you and I have a conversation and I'm talking to you, you're checking out. We all check out every 12 18 seconds to think about what we heard. So if somebody responds back to you in a way that doesn't make sense to you, if it's somehow related, or maybe not, it could be just hand gentle. What you're hearing is what they think about it, which may surprise you. But that's just a heuristic. That's how we humans process information.
Mary Kutheis: 18:52
And and the person who said whatever they said has no idea that what you're taking away from it or thinking about, is not exactly what they said. Because your intention, when you said that is your intention, what they got might be something very different.
Sam Naes: 19:07
Their interpretation of it or their feelings about it. So if you have this communication problem, and obviously that's gonna tear down the community at work, if you're working on building it, back up and you do this exercise, what do you do if the response isn't what was expected? How do you get the person to hear it as it was intended, or get the center of the message to say it in a way that the receiver can receive it?
Kim Baker: 19:30
So if I'm having a conversation with somebody and their response surprises me. I'll simply say, "Tell me more about that," or I'll dig into something that they said. So I'll try to connect because the message resides within the receiver, not the sender. To Mary's point, I may know what my intended message is, but how it's received is how you receive it, right? So if, if I need to get a point across what we should be saying is "Tell me what meaning you make of this or what have you taken away or how do you understand this?" And sometimes if I have to have a conversation, I'm concerned about how it'll be received, I start out by saying, "Here is my intention."
Mary Kutheis: 20:08
Makes it much clearer.
Kim Baker: 20:09
Exactly! And and I will go as far to say if this lands on you. In a way that's not like that. I apologize, especially if I know this is gonna be a critical conversation in the message may be difficult to hear. I may say "I need to share some feedback with you, and my intent is to help you. My intent is forced to maintain a good relationship, and if this comes across in any other way that that is not my intent. I apologize, and we'll work through that together."
Mary Kutheis: 20:38
And one of the things that we can all take away from any conversation, our reaction. We don't need, we're not afraid of getting eaten by bears anymore. But that part of our brain still works. And when we hear something that we see as an attack, I'm making those air quotes, that we react that way. Our Magdala kicks in, and if we don't wait before we speak, then it gets very defensive. And so if we can stop and wait for a second and not assume the worst, don't go in hot or don't return hot, right, because the person may not have come in hot that you take it hot. And so then you go back in that person, "Wait a minute, that's not what I meant!" And it can degrade pretty quickly.
Sam Naes: 21:19
Mary, I think it was you in a previous podcast, brought up something really interesting that I think is relevant to this one. Weren't you talking about a person telling what is the most difficult part about their job? Was that you that brought that up?
Mary Kutheis: 21:31
I think it's a really good exercise in an organization that everybody has a part of their job that's really hard, maybe one or two things. And if everybody else in the organization knew what that was, they might be able to say, "Well, I don't have to do it that way. I could make this a lot easier on you because I don't even really need that." Or something to the effect. Sometimes we're making things difficult for people, and we don't even know it.
Sam Naes: 21:57
Right.
Mary Kutheis: 21:58
But if they say "This makes it difficult for me," and everybody's, "Well, let's shift that process and not make that difficult for you."
Sam Naes: 22:04
Kind of what I'm getting from this entire conversation was it comes down to communication. People being communicate with each other effectively in order to build that community. It's not about personality types or whether you're a good fit. It's really about understanding. Communicating and understanding.
Mary Kutheis: 22:18
Well in the personality types will affect how you communicate, so that is part of it. But it's very doable, but it is a skill to be developed just like the work that someone is doing the soft skills that they have while they're doing it are important and they need to be developed.
Sam Naes: 22:35
Do either of you have a horror story about building a community at work? Maybe a bad community at work?
Kim Baker: 22:42
You know? So this is gonna be general. There are some cultures or communities that are very negative. So the gossiping, the back biting, you know, we talk about a previous president company I work for talked about, assume noble intent, right? Some organizations assume nefarious intent, and then what happens is more time. It's spent gossiping, and finding fault, and wasting time then the energy is used in negative ways versus positive ways.
Sam Naes: 23:16
I can't think of a more uncomfortable work environment than gossiping.
Mary Kutheis: 23:20
Yeah, it's awful, awful.
Christine Lawrence: 23:23
Thanks for listening to SuperManager by CN Video production. Visit our website at cn-video.com for additional episodes and lots of SuperManager resources or give us a call at 314 Video me.