Does Your Business Culture Thrive?
We rejoice when our business is profitable and twist in turmoil when it is not. We suffer when we have no idea how to fix it.
In that instance, it is helpful to recall that, like everything, there is a holistic relationship between all factors at play. Think of an orchestra – how all sound sections play together determines the quality of the music.
In the same way, the culture at a workplace is determined by all the souls who work there, and how they play together – in harmony, or not.
Everybody knows the importance of creating a values-based culture for employee engagement and maximizing worker productivity.
Yet the question asked most often is: How does one incorporate these values into a sustainable culture, one that enables us to succeed in business today, and tomorrow?
Moreover, how does a business get past the mere discussion phase and translate the ideas into behaviour and action?
What if we began the process with more defined outcomes like aligned teamwork, intuitive leadership, and charismatic management?
This brings life to the direction in which you may wish to go – creating alignment among team members and using intuition and charisma as a leadership style.
Alignment, intuition, and charisma strongly suggest using an inner focus toward creating an outer result. In other words, everyone is charged with the responsibility of changing their inner landscape to find alignment among the team.
What does this mean?
When was the last time you experienced an exceptional concert or watched a sports team rise above their normal level? You probably noted that the “team” was operating in sync and communicating in an unseen way.
Coherent teams experience “team spirit” or “team cohesion” and this translates into tangible results, like enhanced performance and securing the “win”!
Research has shown the benefits of building team alignment:
more trust among members is built
the team can draw from a wider range of skills, ideas, and expertise
the team experiences increased positive energy, bonding, motivation, and momentum to make something purposeful happen
the team feels compelled to contribute to something greater than themselves
workplace behaviour is more efficient - saving time and energy
there are shorter meetings, better communication, fewer mistakes, improved relationships, and heightened creativity.
People spend a significant amount of time together, at work, and too many of us exist in environments with low morale, tension, and toxicity. It can feel like “it’s just the way it is”, but it doesn’t have to be.
In the modern workspace, it is normal to exist in a biological environment of instinctive survival reactivity. This means using anxiety, fear, anger, impatience, and judgment to survive. It is the brain’s source of quick energy. Always being in action is a dead giveaway to those patterns of thought. Many of us spin all day, trying to cope with the adverse effects of a poor emotional environment, which can include mistrust, protectionism, separation, silo building, competition (where it shouldn’t exist), backbiting, and general malaise. Hardly a place of thriving human interaction!
We are at a time in human history where cultivating space for coherence is rare – either on the individual or organizational level. But we must. Relationships matter more than we may realize. They can impact not only a team’s effectiveness but how each perceives the world in general. Efficiency and performance are directly impacted here.
Harmonious relationships are good for us, as people, and for the business. It is essential to develop skills, attitudes, and behaviors in the workplace, commensurate with that. The bottom line can only benefit from that.
It is possible to activate the heart of your team(s) with conscious learning and the application of truly simple tools for calming the nervous system and creating heart rate variability and shifts in attitude necessary for sustainable harmony.
It begins with you. Are you curious? Do you desire change? What are you prepared to do to provide your team with the tools necessary to create a healthy work culture and a place to thrive? I can help.
