It's Not Your Managers: It's Your Culture

Whilst 87% of employees believe that they’re being productive, only 12% of employers would say the same thing about them.

Using a little conjecture, it’s not hard to see that some key conversations around performance are not happening.

Whilst it’s easy to point the finger at our managers, especially with the observable behaviours around “quiet firing” or “silent sacking”, we need to take a more curious, supportive approach.

Avoiding “crunchy” potentially uncomfortable conversations - which conversations around performance represent - is a very human trait.

Organisations need to provide absolute clarity on purpose and strategic direction to support their managers, who in turn need to create this for their teams.

That way we lay the foundations of collective responsibility for high performance conversations to happen organically.

With INTENT: our 5 minute deconstructions of the current trends to inspire healthy rethinking and reconstructive action.

by Chris Wickenden, Chief Creative Officer at FROM:TODAY

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey, Chris here from FROM:TODAY. So last week we ran a virtual workshop, high performance conversations, why they matter and how to have them. Thanks to everybody that came along and for your contribution. And one of the things that came up was that not enough of our managers are having them. And this much is evidenced by the fact that with the Microsoft Work Trend Index, we see that whilst 87 percent of employees believe that they are being productive, only 12 percent of leaders would say the same thing about those employees.

And whilst there is some conjecture there, it does lead you to question whether enough high performance conversations, direct, transparent communication is happening. And we've heard about the trend of quiet quitting, we've spoken about it at length, but we don't tend to speak or hear as much around another observable trend of quiet firing or silent sacking.

And this is [00:01:00] the trend or behavior of managers losing faith in certain members of their team. And instead of giving direct and clear feedback and guidance, choosing to sideline them, not involving them in the hope that eventually they'll self select out. And whilst this is an observable behavior, It's not always so malicious.

It's not always intentional. There are a number of gateway behaviors and at the same time, it is also a really human behavior. When there isn't a great enough sense of the collective, our natural instincts are often to protect ourselves and avoid short term discomfort, which is what crunchy conversations can represent.

So we need to approach this more curiously. We need to support our managers and you know, you could ask, is this a skills deficit? And that could seem like a short term solution to it. But from our experience running [00:02:00] workshops on high performance communication, Most managers know intellectually how they would have those conversations.

They do them every day in their personal lives, but they're still not having them. And so it leads us to conclude that it's less a skills deficit and it's more a cultural deficit and that perhaps they haven't created the conditions for themselves and for them, their teams, where they, people are safe enough and motivated enough.

And have the platform to speak up and I really like this analysis of Amy Edmondson around the cost benefits of speaking up and remaining silent. So, if we look at silence, the benefit is felt to the individual, it's felt immediately and the certainty of that benefit is absolute. Now, for speaking up, the benefit is felt to the organisation.

It is felt after some time, and the certainty of that benefit is quite low. So, [00:03:00] when there isn't a great enough sense of the collective, if there isn't a great enough shared reason to believe, Then the motivation to speak up, uh, enter into those conversations in the right spirit and with vulnerability is quite low.

And managers have to provide this for their teams. They need to provide a shared reason to believe for people to have the motivation to get over maybe that initial discomfort of having that. Difficult conversation. So we ask people, uh, five questions in our diagnostic organizational performance tool in relation to purpose, shared purpose.

We ask, um, people to strongly agree or strongly disagree with five key statements. And here they are. I am intrinsically motivated by my work. I am aware of my organisation's performance and strategic direction. I am contributing to the organisation's big picture goals. [00:04:00] My organisation has an articulated shared purpose.

And I truly connect to my organisation's shared purpose. So these things are absolutely crucial. Purpose is one of the key founding elements to high performance within an organisation and organizations have to support managers to find clarity over these things and how their role fits into the bigger picture so that managers can then do the same thing for their teams.

If there isn't a clear enough sense of purpose, then people don't quite care enough to endure the short term pain of having that uncomfortable, crunchy conversation. But when there is a high enough level of purpose, when there is a shared reason to believe, then the moral compass in deciding whether to remain silent or to speak up becomes about the organisation, about the collective, as opposed to the individual.

So as always, we would love to hear back from you. Why don't you sign up to [00:05:00] our next, uh, virtual workshop? Uh, look out for it on LinkedIn. I really encourage you to have a look at our blog post on this where we provide a little bit more guidance and you can get in contact with me at chris@fromtoday.com. Or simply on LinkedIn. I'll see you soon. Cheers.