While the discourse has advanced beyond the call for more than ping pong tables, we know creating spaces where people feel positive about their organizations and their role in it is complex work. Culture is subtle because it is expressed through the way we experience an organization and how the setting shapes our thoughts and actions.
As a community of compassionate leaders, we are striving to create a different sub-culture and change the conversation about what’s possible within leadership. Seeing team members with universal positive regard is a foundational practice of compassionate leaders. This perspective enables leaders to embrace our common humanity and appreciate that everyone is capable of growth and change. Compassionate culture respects each individual and their uniqueness and treats everyone with respect.
Culture is the sum of the behaviors of everyone in an organization, but those behaviors are shaped by the dominant culture. As leaders, we must examine our own behaviors, values, and biases, and what we allow to happen in organizations. To make change, we have to start with ourselves.
How we see the world shapes our lived experiences. The same is true of organizational culture.
Compassion scholars Monica Worline and Jane Dutton define culture as, “the structural patterns of shared values, emotional expressions, repertoires of action, norms, and assumptions of what is appropriate to see, think, and do in a system.” Connections between our individual perceptions and organizational preferences create unique tapestries that reflect what’s actually happening with workplace culture.
There’s a dance required to accurately assess, evaluate, and transform what we assume as a “correct” way of being and doing, together. Changing espoused culture (what we say our culture is) alone doesn’t change individual actions. Changing individual behavior alone also will not succeed as the culture will constrain behavior different from the accepted norm.
This process of changing culture is complicated by the fact that many of the components of culture exist below the surface of what we consciously see. The explicit and espoused culture can take the form of written mission, vision and values statements and the ways those are expressed in specific policies and procedures. They can also include visible symbols, artifacts, and stories told about the history of the organization. These are all relatively easy to see and perceive.
There is an additional dimension of culture that is unseen or unconscious, sometimes thought of as “below the waterline.” These elements of culture can be tacit or embodied. These are conveyed in ways that may include embodied nonverbal communication that responds based on the assumptions of “what people here do.” It can be seen in which people are given a voice in meetings or the unseen power dynamics in decision-making.
To assess your existing culture, ask your teams questions like:
What are we trying to do together?
What is treated as valuable here?
What behaviors can we observe? Competitiveness? Supportive acts? Collaboration?
What is the role of the individual employee? Are they input like funding or raw materials? Are they unique individuals to be acknowledged and celebrated in their uniqueness?
How do we feel about people and respond when they come up short, make mistakes, or fail?
How do we care for one another when we are struggling?
Change can be hard and stress inducing. Curiosity and understanding of the reason that things are as they are will make change easier. Start with a view to build on what is going well rather than simply naming what is broken. All change requires compassionate leaders to be patient and willing to embrace incrementalism. Small steps practiced over and over can lead to significant changes in culture.
Changes can be initiated from above with a new expression of culture, so long as the implementation offers the space to allow team members to contribute to the change planning and then integrate what is new. Research shows that over 70% of change management initiatives fail. By communicating shifts in how teams interact with one another and the organization regards their people, you can begin to reshape emotional expression and behavior that leads to different outcomes.
Changes from the ranks can also work, and need to be brought forth in ways that show support for existing espoused shared values. As we change culture, the task becomes creating a new shared language of compassionate leadership that shows the mutual benefit to all (leaders, followers, all stakeholders) and is understood by all. The spirit of collaboration and cooperation at the heart of compassionate leadership also applies to bringing about change.
The work you do now can set the stage for generations of change in how we treat one another, our stakeholders, and our planet. What small change can you implement today in service of a stronger and more compassionate culture?
Additional resources:
This post is one of four on the elements of social architecture that support compassion competence in organizations. Read the other three:
Smoothing the Way for Compassion to Flow: Routines
Designing for Compassion: Roles
Building High-Quality Connections: Networks
For deeper reading on this topic:
Awakening Compassion at Work: The Quiet Power That Elevates People and Organizations by Monica Worline and Jane E. Dutton. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2017.