{"id":5762,"date":"2022-03-12T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-13T01:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/?p=5762"},"modified":"2023-02-24T21:18:45","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T01:18:45","slug":"half-humans-cant-grow-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/2022\/03\/12\/half-humans-cant-grow-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Half-Humans Can\u2019t Grow Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What is your work persona?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it involves a heavy dose of \u201cSounds great!\u201d emails or carefully curated meeting small talk or no-nonsense, down-to-business Slacks. But whatever it is, chances are it\u2019s not authentically you. Just as some restaurants conceal their kitchen and hide the \u201cundesirable\u201d back-of-house process from front-of-house patrons, we often get caught in the trap of presenting sanitized, \u201cprofessional\u201d versions of ourselves at work. But these avatars aren\u2019t us \u2014 they\u2019re facades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you ever been to a restaurant with an open kitchen? It\u2019s fun and fascinating to feel engaged in the process of making your food. Sure, you don\u2019t need a close-up view of the fryer, but it\u2019s nice to see what goes into preparing the items you order. It\u2019s certainly more interesting than a beautifully plated meal conjured from the ether by a white-gloved waiter at your beck and call. Similarly, when we bring a perfectly packaged version of ourselves to work, we miss out on the chance to form deeper bonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These fake work facades keep us from forming strong connections with the people with whom we spend our weekdays. Coworkers don\u2019t have to be friends, but everyone should be able to show up as themselves. A strong, healthy work culture allows us to display the \u201cback-of-house\u201d traits that make us full people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I care about creating a work environment where we can be our authentic selves. Not just because I think it makes for a stronger team and better work, but because I think it\u2019s essential to a holistically fulfilling life. In considering how to achieve this goal, here are a few things I\u2019m thinking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why do we want to hide?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can\u2019t advocate for authenticity at work without acknowledging the decades of expectations that contributed to our neat, sterile work personas. For many years, we\u2019ve been turned into numbers and rewarded for productivity rather than recognized for being true selves. Workplaces are, after all, a business. Bottom lines still matter, but who says an army of corporate robots is the only path to business success? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large-scale shift to remote work began to shatter some of these neatly placed walls \u2014 crying babies, barking dogs and carefully hung wall art suddenly entered the frame of our laptop cameras, adding dimensions to our polished work facades. Seeing coworkers as full people, it\u2019s easier to connect. However, these digital boxes we stepped into also became a new tool for inauthenticity. We can clear real, human messiness out of our Zoom backgrounds and step into \u201cmeeting mode\u201d for half-hour chunks with a clean cut-off \u2014 side-stepping true work connections all together. Even awkward post-meeting small talk can be wiped away. But again: Is this how we want to spend our days?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the restaurant example, owners may give several non-aesthetic reasons for a concealed kitchen. They may say that it should be hidden because staff yell at each other, or it\u2019s not presentable. But should they be yelling? Shouldn\u2019t it be presentable? Upon examination, there\u2019s really no excuse. The same applies to our work lives. The reasoning behind our work facades doesn\u2019t hold up to scrutiny. When we hold back from being ourselves at work, we don\u2019t just hurt the business or culture, we prevent ourselves from forming authentic bonds with those around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we encourage authenticity?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve all gotten those Slacks where someone issues a quick \u201cHow are you?\u201d and then you see ten minutes of \u201cThis person is typing\u201d before they dive into their real question. That\u2019s not what I mean when I talk about cultivating workplace authenticity. That\u2019s a quick peek behind the facade before slamming the door shut. To me, bringing our full selves to work starts with genuine curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hire people not because of what they\u2019ve done<\/a>, but because of their potential to make our company better, make me better and make themselves better. But to do that, we can\u2019t only talk about work. Fostering these genuine interactions is also just good people skills \u2014 showing real interest, caring about others and asking more questions than you answer. We try to emphasize transparency and authenticity at every turn, using Pingboard statuses to denote mental health days or specify what we\u2019re up to, from doctor\u2019s appointments to dog walking. We\u2019ve learned that when people don\u2019t feel shamed for living their lives, they actually enjoy letting their coworkers in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We all bear a responsibility for normalizing and celebrating workplace authenticity. Personally, I make it a point to check in with team members \u2014 casually, over Slack and never off hours \u2014 just because. I also make it a point to dress down to communicate that I don\u2019t equate appearance with contributions. As the CEO, my actions might make more of an impact toward this progress, but we can all take these steps. Do you know who your coworkers are after they press \u201cLeave Meeting?\u201d Not everyone wants these close ties at work, but I think we\u2019re all better off from making an effort to connect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my experience, this approach completely changes work dynamics. If one of our VPs takes the day off to supervise their kid\u2019s field trip, less senior employees aren\u2019t jealous or bitter \u2014 instead they want pictures, because they know and care about others\u2019 lives and feel empowered to do the same themselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason we form organizations in the first place is because people are stronger together. So why not get to know them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can we measure culture?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is your workplace culture one where employees feel fulfilled, are psychologically protected, have a work-life balance and contribute to the organization? That\u2019s great \u2014 but you\u2019re not done. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Culture isn\u2019t just a switch you can flip on and leave alone. It\u2019s like a plant you have to tend to every day. Some issues can be solved with the right policies and people, but without the right belief structure and energy propelling you each day, attempts to grow a stronger culture will fall flat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s why I don\u2019t believe in \u201cChief Culture Officers.\u201d Culture isn\u2019t a top-down initiative curated by a boxed set of employee happiness features \u2014 it\u2019s an innate feeling that everyone is responsible for creating. Employee satisfaction surveys and other metrics have their place, but at the end of the day, culture, to paraphrase John Mayer, like love, is a verb.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Culture, just as authenticity, isn\u2019t a neatly measurable KPI. Just like your value proposition, it starts and ends with your people. We may not be able to measure it, but we can fight the daily fight to make sure people feel a sense of belonging and fulfillment. We\u2019ll never get it entirely right, but that\u2019s also what\u2019s encouraging \u2014 we always have tomorrow to do better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Changing the Workplace Standard<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While so many depersonalized, profit-centric behaviors have become etched into the exhausting \u201cprofessionalism\u201d standard, I think we have a real chance to change these norms. Working from homemade cracks in our curated work facades. If we keep chipping away, I think we\u2019ll find something much more interesting and fulfilling underneath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We spend a third of our lives at work. Shouldn\u2019t we make this time something we enjoy and cherish, rather than suffer through? If we embrace authenticity and show curiosity every day, I think we can move that needle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s time to stop settling for amazing meals just appearing on the table, and start celebrating what makes them great. How are you cultivating authenticity? To some degree, we\u2019re all ready to drop the facade \u2014 so let\u2019s do it together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is your work persona? Maybe it involves a heavy dose of \u201cSounds great!\u201d emails or carefully curated meeting small … Continue ReadingHalf-Humans Can\u2019t Grow Culture<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5763,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_social_preview_title":"","wp_social_preview_description":"","wp_social_preview_image":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-leadership"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5764,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5762\/revisions\/5764"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/followgreg.com\/ftravel\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}