Is Your Infectious Culture Spreading Positivity or Poison?

Starting Off Right

One of the biggest reasons that we are called to work with a business is to repair a culture. Whether it is an adopted team from an acquisition, a team that is experiencing burnout or potentially the wrong fit from the beginning, it is important to get the right people working for your business.  It is important not only to have the right people in your business, but also have them in the best role for them and your business.

Finding Your Baseline

We typically will begin working with a company by interviewing or surveying the entire team to see how well the business and the leadership team are supporting the rest of the staff members. This can sometimes be a difficult exercise, but it is important to get a clear picture of what is truly going on. From there we will develop a plan.

Developing a Plan for Improvement

Working on the culture of a business is not a quick fix. It typically will involve multiple strategies. This may include leadership training & development, staff training, a new hiring process to find the best candidates and sometimes freeing up team members for other opportunities with another business if their values do not fit the values of the team you want to build.

As we work, we will teach all of the team members some important concepts for self-management. One of these concepts that is crucial for the team to understand comes from Jim Rohn’s Book: The Success Principles. It is a formula called E+R=O. (Events + Response = Outcome). Ultimately, this means that we can’t always the events that occur in our life or our business, but we can always control our RESPONSE. If you have a positive response, you can create a positive outcome. If you have a negative response, you definitely we create a negative outcome. Some of the most successful people gained their success after overcoming adversity in their life. It is important that as a team, we hold each other accountable to have a positive response. Positivity breeds positivity. As our coach, Michelle Calcasola always says: “The only thing positive about a negative response is that you positively will get a negative outcome.”

Raising the Bar May Cause Team Shift

As you raise the expectations of your culture, as you stop tolerating the actions that are not driving your business towards success, some of your current team members may not go along for the ride. If they can’t adapt, if they can’t grow with you, there likely is another business that would serve them better (let’s face it, there are plenty of businesses with negative cultures if that is what they want). Don’t be afraid of this change. When your team is unified and they are excited to come to work, their excitement will be contagious. They will give a higher level of customer care, leading to great client satisfaction which will only grow your business naturally.

Remember: The role of the business owner is to support the team, the team needs to support the customer, the customer supports the business and the business will support the owner. The cycle continues if the sphere isn’t broken.