Why is it so hard for leaders to talk about the culture and energy in their workplaces? If they were as focused on making money as they claim to be, they would talk about culture all the time.
They would want to know how the team is feeling, not just once a year in a check-the-box way but all the time, in the moment and on the ground.
If more CEOs could get past their fears to tune in to the unimaginable power-and-information source available to them through their employees, their company's culture would be their highest priority!
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A company is an organism. In order to survive, it has to change as the outside environment changes. The organism has to take in constant signals from the outside world. Your employees have those signals!
The most important messages from the real world beyond your company's walls are not data points. They are not easily-counted particles that end up on spreadsheets, but stories and impressions and hunches, too.
Any CEO who is truly interested in growing their organization and making it profitable will be obsessed with corporate culture. It's the ether in which your business operates. It's the quality of the water in your fishbowl. Do you want your incredible fish swimming through filthy water and muck? No way!
CEOs often pretend that corporate culture isn't real, or doesn't matter. They point to the numbers in the cells on the spreadsheets or graphs on the wall as though the numbers have tremendous weight. Nothing can move those numbers around except human conversations, and human effort. That is the only thing that drives a business forward or holds it back.
CEOs are afraid to talk about the stickiest human topic at work, the culture inside their own organization. In order to talk about it, they have to talk about fear and trust, including their own fears. That is hard to do.
CEOs don't want to talk about culture because they are afraid of looking stupid or feeling vulnerable.
A lot of CEOs go out of business because at one point, they were afraid of looking stupid.
Some leaders are afraid of not being in charge. They fear that if they take too much guidance from their subordinates, that makes them less than commanding.
They would rather go down with the ship than take in outside perspectives. It's too big a leap for them. That doesn't make them bad people. We are all on our paths and we all struggle at times.
It takes humility for a CEO or any leader to say "I want to know what people are thinking and feeling in this company. I want to stay open and keep listening."
It is easy for CEOs to get walled off from all but a small number of people, including their direct reports and a few trusted advisors. Top-level leaders often participate in the walling-off of a CEO from the outside world, intentionally or otherwise.
When you are one of the most-trusted advisors to a big-shot leader it is tempting to want to keep him or her from free and constant interaction with the rest of the team.
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There are rewards for telling the CEO what they want to hear. The inability of top executives to cut through the layer of fear that separates them and their truth from the CEO's ears is a shame, but it is easily predicted from the organizational structure.
Unless they have employment contracts, the CEO's direct reports serve at the CEO's pleasure. The function head who tells the CEO what they don't want to hear could be sacked next week.
The corporate model itself incentivizes non-truth-telling. That's bad for shareholders, customers and employees -- and very bad for CEOs!
Here are 10 reasons most CEOs have a hard time talking comfortably about the corporate culture in their organizations.
1. If your company has a financial problem, a product failure, a PR disaster or some other mishap, you can blame other people. When the problem is cultural, a CEO has to look in the mirror. Some CEOs can't do that. They rose to the top of the ladder in part because of their pursuit of higher and higher-level roles that would keep them focused on hitting yardsticks, and protect them from the mirror.
2. Culture is squishy. It isn't measurable. If you think you are measuring your culture, you are looking at your culture too narrowly. CEOs can't see it on a spreadsheet, so they say "Our culture is fine!" If you wait to talk about culture until people are quitting in droves, you may have waited too long.
3. CEOs don't talk about culture because they don't know what to say. They think that culture is big, but it is a wave made up on microscopic particles. They are sub-atomic units of good feeling, called communitrons. I made them up to illustrate how culture is conveyed from person to person and from the organization to its team members. It's tiny things, repeated and varied. It's warmth and acknowledgment, and trust and flex. Culture is an energy wave you build through words and actions. Your culture will carry you over every obstacle to your goal!
4. CEOs often avoid cultural topics because they feel that those topics are not businesslike. They see their business through the old-school model, the Industrial Revolution idea that a business is simply a mechanism. That's not true. Your business is informed by the specific people who work for you right now. No other set of people could produce this team energy that powers your business. There is no more businesslike topic than culture!
5. CEOs are afraid that if they open the floodgates by starting a conversation about culture, employees will go overboard. CEOs fear that if they give their employees the mic, the employees will start complaining and they won't stop. I have never found this to be true. It works in the opposite way. When employees have a sounding board and know that their issues will be addressed, they don't have to complain. The information flow accelerates because the trust level has grown.
6. CEOs don't talk about culture because they don't have a vocabulary for it. They know how to talk about bits and bytes and release dates. They know how to talk about cost of goods sold and sales per region. Conversations about culture take them out of their comfort zone.
7. CEOs are hesitant to talk about culture because they fear that they might look weak -- to themselves or others -- if they take too much input from their employees. They may have the outdated view that as the CEO, they have to call the shots and can't stoop to consult their employees. The minute they find the courage to do so, they get stronger. Their employees get stronger. Their culture warms up instantly!
8. CEOs are nervous talking about culture with their employees because they fear it may open up sticky topics that they can't easily resolve. What if a CEO wandered around her office checking in with people at their desks and sitting in the break room -- and what if one of those employees said "I need a pay raise" or "My boss is too hard on me.?" What could a CEO do in a situation like that? The CEO will say "Thank you for telling me that. I want to write down your name and your contact details so I can look into this. I don't know what will happen next, but I did hear you and I thank you for telling me." There is no reason to be afraid of interaction with your own employees!
9. Some CEOs don't want to talk about culture because they feel that it is HR's job to look after the culture. That's like saying that it's the CFO's job to look after money in the organization, and henceforth nobody except the CFO will have anything to say about money. Obviously money flows throughout your organization every millisecond, in purchases and incoming sales and credits and debits and investments and who knows what. Money moves in waves, like energy. Everybody is part of the cultural conversation, not just HR -- and the CEO is the leader of the conversation!
10. Lots of CEOs are afraid that if they start a conversation about corporate culture, they will give up control of their organization and turn it over to their employees. Many CEOs are hung up on the issue of control. They don't understand that any control they might have over their employees by the virtue of their economic power and ability to hire and fire people is fake control that doesn't help them.
Real control is confidence that the energy field you've created will power your team to its mission.
If you broke a leg and were out of commission, God forbid, your team would carry on, because that's how your team is. They don't need to be poked and prodded because they love their work and they care about one another, and you. You care about them. A trust-based culture is an uplifting energy wave that will help you overcome whatever obstacles appear.
Your leadership style is the number one determinant of your success. To unleash the incredible power of your team's energy, you only need to step out of fear and into trust. It is an easy shift to make.
When you realize that you are a CEO who is courageous enough to hire people you trust and to set them loose, you will have taken the first and most important step.
