How to build your workplace culture foundation

I have the immense pleasure today of being the values guide for conscious leaders and their organizations, transforming their groups into tribes. It’s always different and it’s always the same. That’s because it always involves humans. When people are connected through their values, there’s no limit to what they can do. Values-driven tribes create a workplace culture in which talent is fostered and new meaning is brought into each person’s life. If you could do that in your company, wouldn’t you think it was worth a try?

Don’t get me wrong—this is far from a rainbows-and-sunshine path. Even while I was leading an astonishing tribe, I had days when I didn’t want to get out of bed and deal with the people who were on the peripheries of the work. I would often feel totally overwhelmed by everything that I needed to do to get the results I desired in a way that aligned with my values. I had pressure from my internal leadership to take an easier path. The problem was that the solution they had in mind went against my values.

I remember a one-on-one in which my boss said, “You just have to lower the bar. Your expectations are too high, and it’s making other people look bad.” Another time I was told, “It’s not appropriate for you to share information about what’s on the horizon. Just because you know it’s coming doesn’t mean you have to tell your team that.”

The “coaching” I was receiving often left me feeling sick. And because at the time I was still living in a people-pleasing mindset where I made myself smaller to make others more comfortable, I took their feedback to be true instead of questioning its intentions. I didn’t put it through my own filter to determine whether I was going to accept that truth or ground myself in my own.

I’ll never forget the advice I received when I asked a trusted colleague if they thought I was wrong for sharing my vision of the future—what was in place and what needed to be created. He looked at me with so much empathy in his eyes and shared a story: “I want you to imagine that you physically came into this company for the first time and you noticed that the floor wasn’t level. In fact, it was on such an angle that people were getting back problems, and things were sliding around and even getting lost. You noticed this for a couple of days, and you finally got the courage to speak up. You said something to your colleagues like, ‘Hey, did you ever notice that we’re losing things and our backs are hurting because the floor is so uneven? Is there something we can do to change that?’ and they responded, ‘Oh yeah, but it’s not that bad. You just have to start walking on an angle, and it will feel like it’s evened out. Just bend over a little more, and you’ll get used to it.’”

He went on: “That’s what’s going on here now. You are trying to fix the floor, and everyone else is just comfortable in the pain of it. They don’t care if they lose things or their backs hurt because this is what they know and what they protect. It’s a lot of work to pull up the entire foundation and rebuild what’s broken. But you’re the kind of person who wants to do that work. And we need more people like that to speak up about the floor and not be afraid of the consequences.”

I just about cried when he used that analogy. He was right. I had no interest in bending over, experiencing pain, and losing things when it was obvious what needed to be done to fix it.
I resigned within a few days of that conversation, realizing over and over again that I wanted to build my own floor and help those who were interested in building theirs with intention from the start, or those who were willing to rip up the whole damn thing to do what was right to ensure that they were working from the same, solid level.

Are you looking to build your own floor so that you can have a thriving workplace culture? This post was inspired by MaryBeth’s new book – Permission to Be Human: The Conscious Leaders Guide to Creating a Values-Driven Culture. Check out this conscious leadership book to learn how.