Episode 08 · 23 August 2022 · 29:34
How To Build A Positive Workplace Culture With Bottom Line Impact
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How To Build A Positive Workplace Culture With Bottom Line Impact
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What the article gets right and the commercial reality
The positive psychology movement and its application to culture
Thriving vs. fixing problems: engaging culture vs. positive culture
Culture vs. climate: definitions and differences
Dominant and secondary culture types in real organisations
The 6 characteristics of positive cultures and the learning culture
other#positive culture characteristics#learning culture#culture
Social relationships and empathy at work
Empathic leadership without burnout
Show notes
Why "Positive Culture" Advice Falls Short — with Leanne Elliott
Guest: Leanne Elliott — Chartered Occupational Psychologist and lead consultant at Oblong.
"Positive workplace culture" is everywhere these days — but is it actually attainable? Or just another piece of HBR advice that sounds great on paper and falls apart in practice?
In this episode, Leanne takes a Harvard Business Review article on positive workplace cultures and puts it under the psychologist's microscope. She breaks down what's genuinely useful, what's oversimplified, and what's downright impractical for real businesses. Along the way, Al and Leanne unpack the difference between culture and climate, why the "caring culture" label is more complex than it sounds, and how leaders can build empathy without becoming doormats.
Top 3 Takeaways
Culture and climate aren't the same thing. Climate is how employees perceive the work environment right now — it fluctuates. Culture is the deeper, more stable set of values and assumptions. You can't fix culture by tweaking the office temperature.
"Positive" is a loaded word. In psychology, positive psychology is a specific school of thought — not just "be nice." Much of the HBR advice borrows the language without the rigour, which is where the impractical suggestions creep in.
Empathy is a skill, not a personality trait. You can build empathic leadership deliberately — but it requires creating environments where people can actually open up. That takes more than a well-worded values statement.
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThe dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Al ElliottNice. Check out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Leanne ElliottAlways forgive. I'm uncomfortable because I think forgiveness is, is, is almost irrelevant.
Al ElliottHello and Welcome to the Truth, Lies and Workplace Culture podcast. This is episode 8, and I'm Al.
Leanne ElliottI'm Leanne.
Al ElliottAnd if you've not listened before, just the format of the podcast is very much that Leanne is the expert in workplace culture, anything to do with engagement, leadership, etc., etc. I'm not the expert, but I do own a couple of businesses. And so therefore, I'll be quizzing her and translating the science that comes out of her mouth into stuff that we can actually, as business owners, we can actually implement. Anything to add to that, Leah?
Leanne ElliottNo, I'm ready to be translated.
Al ElliottSo today we are going to be talking about positive work cultures. Now, this is based on an article, I think, Leah, that— did you find this article?
Leanne ElliottI did. It popped up on my LinkedIn feed, actually.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Al ElliottAnd it was originally— well, it was published in the Harvard Business Review, and it's by a lady called Emma Sapala and another one called Kim Cameron. Which are they? I think Emma's from Yale School of Management, and Kim is a professor of management at the University of Michigan. Now, when you originally read this article, what were your initial thoughts on this, Leah?
Leanne ElliottI think as a, as a psychologist, I appreciated the, the overarching narrative. In terms of somebody who has worked in businesses and with business owners, it all just sounded a bit like, well, that's nice, but how can I actually make that work commercially? It all sounds just a bit too woo and a bit too friendly and a bit too not real-worldy. Um, so I saw it and I just thought this might be an interesting thing for us to, to touch on and just translate some of the truth and maybe some of the potential lies of, of what the authors are saying a positive culture is as presented in this article. Of course, these are very specialist people. I'm not competing with professors from University of Michigan or Yale, certainly not. But I think what We're not saying, well, we're not saying they're wrong. We're saying, as consultants in workplace culture, we think that sometimes this level of best practice needs some translation, just to help SMEs better understand it as a concept, and also to leverage the techniques in a way that's actually going to work for their business.
Al ElliottAbsolutely. And I think that's, that's one of the issues that, as a non-professional, I come across when I read stuff, particularly very academic, or stuff that's come from an academic sort of person is that I go, well, that's all well and nice. And perhaps if I was Google, IBM, or someone with a budget of $10 million a year to spend on my people, then yes, that would be the thing we're going for. But the fact is that if with most businesses you're growing, you need to make sure that you spend your money as responsibly as you possibly can, but also look after your people. And so, I think what's interesting will be interesting about this is to go through their ideas and then say, right, what is it that we can actually take from this and apply to a smaller business? who perhaps don't have, or doesn't have the budget that larger businesses might have. So, we start off with this idea. I mean, the headline of the article is proof that positive work cultures are more productive, but I don't think I understand what a positive work culture is. So, can you explain what is a positive culture?
Leanne ElliottYeah. So, I mean, in psychology, if you're reading anything psychology-based and you see the word positive, that comes from a movement called positive psychology, which was founded by a guy called Martin Seligman in the late '90s. He was a president of the American Psychological Association. His mandate at the time was to start to shift the mindset that psychologists were bringing to human behavior. So where the focus traditionally was on mental illness, maladaptive behaviors, negative thinking, and how we address those to a point where someone can function normally, in inverted commas, it builds more on the movements of humanistic movements and encourages an emphasis on the more positive aspects of how we can help people get from, from kind of surviving to thriving.
Al ElliottSo if I've understood that correctly, then the traditional thinking was more like a sticky plaster or a medicine or something to fix the problem, the ailment, whereas the positive work culture is more about how to eat healthily, how to take vitamins so that you don't get in that situation in the first place.
Leanne ElliottYeah, I mean, I guess as a, as a, as a Psychological school of thought is kind of going from, rather than just focusing all of our efforts on the problems and getting them to a point where they are then functioning, how do we actually start with what's functioning and make changes to make them thrive? So, if we're looking at that in an organisational culture perspective, maybe rather than necessarily focusing on perhaps very small areas of toxicity within your culture, it's putting your time and attention into those people who are currently functioning well within your business.
Al ElliottMm-hmm.
Leanne Elliottand helping them thrive, and in turn, helping your business thrive, focusing on the positive aspects.
Al ElliottOkay. So if I've got 20 employees and one of them I know is on Facebook half the time, and another one is long-term absent and, and doesn't seem very engaged when they're here, but the other 18 are pretty well engaged, then am I right in thinking that positive culture is basically building on the strength of the other 18 first before we Rather than going straight for the 2, which I'm not sure about, and trying to fix that.
Leanne ElliottYes, but I think this is where my first question mark with, with how this article is, is presented comes up. And that is the fact that, to me, I don't necessarily think positive culture is a type of culture. And what you explained there was what I'd call an engaging culture. So, we've talked about this on the podcast before, but it's about how leaders can actually put their efforts into the people who are engaged, rather than disengage, and how that's going to have much more benefits for you, both in the short and in the long term. For me, when I'm looking at something like this explanation of a positive culture, to me, it feels more like an organisational climate, as opposed to an organisational culture.
Al ElliottOkay, well, you've just used a phrase there that I've not really come across before, organisational climate. So, what the hell is an organisational climate versus the culture?
Leanne ElliottSo, climate is more about staff's perceptions of how the work environment is currently impacting them, impacting the team, impacting their work, impacting their wellbeing. Climate is fairly changeable, and it can fluctuate. So, for example, if you're in an organisation, say you are in a school, and your school typically is all about teamwork, it's very much around positive relationships and enablement, Um, but then you'll— you get announced that Ofsted are coming in to inspect. Your organisational climate is going to shift very quickly. It's going to become more about, right, process-driven. How do we show this? How do we achieve that? How do we evidence this? How do we get everybody to hit these deadlines very quickly? The climate is going to change to facilitate the current challenge that the organisation is going through. Culture, on the other hand, is much more ingrained within the norms and the expected behaviours of a workplace. So it's less on what is being done and how it's being done.
Al ElliottSo if you are a creative agency and you have, you win a big project, it's coming towards the end of this deadline, then your climate might be one of, one of like, we've got to rush, we've got to, we've got to make sure this work's good and done on time, etc., etc. That might not necessarily affect the culture, which is everyone does the best they possibly can and really cares about the, about the customer or the client. But you're saying that the culture can fluctuate throughout perhaps a year, whereas the—
Leanne Elliottsorry, the climate can fluctuate throughout the year, whereas the culture Yeah, unless there's a fundamental change within the business, rapid growth, for example, that can threaten the existing culture within the business. But if you don't go through a significant change, then culture is going to be fairly stable, unless you want, you know, you're either in intervention or something happens to the business. Whereas climate is going to fluctuate with both the individuals and the environment in which they operate. Right, okay.
Al ElliottSo, how does a business owner manage the climate or create an engaging climate?
Leanne ElliottSo, I think really with, um, with climate, we first need to think about culture, because climate is also one of those things that fairly, maybe fairly uncontrollable, depending on the other influences on the business. So, for example, at the moment, the cost of living crisis is causing significant challenges for businesses, both in terms of the, um, The financial implications of that and also the wellbeing of staff potentially. Climate is also a phenomenon of external factors that are uncontrollable. We always like to focus on what is controllable. I think if we first look at culture, the tricky thing with culture is there's no real agreed definition on culture. Again, we've touched on this before when we talk about recruiting for culture fit, and that is one of the first issues. That said, some more recent research has looked at hundreds of models on culture, and it's found that 8 typical types of culture, essentially mapped on a scale of how people interact, whether they are independent or interdependent, and how they adapt to change. So, are they operating in environments that are typically quite flexible and rapidly changing, or are they in environments that are quite stable? The important thing with this research and what was concluded is that Of these 8 culture types, there isn't one that's superior to the other. They all come with their advantages and disadvantages. So, if we take 2 opposite cultures, so, in terms of how these cultures are mapped, the 2 that would be considered kind of polar opposites of each other. So, one of the cultures of the 8 cultures that was identified is called a caring culture. So, a caring culture will focus on relationships. Mutual trust. Work environments are going to be very warm, very collaborative, very welcoming places. They're going to be defined by people who really help and support one another, go out their way to help and support one another. Employees typically are united by a sense of meaning, loyalty, and leaders are really going to emphasise the sincerity behind teamwork and these positive relationships. Think I think something like the NHS is gonna have typically a caring culture.
Al ElliottOkay, well, I mean, that sounds like something that everybody wants, this, this culture. So how can you have a culture which is opposite?
Leanne ElliottWell, the thing with a caring culture, I mean, the advantages are you are gonna have improved teamwork, engagement, communication, trust, and that huge sense of belonging. But the disadvantage of that is there may be an overemphasis on consensus. It may be very difficult to explore new options. It might stifle competitiveness. Slow decision-making is likely to creep in. I mean, I'm sure if you speak to anybody who works in organisations that are very purpose-led, change is something that can be very, very difficult to implement, and that in itself can really stagnate growth. The opposite culture is what's called a results-driven culture. So it's very much about achievements and it's very goal-focused. So where is you're going to have this improved execution that a caring culture may not? You're also going to have a lot more of focus on goal achievement, on capability building, much more of a competitive nature, not necessarily between the team, but externally with other organisations. The downside of this is they're going to be There may be an overemphasis on achieving results, and that may lead to breakdowns in communication and collaboration, and also high levels of stress and anxiety if people aren't managed in a way to make sure they're not going— they're not burning themselves out, and they have the right levels of resilience to deal with this more high-pressured environment. Neither culture is perfect. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. And I think really by understanding the culture that you currently have, and then laying over an engaging climate, then as a business leader, you're gonna be able to moderate any of the potential disadvantages of the current culture. Did you know that the UK's number 1 management podcast— that's us, by the way— and the UK's number 1 marketing podcast are both on the same podcast network?
Al ElliottWe actually have a lot in common. We both use behavioural science to help people do better at work.
Leanne ElliottAnd we both had to wrangle Rory Sutherland on an episode, and 2 out of 3 of us are devilishly good-looking.
Al ElliottAnd you're not gonna say which. Phil, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in 3s—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.
Al ElliottSeamless, seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)We've just done an episode on fake fandom and and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioural science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff, and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Leanne ElliottIt is, it's such, it's such a good show. Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes. It'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)It can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)I am.
Al ElliottGo and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Definitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this. So come back.
Al ElliottI'll cut that out.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Keep that in.
Al ElliottOkay, so let's take this to a more practical view of this. So we are gonna pick a business, let's say it's an accountancy firm, um, and their culture is obviously results, but also carefulness and, you know, a bit of attention to detail, et cetera, et cetera. So that is their culture. But then when it comes to tax season, when they've got, when they've gotta submit everyone's tax returns on by the 31st of January for the UK, um, then I'm get— I'm imagining that the climate at that point is going to be a bit more frenetic. It's gonna change slightly.
Leanne ElliottYeah. Yes, yeah, it might well do. And as you say, it's very likely that organizations are going to have a dominant culture and then kind of a secondary culture. So, as you said there, you know, an organization that is in an area that works in compliance and regulation and within the law, there is going to have to be an element of a culture called order, which is more rule-abiding, more cooperative, has a big focus on operational excellence.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Okay.
Leanne Elliottoperational efficiency. There is an emphasis on rules and things that need to be followed. So, what you might find in areas where the climate will shift, this secondary culture may come to the fore.
Al ElliottOkay, that makes sense. So, I mean, moving back onto this article, if I remember, they've got 6 characteristics of a positive workplace culture, and there's one that just jumped out at me. Which it didn't feel right or practical, actually. It might've been right, but as a business owner, I'd be like, this doesn't seem practical. And that was that one of the essential characteristics was avoiding blame and forgiving mistakes. Now, as a business leader, how can we make that work commercially? If we are not able to hold people to account, then, you know, if someone goes and messes up massively, I go, oh, don't worry. It's all right. It's all right. It's not all right. It's pretty far from all right. So how do we hold people to account? But still incorporate this idea of avoiding blame and forgiving mistakes?
Leanne ElliottYeah, so it's a really good point, and it is one as well that really stood out to me when I read through. I mean, what this is essentially referring to is, in a culture, is a learning culture. And we know that learning cultures have very positive relationships with both wellbeing and performance. So, learning cultures are very open, they're very inventive, it's all about exploration. Creativity really is at the heart of a learning culture. What that also means as well, to allow that level of creativity and innovation, is high levels of psychological safety. And to be psychologically safe, we need to know that we can make mistakes, and we're not going to be blamed or immediately fired for doing them. So, if we think Elon Musk, if we think Tesla, SpaceX, they're very focused on innovation. Innovation at that level is quite literally world-changing. The man's trying to get us on a colony on Mars in the next 30 years. But if you look at the Starship prototypes, I think they must be on number 15 now because they keep blowing up or missing their landing. So, in that sense, the learning culture isn't about blaming. I think blame in general, whatever organisation, is not going to be a very productive thing to do, because then also, as a leader, if you're blaming somebody, you're not taking accountability for your role in whatever happened for this mistake to happen. So, I'm half with them. No blame is really good. Always forgive, I'm uncomfortable because I think forgiveness is almost irrelevant. Yes, you forgive. You're not going to hold a grudge for somebody who makes a mistake. That's not going to be productive. But, at the same time, you need to help people learn from their mistakes. You need to help your teams learn from mistakes.
midroll (Phil Agnew, Nudge)Yeah.
Leanne ElliottYou need to reflect on what went well, what went wrong, where are the red flags, what did we miss, what could we do differently in the future, what can we learn from this situation to make sure it doesn't happen again and we get better outcomes for the business, for ourselves, and for our customers. There is a point, however, where the learning could stop and somebody, an individual or a team, continues to make the same mistakes over and over again. Now, it's at point that I think always forgiving becomes a little bit counterproductive. It's bad for you and it's bad for your business, but also it's bad for that individual. Very few people come to work every day with the intention of doing a bad job, but they may be in the wrong role for them. They might be in the wrong team. They might just not have the strengths, the skills, the knowledge, the abilities to do this job at the level at which it needs to be done. At that point, your responsibility as a leader is to either help that person and find another job within the organisation that is more fitting to their skills, or work with them to manage them out of the business, because ultimately, repeated mistakes is not sustainable for a business that is in growth.
Al ElliottLet me ask you then, because there's a fair bit in that article about social relationships, but as a manager or a leader, do I want to be friends with my employees? Do I want them to be friends with each other? Is that the right or wrong thing to do? What do you think?
Leanne ElliottI think undoubtedly positive relationships in the workplace are going to have a positive impact on engagement and wellbeing performance. You know, good relationships with our peers, our managers, our leaders, they're really important, and they have, you know, evidence shows they have direct impacts on our performance, on our wellbeing, on our physical health even. But what I fear this article is perhaps over— overemphasising is the root of these positive relationships is in friendship, or dare I say, family. And I think this is where the risk and potential negative impacts could come. I mean, no one wants to performance manage their best mate if things aren't going well, right? But I think with these types of relationships, being a friend, being a family, it's more pulling out the principles and then reframing them to then apply within your business. So, for example, in these types of relationships, friends and families, you know, there is this healthy feeling of being able to challenge people, to have discussions, to be able to question why somebody believes a certain way, or to problem solve, or to innovate, or think about, well, what is the best way to cook the roast chicken on Sunday? And it's not a case of avoiding conflict, but it's a case of making sure that situations don't escalate to a point of conflict, and also dealing with any unacceptable behaviours within the workplace as well. Being empathetic with the challenges somebody is facing in their business. These are all aspects that we'd find in friendships, we'd find in family relationships, and they will motivate people, they will help performance, they will nurture wellbeing, but they're done through the lens of an organisation and through business management.
Al ElliottSo, you talked about empathy quite a lot there. And I think, I mean, I know that back in the day when you, when you had a job, one of your best lead— best managers demonstrated a huge amount of empathy. And looking back to back 20 years ago when I used to work for people, then the worst bosses, the ones who didn't, weren't empathic. Is that right? Empathetic, empathic, whichever the word is. So, so, and those, and the best ones, the ones who did have this empathy. So as a leader, how are you going to develop that? develop this empathy or this empathic leadership style?
Leanne ElliottYeah, and empathic leadership is something that's getting a lot more coverage at the moment, and it can be really effective in terms of motivating performance and nurturing wellbeing. I guess, first of all, to define what it is to be an empathic leader, um, you know, demonstrating empathy, which is, you know, imagine we kind of use this analogy at Oblong where if you imagine kind of a person who's, who's in a hole, then sympathy is somebody standing looking into the hole going, you all right? That looks bad. I'm so sorry this happened to you. Empathy is when that, that, that second person who's not in the hole will get a ladder, get in the hole with them, and go, wow, it's dark down here, isn't it? That's empathy. And when you have real empathy for the challenges that your, your team are facing, that creates trust. And trust creates empowering and honest relationships between colleagues. That's what in turn is going to increase collaboration and productivity, because if you have honest relationships with your colleagues, you're going to have these behaviours, these rules that you're going to help somebody out if they need it. You're going to pick up over a flow of workload if you've got the capacity, because you've got that trust, and that's what leads to collaboration and productivity. It's that feeling of being taken care of. In terms of demonstrating empathic leadership, there are a few things that you can do to develop this within your approach. First of all, it's just show genuine interest in others. I think one thing that really bugged me is when, for example, an employee walks in, whether it's either to your office or over to your desk, and they say, is it okay if I talk to you for a second? The leader will be there typing an email and not look at them, not look up, and go, yep, sure, what can I help you with? And keep typing.
Al ElliottTyping.
Leanne ElliottThat's not creating an environment where I can open up to you, where I can tell you what's going on or what I need help with. If that happens, stop what you're doing, turn your chair, look at them, and make sure that they are your only point of focus for the point of which they need to talk to you. That is what showing genuine interest in others is. And then of course, you know, depending on the challenges that somebody is going through, be willing to help them, whether that's with a professional issue, whether it's with a personal issue. I'm I'm not saying get deep into people's personal lives and help with that, but for example, if somebody is struggling to get a doctor's appointment for their son at a time outside of work, then allow them an hour and a half off to take their kid to the doctor's. It's things like that that's just going to, again, foster this feeling of empathy, of trust, of mutual respect, and that itself is going to Encourage employees to give those extra efforts. As we mentioned before, one-to-one meetings, check-ins, not always keeping it to the formal kind of appraisals or monthly reviews. Just have a time in your diary where you're just going to meet somebody, phone them up, see how they're doing. Maybe not even talk about work stuff, just see what it is that's impacting them at the moment. And I think we just keep an eye out on people. We all know those cues of people who are perhaps struggling a bit more, that may be coming in a bit later than they usually are, not looking as well presented, maybe not as engaged in conversations or as meeting. Keep an eye out for those warnings of burnout. Ultimately, you can absolutely use your leadership instincts with this and your relationships with your team, but implementing some kind of employee analytics, some kind of employee engagement survey, is going to help you understand how your people are currently feeling, so what your current climate is, and also translating that into your culture and how you can overlay this engaging climate with your company culture.
Al ElliottFantastic. Okay, so we'll link to the article in the show notes. We also have an employee engagement product that we have ourselves, but it's not the only one on the market. There's plenty out there to choose from. Obviously, we think ours is the best. So if you go to oblonghq.com, there'll be a way you can get in touch with us there. If you've got any thoughts about the podcast, or you want to be a guest, or you want to recommend a guest, or just any kind of feedback, then just email us podcast@oblonghq.com. And I think, is there anything else you want to add for today?
Leanne ElliottNo, I think that's it.
Al ElliottThank you for listening. And as ever, we're looking forward to your feedback. Bye for now.
Leanne ElliottBye.