Workplace Culture: The Build or The Breakdown

I used to be an elementary school teacher. I was actually an elementary music teacher which means I had a front row seat to every single teacher's classroom management style as they walked their students in and out of my room. After a few years I started noticing a lot of trends.

Regardless of the new classroom characters and the class makeup, the group would end up in one of two places: 1. A caring community of students that excelled in every area OR 2. An annoying group of students at each other's throats.

Let's Compare

In the classrooms that ended up growing together, the teacher actively put culture building activities on the agenda. When there was an issue that happened outside of the classroom, that teacher paused the regular learning to address it. In other words, the social-emotional health of the classroom community always took precedence over checking curriculum boxes. And what happened in the end was every box was checked anyways, and sometimes more.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

This is simple pshychology. When people feel safe, secure and important in their environments, they easily excel in their work and daily tasks.

See this article for more:

https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html In the second example above, in classrooms that ended up nearly on fire by the end of 10 months together, students never moved past their need for safety and security. In these classrooms belonging was assumed but never explicitly incorporated into the regular schedule - talked about but never actively pursued. When issues came up outside the classroom they were swept under the rug, The connections between classmates grew more and more volatile. And their level of skill and proficiency dropped lower and lower.

Intentional Culture

In case you haven't connected the dots to your workplace, let me make it obvious.

Kids and adults are the same when it comes to what they need. We are all humans. We need to have our needs met, we need to feel safe, we need to know we belong in order to have the confidence to achieve, grow, and succeed in our lives.

Here's the second part of the puzzle. Because of our various backgrounds, work and life experiences, a workplace and coworkers will always need to be intentional about building a culture people can trust.

Henry Cloud says, "Trust cannot be given only on a promise."

Both classrooms above told their students they belonged. But only one of them proved it.

How do you show your team members their needs matter?