Back To Basics
Building a healthy workplace culture takes more than good intentions. It takes real commitment to your values. And it takes a willingness to roll up your sleeves and do the work so that your stakeholders, especially employees, know (not just hope) that they can trust you to look after their best interests. Here’s where to start:
1. High Trust
A recent Gallup poll found that only 1 in 3 employees trusts his/her leaders. Focusing on transparency and being consistent are keys to creating high trust cultures.
2. Authenticity
The days of window dressing, check-the-box solutions are over. Employees are demanding an authentic commitment to cultures that are healthy, safe, inclusive…and fun.
3. Radical Fairness
Giving everyone a sense of having a fair shot at succeeding at your organization is a key driver of success. Focus on actual fairness and on perceptions of fairness.
Root Causes of Drama in Workplace Culture
Over my career, I have identifies the eight common root causes of drama. Each of the items below can be remedied by focusing your efforts on the three workplace culture basics of high trust, authenticity, and radical fairness.
- Inauthentic leadership
- Problem-solving deficit
- Persistent confusion
- Lack of transparency
- Communication gaps
- Increased division
- Culture of complicity
- Blind spot pop ups
- Wrong solution
- Unwillingness to admit wrongdoing
To prevent, manage or resolve workplace drama, you need a strategy that accounts for human psychology. The Drama-Free Workplace not only identifies these root causes in more depth from a psychological perspective, it also offers a roadmap to creating a healthy workplace culture and organization.
Additional Resources for Workplace Culture
- Forbes: Four Ways To Create Transparency In The Workplace
- Harvard Business Review: Why Radical Honesty Is Good Business
- Understanding workplace drama starts with understanding human psychology (one of my favorite topics):
Our mission is to help create and support healthy workplace cultures. Part of that mission is to provide tips and advice on how to evolve your workplace into a truly inclusive environment. Feel free to share with anyone who you think could benefit from our message.
About PersuasionPoint
Patti Perez is founder and CEO of PersuasionPoint, a modern-day consulting firm dedicated to teaching leaders and teams how to create and sustain healthy, equitable and inclusive workplace cultures. Patti is the best-selling, award-winning author of The Drama-Free Workplace (Wiley 2019), and draws from the book’s themes to provide practical, authentic, and action-oriented solutions to help companies achieve true diversity and equity, and to create environments of belonging and inclusion.
Patti and the team provide services specifically tailored to address workplace struggles with recruiting, retaining, promoting and fully valuing diverse employees – including consulting, leadership training, and boot camps for diverse attorneys who are emerging leaders.
Contact Patti here or email her directly at Patti@PersuasionPoint.com.
