A few weeks ago, I went to a reunion lunch with about twenty former workplace colleagues. Some of us had been gone from the company for up to ten years or more. But we still liked each other enough that we wanted to get together again.
The experience got me thinking about signs that you’re actually creating a good culture in your workplace. I’ll share a few of those signs, and then give a quick word of warning.
1️⃣ Do people choose to hang out on purpose? Do they eat together? Enjoy extracurricular activities together? Especially people from different departments? A Gartner survey famously asks if people have a “best friend” at work, because friend-like behavior strongly correlates with employee engagement.
2️⃣ Do your team members readily admit when they don’t know something or make a mistake? And do they share with you when they disagree with your point of view? These behaviors are good signs of an environment with psychological safety that favors growth over self-preservation.
3️⃣ Do you know the names of your team members’ spouses, kids, and pets? For that to happen, they have to be comfortable enough talking about them, and you have to be interested enough to remember.
But I also have a warning.
Like any other lagging indicator, these can trigger backlash if you directly try to force them to show up. Mandatory fun, extracted confessions, and interrogations into personal affairs may seem like they’ll create these signs. But that would be a mistake. Remember Goodhart’s law, “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”
If you’d like a thinking partner to help you improve the culture of your own organization, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to schedule a complimentary conversation.
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