Show Notes

Welcome back to the Designer Practice Podcast and I’m your host Kayla Das.

If you had ever worked in an organization that has poor work culture, you know all too well how a poor work culture can impact the physical and emotional health of its workers. A poor work culture can even contribute to workplace burnout.

I’ve been on both ends of a poor work culture and through the years I’ve reflected a lot on this topic. What contributes to a poor work culture? And more importantly, what helps develop a positive one?

Throughout my experience and after working with clients who had experienced workplace burnout in my therapy practice, I’ve learned that there are key elements that can either promote a positive work culture or reinforce a negative one.

In this episode, I’ll share five key elements that help you develop a positive work culture in your practice.

Before we dive in though, I will be using the word employee throughout this episode to describe someone who works within an organization. I recognize that in many practices workers are actually independent contractors and not necessarily employees. For the purpose of this episode, if I use the word employee it can be considered synonymous to independent contractor, even though both are very different hiring structures with different job functions and expectations.

So now let’s get into it.

Trust vs. Distrust Between Employees and Management

So, the first element is to develop and nurture trust between employees and management. When employees and management trust each other, employees feel autonomous in their work, so work gets completed, employees feel their contributions are valued, which increases their motivation and productivity, and open communication among both parties exist.

When there is distrust in an organization, employees often feel like they are walking on eggshells and are waiting for the next shoe to drop. While management worry about productivity and results. This can often lead to management employing unhelpful work strategies, such as micromanaging employees work, talking poorly about employees, and spending more time disciplining employees instead of supporting them. Leading to a cyclic cycle of distrust. Essentially, distrust plagues an organizational culture.

I like to think of Stephen Covey’s concept of the emotional bank account from his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s a great book, by the way. It’s actually on my top five favorite books.

My interpretation of Mr. Covey’s emotional bank account: humans have an emotional bank account with each other. With each relationship being its own bank account. Each person in a relationship either contributes or deposits into the bank account, or they withdraw from it. The more deposits into the bank account, the better the relationship. And this is also where trust is built. While continuous withdrawals ultimately lead into overdraft.

The thing I like about this analogy is that it demonstrates that if we continue to deposit into a relationship, at some point, if you withdraw from the emotional bank account, it won’t necessarily lead to overdraft depending on the amount that you withdraw.

Let me give you a practical example. If you had a long-time friend who you’ve known for years, and you both continue to deposit into the relationship over time, if your friend takes a misstep in that relationship, depending of course on what that misstep is, you might just shrug it off as being out of character and you won’t think differently of that person because of that. Whereas if you just met someone off the street and they took the same misstep, because you don’t have an existing relationship with that person, it might immediately go into an overdraft situation.

Although when it comes to workplace culture, what often gets overlooked is the fact that in existing organizations, the relationship between employee and management actually exists before you come into the picture. So, although you’re someone very different from your predecessors, the relationship did precede you. Meaning that if you inherited a practice with poor work culture, your emotional bank account with employees is already in an overdraft situation and you’ll need to make significant deposits to be able to get out of that situation, which can take time.

And there’s one more piece of this that I think is very important, is that like regular bank accounts, there are also different currencies. Although we’ll discuss some core pieces of developing a positive work culture, each employee has their own currency. And depending on their currency, your actions could either be a deposit or a withdrawal in that particular situation.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say you have two employees who have engaged in something questionable that you need to speak to both employees about. You speak to both employees in a matter of fact and direct manner. One employee appreciates your candidness, so it’s considered a deposit. Whereas the other employee felt that your approach was too harsh and it left them feeling that the conversation was a withdrawal to the professional relationship. The difference is that their currencies are different. What the second employee may have needed was a supportive, empathetic, and understanding tone versus a matter of fact one.

It’s funny because I’m actually the first employee. I like when people are straight to the point, matter of fact, and tell me what’s wrong and what needs to be fixed. That’s my currency. Which after learning more about myself over the years, this makes complete sense as I’m an INTJ personality in the 16 personalities quiz, and I’m a 3 in the Enneagram. But I’ve realized not everyone thinks, feels, or experiences the world through my currency. So, when developing trust with employees, sometimes we need to adapt to their currency, even if it’s foreign to our own.

Building or rebuilding trust isn’t an easy task because trust isn’t just given, it’s earned. Whether you’re building a work culture from scratch or you inherited an organization with poor work culture. Building trust is the most essential building block for a positive work culture.

Transparency vs. Secrecy Between Employees and Management

The second element is transparency. When it comes to an organizational context, employees like to know what they need to do and why they should do it. Transparency helps them better connect with you and the organizational needs. Transparency also provides clarity, whether it’s with organizational policies, procedures, or processes. However, when intentional or unintentional secrecy exists, trust breaks down and employees feel disconnected with the organization’s vision or direction.

This doesn’t mean that you should share privilege information with all of your employees, but transparency can help improve communication so that employees feel heard, understood, and valued. When employees and management have an opportunity to communicate and understand each other, without fear and repercussions of course, trust is built and the organizational culture flourishes.

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation of Employee

The third concept, which is actually my favorite one to talk about, is intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation with respect to the activities within the role is important for an employee to feel satisfied with the work that they do. When an employee is internally motivated by the work, they feel an increase in energy, accomplishment, and fulfillment in the role. And in turn, have a positive outlook of the organization.

When it comes to therapy practices, it’s not just whether someone is intrinsically motivated to be a therapist, but also the types of clients they like and want to work with as well. All too often when individuals are hiring, they look at the candidate’s skills and trainings, which in part important because we want to make sure that they have the appropriate credentials. But it’s also important to identify if the candidate is intrinsically motivated by the job or the clientele itself.

At this point, you might be wondering, “Well, if they weren’t intrinsically motivated by the job, why are they applying?” The simple answer is that they may be extrinsically motivated to do so.

Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for people to apply for a job due to extrinsic reasons, such as necessity or income. There are actually five reasons why someone might apply for a job, with four of them being extrinsically motivated.

First, they have no employment or in need of part time employment to supplement their current lifestyle. So, they are applying for the position in order to fill an employment gap.

The second is they have full time employment, but are unhappy or burnt out at their current place of employment, and will take any position to get out of that current situation.

Third, they apply for a position for the raise in pay regardless if they think they’ll like that job or not, because money does talk.

The fourth reason, which we don’t see a lot in the therapy sector but it still can occur, is when people enter a profession or apply for a job due to strong encouragement or pressure from others. So, for example, in some families, children are strongly encouraged or pressured to enter certain professions over others by their parents. In this case, the person is not intrinsically motivated by the job or profession, but instead, extrinsically motivated by the approval of their parents.

The fifth and final one, which is the one that we want to happen more than not, is that they are intrinsically motivated by the work and clientele and they are excited to work regardless of the pay. Not saying that you shouldn’t pay well, but they are intrinsically motivated. It’s not just about the pay.

Now these five reasons are not mutually exclusive either. They could overlap. For instance, someone can be intrinsically motivated by the work but also appreciate and apply for a pay raise. Or someone could have part time employment and need to supplement income with a second job but also feel burnt out and want to get out of their other part time job, which is why they’re applying for this position. Or someone could be pressured to be in a specific career or profession by their family and actually still enjoy and be intrinsically motivated by it as well.

But when it comes to developing a positive work culture, it’s important to assess and try to sift out whether candidates are applying for the position because they are intrinsically motivated to do so. Although you might have questions in an interview process that focuses around skills and experience, it’s not always just about hiring people with the most experience or best trainings, but instead because they really want to be there. You can train skills but you can’t change someone’s motivation for wanting to be there. So that’s important to consider.

Supportive vs. Dismissive Management 

The next element to develop a positive work culture is supportive management. I have no doubt that being supportive will probably be one of the easiest for you because listening and validating come second nature. However, what it means to be supportive as a leader goes beyond listening and validating.

Being a supportive leader might include several things such as:

Helping an employee with the task at hand, such as working on the front line to support them with that task. Now this is different than micromanagement because the employee and manager are working together as a team to complete the task instead of the manager delegating or overseeing the process.

Being available to answer employee’s questions and discuss the employee’s concerns, essentially having an open-door policy.

Providing the necessary resources so that the employee can do their job effectively, such as having clear policies, procedures, processes, even job descriptions readily available. Or providing the necessary equipment so that employees can efficiently complete their work.

Giving regular and honest feedback about the employee’s performance so that they can enhance their skills and build confidence. I’m a strong believer in regular performance chats so that the employee has a clear understanding of your expectations, their work progress, where they need to improve, and the strengths they bring to the team. Organizations that do not provide regular performance evaluations tend to have poorer work cultures than those that provide regular feedback. Because what tends to happen is that employees have no idea how they’re performing and then all of a sudden, the employee is told that they’ve done something wrong or are disciplined without ever being given feedback about the issue prior. Performance chats are generally seen as supportive if they are a regular process within the organization, but feedback shouldn’t just occur when something goes wrong, but also when things are going right as well.

Autonomous vs. Controlling Environment

The final element for developing a positive work culture is an autonomous work environment. Although all jobs have specific work expectations, when employees feel that they have the autonomy over their work, they are much more likely to feel fulfilled by the work and to get the work completed efficiently. In contrast, when employees feel controlled or micromanaged, trust breaks down and a poor work culture can develop.

The best way to create a positive work environment is to have clear expectations about what the job functions are and the type of work that needs to get done. And not necessarily as much about how it gets done. When you have clear procedures and processes, employees have a roadmap to follow, so they won’t necessarily need continual oversight. And with an open-door policy, employees know they can reach out to you if they have questions.

Let’s break this down with an example. If you’re hiring therapists in your practice, you may have expectations about the type of clients that therapists work with, especially if you work in a niched area. Or the time frame for sessions in which therapy is conducted, such as 50-minute sessions. But you may provide therapists the autonomy over how they schedule clients, the approaches that they use, or how they structure their sessions, intakes, or case notes.

Ultimately, as long as the work gets done ethically, income is coming in and clients return to see the therapist. Does it really matter how it gets done? Not really.

Conclusion

So, there you have it. Five elements to develop a positive work culture in your practice.

First is trust between employees and management.

Second is transparency between employees and management.

Third is intrinsic motivation of employees.

Four, supportive management.

And five, autonomous work environment.

When it comes to creating a positive work culture, when employees and management have a supportive, motivating, and trusting work environment, the organizational culture will flourish. Whereas a dismissive, demotivating, and one of distrust will ultimately lead to a poor work culture.

If you’ve inherited a practice that already has a negative work culture, it can feel like a challenge to change it. But by continuing to develop trust and deposit into the emotional bank account of employees, you’re going to start seeing a slow but steady transition towards rebuilding a positive work environment. So just hang in there.

Thank you for tuning into the Designer Practice Podcast. If you like this episode or the podcast overall, and you’re listening on a major podcasting platform, I would appreciate if you could take a few moments to leave a comment or a review.

Until next time, bye for now.

Credits & Disclaimers

Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

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