How We Feel at Work Comes From the Organizational Culture – Good or Bad

Second installment of our series “What We Feel at Work”

Part I: Do You Feel Alignment with Your Organization’s Purpose, Vision, and Values?

The feelings we get from our work environment most often stem from how we are treated, which either aligns with or conflicts with our personal purpose and guiding principles.

In whatever organization we work in, those values are all around us. There is a clear sense of what feels right and what feels wrong. When we see a team member properly valued for their good work, we know we are part of a caring organization. However, when we see a teammate recognized for work they did not do, we feel that trust, integrity, and honesty have been violated, and it de-energizes us.

Values can be put on the walls and on the website, but that is not what team members feel. They feel the interactions that create the emotional environment people experience every day.

First, Have We Made the Shift from Me to Team?

If we are in it for the organization, we’ve made the necessary shift to be a team player in service of something bigger than ourselves. If not, and we are in it for self-serving reasons, the organization’s core values will not look good to us. Next week, we will address those who find themselves misaligned with the organization’s purpose and/or guiding principles. We all need options.

Is What You Are Feeling About You or the Organization?

It is important to have a personal values filter that helps us label our feelings – respect/disrespect, trust/lack of trust, collaborative/siloed, growth/fixed, or positive/negative — and understand where they rise from. That said, within an organization that seeks alignment, there are shared values in service of the organizational purpose, and the purpose is in service of the organization.

In one of our client organizations, team members show so much care for one another that it has created a bigger issue: they are not addressing the strategic issues facing the organization. We label this a “systems issue,” not a “team member issue.” It is not about any one team member; it has become an accepted cultural system. As a result, the business is declining. So, we can feel good about our day-to-day interactions, but what about aligning those shared values with the organization’s purpose so there is a sustainable future?

The organization’s values of caring/respect/compassion help team members feel loved, supported, and accepted. But the same value that creates warmth has also made difficult conversations too awkward—no one wants to hurt anyone else’s feelings. As a result, important decisions are delayed, and accountability conversations are postponed. The organization struggles to grow. Caring has become disconnected from purpose.

Key Concept for Us to Understand

The purpose is either for the organization or for our personal best interests first.

Guiding principles must always operate:

• Within ourselves
• Between one another
• Up and down the organization
• In service of the purpose

When values stop serving the organizational purpose and begin serving individual comfort, organizations stop growing and fall into insignificance.

The Shift from Me to Team

The shift required for sustainable success is one that has us thinking in terms of what is the best decision in service of the organization’s purpose, not just our personal desires.

When organizational values guide decision-making in service of its purpose, a powerful force is at work. This helps remove the emotions in difficult conversations that can get team members stuck in the primal brain: “My way has to be right.” Using values in decision-making to best serve the organization’s purpose engages our wise brain to co-create a better tomorrow together. Using organizational values for decision-making lets us think more freely, with less stress, openly, and without ownership, because it is not about you and me; it is in service of the organization.

Leadership Challenge

Sometimes the most caring thing we can do is have the difficult conversation in the best interest of our shared purpose for working together.

Reflection Questions

• Do we avoid difficult conversations?
• Under pressure, do our values guide us in serving our purpose?
• What difficult conversation could best serve honoring our purpose?