Research defines culture as “gained knowledge, explanations, values, beliefs, communication and behaviours”. The same research concludes that the reason why some organisations succeed, and other fail is culture.
In other words, organisations focussing solely on strategy will not be as successful as those who adapt their culture in response to industry and economic changes. I was given an alarming statistic that leaders know around 4% of the issues happening at any point in time (meaning 96% of issues are known to and being resolved by employees) yet leadership have the strongest influence on the direction of the business. Even more alarming is that less than 1% of leaders consult employees when making major changes.
Personal experience, confirmed by numerous studies, has informed us that the biggest issues causing stress are workload, lack of management support and unacceptable behaviours (70% of all cases). No amount of reactive measures will tackle this.
When it comes to Mental Fitness, values of honesty, empathy and unconditional positive regard for others are key. It’s not enough to talk about these values, leadership need to genuinely believe them and act in a way that demonstrates that belief; the communication element.
Honesty, in the context of leadership in the workplace is about integrity and openness more than just simple truth telling. Many organisations talk a great talk and may look good on paper, but behind closed doors are not walking the walk, in fact they do the opposite. Employees who trust and believe in their leadership will firstly hang around regardless of whether they agree with every business decision, and secondly are far more likely to be productive.
Empathy is the ability to step into someone else’s shoes to see their world through their eyes. Active listening is a key skill, alongside the ability to understand others, to see things from their perspective and to actively acknowledge their views. When an employee feels listened to and understood, they are far more likely to be bought into the goals of the organisation again, even if they don’t necessarily agree with them. Empathy is not the same as sympathy, which is a feeling of commiseration.
Unconditional positive regard is the ability to be non-judgemental. We all have unconscious bias, experiences from our lives that gives us our belief system. We judge people on TV, walking down the street, the server in a shop all unconsciously. We set conditions of worth, in other words we set our own personal standards and judge people, places, material items against those standards. i.e. they are worthy if…. [the condition]. Becoming fully aware of these judgements and criticisms, acknowledging them and then replacing with compassion and acceptance will shed a huge amount of weight, baggage, head noise whatever you want to call it.
So, if these are the basic values of a culture which will support Mental Fitness and Wellbeing, then what type of culture doesn’t?
Obviously, the opposite of honesty, empathy and unconditional positive regard apply here but what else?
Those who are really engaged, take the time and actively participate in a Mental Fitness strategy are on the way to realising a change in culture. Conversely those who are resistant, denying any existence of mental health issues see the problem as someone else’s. Employee participation is negligible because there is no belief that anything will change.
At the farthest end of the scale, there are some leaders who refuse to see the importance of any Mental Fitness intervention. They actively disrupt employee attempts to implement anything as they see other tasks as much more important. Here, there is real risk of negative attitudes escalating into greater sickness absence and ultimately customer dissatisfaction.
Leadership are truly in the driving seat to make sustainable and beneficial change. See our article on leadership engagement to see where you sit on the scale.
Reference: Kotter, J.P. and Heskett, J.L. (1992) Corporate Culture and Performance. Free Press, New York.
