Stinky Cultures

It’s amazing how negative, negative people can be. When it comes to our workplace and family cultures, it’s truely destructive.

It snuck up on me recently, one or two individuals quietly complaining about the world to my face, and about me (my business) to my back.

We all do it I guess, we complain about what’s wrong with the world — mates do this over a cold beer, partners do this at the end of a hard days work. In a lot of way’s, complaining is how we bond.

But when it happens inside a business, or a family, unchecked, it’s truely damaging.

In my case, it resulted in the resignation of four people in one day!

There were things that needed to be talked about, people just weren’t talking about it — with me. 

Over the coming weeks I heard it said: ‘I shouldn’t have needed to tell you’ and ‘it’s not something you tell the boss’ and ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t understand’ — all a reminder that cultures get stinky when your culture making stagnates.

Bugga! A leader can delegate a lot, except culture making — that’s one thing they have to make time for, even when they don’t have time — and I wasn’t.

Actually, I was, but these are funky days. We’re in a recession, inflation is off the charts, we’ve been locked up for two years, still wearing masks — people aren’t happy and culture making is needed now more than ever.

We spend so much of our lives at work — is there anything more important than the cultures we create for our people?

What about home - what culture are we making for our kids?