How to make your company culture better
When starting the journey into ownership, I knew I was different from the other owners. I did not care about money and genuinely cared about everyone who worked for me. So I was wondering why can’t I have a good culture I’m a nice guy. Still, for some reason, there’s always one toxic person lingering around; there’s always one person with more control than I do when it comes to culture. I give the shirt off my back to anyone, so what is the problem?
You can incorporate three tangible things in your business to help improve company culture: Challenge, Clarity, and Care.
The 3 C’s in leadership comes from the book Courageous leadership by Bill Hybels. the author explains that to keep an employee, you need to challenge them, provide clarity and give them care. If they are a 10 out of 10 on all of the 3 C’s, they are 95% less likely to leave your company.
Challenge:
I like to use the example of my brother. He worked in a box Factory for many years. The job was the same every single day. For the first few years, he was OK with the amount of challenge given. Put the glue on the box, glue two pieces of paper together, and boom. You have a box. Eventually, he got very bored. When you get bored in a job, your performance goes down. It’s no longer new. It’s no longer exciting. I can tell you that I would not last one day and a box Factory because of me and my ADD brain. I need many challenges in front of me. I’m a semi-truck. I do better with weight. I drive straighter when I feel like I have weight to carry.
So there are two things with a challenge when you get bored, you want to get out. For other people, their threshold for challenges is higher. Does someone with a high challenge threshold equal value? No! We need people like my brother that can be highly consistent in doing one thing, but we also need people like me that can get 80% of a project done but cannot finish the other 20%. I recognize the difference between my brother and me is that they approach the challenge differently. They have value in different places, but if I give this person the same thing every day, no matter who it is, they will not feel challenged enough and will leave. There is also too much challenge. Too much challenge will make someone go, so you must find their threshold and strengths and cater to that person. This leads us to the next C.
Clarity:
If someone does not have enough Clarity on their job, they will most likely feel too challenged and want to leave. Providing Clarity is extremely important in culture. No one can read your mind as a top-level employee or business owner. Sometimes as in business owner, it’s very frustrating because you feel like you should be able to say a couple of words, and the person should be ingrained enough in your business that they understand what you mean by those couple words. Then you say a couple of words, it doesn’t get executed properly, the task does not get done, and then you end up frustrated. You’re wondering if that person has got what it takes, but the reality is you were the problem. I can speak from experience when you take the time to write out a very clear email of precisely what you want. Maybe it took longer to write the email than it did for you to do the task yourself. When you take that time out, you have just gone from working in the business to working on the business. Allow that person to understand the nuances and the in-betweens of your brain’s workings by providing clarity. You go from being a dictator to a director when you understand how to provide clarity. It’s okay if it took you longer to explain it then to do it. You empowered someone else and allowed them to love their job even more. People want to do an excellent job for their employers. Otherwise, they would not work for you. Doing an excellent job for you leads us into the last C.
Care:
Care is looked at in many different ways. Not everyone feels cared for the same. Some people love public praise. Another person might hate it if you publicly praised them. Some people might really appreciate a $25 gift card to their favorite restaurant. Others might hate that but love a $2 candy bar that you know is their favorite—asking the question, ” Hey, how can I care for you? What do you like? It can help you lead to how to care for your employees. I revert to the five love languages. If you’re unfamiliar with the five love languages, the five love languages are for your spouse, but you can translate them into business.
The five love languages are physical touch, words of affirmation, gift-giving, acts of service, and quality time. So I asked each new hire to write their five love languages with their spouse, so I know how to care for them the best. I typically will take the top two and devise creative ways to care for them. If their top two are physical touch and quality time, then obviously, as an employer, I do not physically touch them, but I have seen people light up big time when every time you see them, you give them a handshake or fist bump. They feel that connection when you do that type of physical touch. The physical touch might look different with their spouse, but it can be as simple as a high five with the employer. If their second one is quality time, well, it’s quality time with their spouse. So when they do something good, I can praise them by giving them a gift card to their favorite restaurant with their spouse So they can spend quality time together. If someone’s love language is acts of service, then I can do a ride-along with them, and I make their day easier by carrying their tool bag, doing something for them. If their Love Language is words of affirmation, they like to be told they did an excellent job verbally.
There are many ways to show Care, Challenge, and Clarity to your team. and we can give you a better Insight. We know this was a wordy blog, but there is so much more that goes into this, and you can also click the link below on how to score your employees practically.
