It’s Time to Align Your Office Culture With the Values That Drive Your Work

Imagine you work as a lawyer for a nonprofit that provides legal representation to folks who couldn’t otherwise afford it. As a public defender, you are hard-wired to be fierce. The injustice your clients face, and the broken systems you see every day, make your blood boil. In the courtroom, you do your best even when you know the cards are stacked against your clients. You win a case every once in a while, but most of the time you don’t.

One day after an especially tough loss, you head back to the office. Everything you couldn’t say to your client is inside you. You head to the office kitchen to get a cup of coffee, and someone looks at you the wrong way. She says something completely unrelated to your case, but it triggers you. And bang. Here, among kindred spirits, your anger lets loose. Your colleague is in the same emotional space, and she lets loose, too. You may not realize it, but your office is on a slippery slope, heading toward becoming a toxic workplace.

Many nonprofit workplaces are filled with fighters and advocates like these who see injustice up close every day, and it wears on them. When victories come too infrequently, it’s hard to maintain a sense of possibility. The courtroom is just one example: You may answer calls from people who feel suicidal or listen, time and again, to homeless women explain how the system failed them and their kids. Perhaps you are a major-gift officer who hears no from wealthy people too many times and worries about all that’s at stake.

Nonprofit professionals carry these weights with them every day. It can (and often does) lead to troubled workplaces – where colleagues have real trouble being on their best behavior, where professionals often lead with anger, and the sense of joy and privilege of service can be very hard to see.

Ironically, these nonprofit advocates ensure that their constituents are treated with respect, dignity, and fairness, but these values and ideas are not ingrained in their organizational cultures.

A Real-World Example

I work with a client and watched this very dynamic unfold. Angry, disrespectful, unkind words in meetings and email were the order of the day. Couched in a commitment to free speech, you were either a bully or a target. While the nonprofit sought to give all of its clients a voice, many staff members felt voiceless or feared backlash and remained silent.

The CEO took a simple step: She wrote an email to her large staff. She talked about the value of open conversation and the need for the culture to be accepting of different points of view. She explained her obligation to lead an organization that feels safe to staff, in which everyone’s voice matters. She indicated a zero tolerance for disrespectful language and personal attacks. She stressed how much she values and encourages robust debate related to work.

And she waited for pushback.

It never came.

The CEO created guardrails for interaction. At the heart of these guardrails? Values. She embedded the values underpinning the mission into the workplace culture. She then introduced follow-up: how she and the staff would work together to highlight positive changes and hold one another accountable for maintaining respectful dialogue. For this organization, it’s been a start. And a good one.

The CEO accomplished three important things. She:

• Honored their hard the work and acknowledged that they all bring the stress of their work into their ‘professional home’

• Identified a threat: Staff members’ fierce commitment to the mission, if unbridled, could cause a toxic work environment.

• Valued the input of staff, put herself in their shoes, and set a requirement for civility in the workplace, instituting a policy that colleagues receive the same respect given to clients.

How to Erect Guardrails

Many nonprofit leaders and workers are not having hard conversations about tough issues like stress, burnout, and living collective values in the workplace. This failure creates angst and leads to staff turnover. Consider this article your call to action. Hit the pause button. Engage your employees in a conversation about your organizational values and how these values ought to manifest themselves in the workplace.

Here are steps you can take to start the conversation and achieve real results.

Put organizational culture on the agenda for the leadership team’s next meeting. In the context outlined above, there is no blame. The top leaders must start conversations that help team leaders define the kind of culture that will leave staff members able to do their very best while feeling valued. It must start at the top with support for, and enthusiasm about, the process. Consider asking participants to read this article before the meeting.

Conduct a series of cross-departmental conversations. The CEO should lead the management team in prioritizing this work. Set side 90 minutes, and get some index cards. Have individuals fill in the blank in this statement:

“Our ideal workplace culture should look like / feel like _________.”

Arrange the answers on a table and discuss which belong together. Decide if anything is missing. Have at least one member of the management team attend each meeting to hear the conversations.

Hold an extended all-staff meeting. Create an opportunity for each group to report the themes it identified. No doubt different groups will raise different issues. The CEO should facilitate a conversation to learn more. The answers to the “ideal workplace culture” will reveal underlying values. See if you can tease them out.

Ask what needs to be different or what you are willing to do differently to bring these values to life. You may need to go back into another set of small groups and record people’s responses. Collect the answers and share with the management team (who should also be engaged in answering this question).

Develop an accountability mechanism together. This may be the most important step of all. The question you are answering is not: What will “the boss” do if I cross a line? It is: How will we hold ourselves accountable? One tactical way to ensure accountability is to incorporate these values into performance reviews. Reviews that include feedback from managers, peers, and subordinates can be an excellent way to monitor individual and collective adherence to the values you created. Together.

Nothing will give your staff members a greater sense of value and ownership over the design of their workplace like an effort like this. And if that is not worth the investment, I can’t tell you what is.

In the comments below, please share your story if you’re experiencing a misalignment between organizational values and workplace culture. How does it manifest itself?

If you are addressing these challenges in some way, please share below or by email. Readers often add the best insights of all.

Questions are welcome, too, and may be answered in a future article. If you want your question to be anonymous, simply indicate that in your email.