Cultivating Your Office Culture
A successful and productive office culture contributes to the effectiveness and outcomes of your team. A positive culture in your office can reduce absenteeism, encourage and cultivate mentorship, build team commitment to your institutional and departmental goals, help you as a leader make better decisions, and create an environment of fun at work. Culture can be one of the hardest things to change in an organization, but you as a leader have an important role to play in setting the expectation as to what your departmental culture will be. By being deliberate and specific about how you expect the office to work, you will have a set of measurable goals to assess your success.
- Office Culture 101
- Building an Inclusive Team & Being an Inclusive Leader
- Emotional Intelligence
- Proactive Change Management
Office Culture 101
Employee Expectations
- Have clear, defined employee expectations. Staff can get frustrated when there are not clear expectations.
- Expectations can address work hours, professionalism, dress code, ethics, etc.
- Roll them out in a positive way (managers first, then team meeting) with an opportunity to ask questions (can address work hours, professionalism, dress, ethics, etc.).
- Work closely with human resources and/or general counsel to ensure they are fair, legal, enforceable, etc.
- Develop an office mission statement, vision, values, and goals.
Training
- Hold compliance, ethics, and human-interest sessions.
- Have a training team on staff that helps develop and roll out training in conjunction with subject matter experts.
- Consider inviting external offices for team building and customer/student service.
For New Managers
- Meet with each staff member individually. Find out what's working, what's not working, and ideas/opportunities for improvement.
- Review job descriptions for accuracy and clear job duties.
- Stay humble and hungry — remember where you've come from and continue to set goals for yourself.
- Check your ego at the door — none of us know everything.
Mentoring Opportunities
- Create a network of people to assist with mentoring opportunities.
- Mentors do not always have to be in higher positions.
- Help facilitate connections for mentoring opportunities.
- Consider how your work helps in mentoring staff and managers.
- What we say and do matters.
- Our teams are watching us for leadership, guidance, and behavioral expectations.
- For example, if you yell at staff members, the team considers this acceptable behavior.
Meet With External Stakeholders
- Find out what's working, what's not working, and ideas/opportunities for improvement.
- The Office of "No" — how do we go from the Office of "No" to the Office of "Yes" or the Office of "Know"?
- The Office of Yes:
- Striving to find a win-win scenario where the main underlying goal may be met, but not necessarily in the way originally requested.
- The Office of "Know":
- Aiming to be seen as experts and be invited to the table to offer compliance-related feedback and compromise ideas.
- See Relationship and Coalition Building: Communicating and Managing Up
- The Office of Yes:
- In schools with multiple locations or decentralized operations, learning each individual location's culture and how we fit into that puzzle.
- Make friends with human resources. They can be your biggest asset.
Have an Open-Door Policy
- Spend time actively listening and talking to your team members.
- For institutions with multiple campuses and/or locations, make sure to visit your teams in other locations.
- Be present matters — others take notice.
- Get input from your managers and team members.
Suggested Books
- The Employee Experience Advantage: How to Win the War for Talent by Giving Employees the Workspaces They Want, the Tools They Need, and a Culture They Can Celebrate by Jacob Morgan
- Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
- Inclusion on Purpose: An Intersectional Approach to Creating a Culture of Belonging at Work by Ruchika Tulshyan
- So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
- The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
- Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek
- The Best Place to Work: The Art and Science of Creating an Extraordinary Workplace by Ron Friedman
- The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business by Patrick M. Lencioni
- Trust and Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash Greatness in Others by Stephen M.R. Covey
- The Leader's Guide to Unconscious Bias: How To Reframe Bias, Cultivate Connection, and Create High-Performing Teams by Pamela Fuller, Mark Murphy, and Anne Chow
- Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald
Building an Inclusive Team & Being an Inclusive Leader
The best leadership teams are composed of people from varying backgrounds, with different ideas, who are willing to work together toward meeting the office's goals. Leaders have a responsibility to foster and promote these differences with understanding, respect, and dignity in the forefront. Inclusive leaders are mindful and intentional in their efforts to create purposeful inclusion.
Suggested Books
- Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott
- A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker Palmer
- How to Be an Inclusive Leader, Second Edition: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive by Jennifer Brown
- Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts by Brene Brown
Resources
- Valencia College Peace and Justice Institute Principles for How We Treat Each Other
- The Key to Inclusive Leadership
- Are You An Inclusive Leader Quiz
- Assess: How Inclusive Are You as a Leader?
- Resources for Inclusive Leadership
- Inclusive Leadership
Emotional Intelligence
Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is our ability to communicate in ways that allow us to maintain positive and empathetic relationships with others. The skill doesn't come naturally for everyone, but thankfully research shows that it can be learned. You will find that higher levels of EQ can lead a team to surpass one with similar skills or knowledge. This skill is valuable as leaders utilize strategic thinking to evaluate where they are now, where they want to be, and the steps necessary to get there. These skills are important at all levels of an organization, and recognizing strengths in these areas can feed directly into your succession plan.
Resources
- NASFAA's "Director Download" Podcast
- Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ by Daniel Goleman (1995)
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Dr. Jean Greaves (2009)
- To Learn and Lead: The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Higher Education
- Emotional Intelligence Self-Assessment
- Assessing Your Emotional Intelligence: 4 Tools We Love
- Emotional Intelligence Assessments
- Inclusive Leadership Behaviors Self-Assessment and Worksheet
Proactive Change Management
Change is inevitable in life, and perhaps even more so in the workplace. However, change fatigue can be real, and change just for change's sake is usually a recipe for failed progress. Knowing when change is necessary, how to manage your organization through change, and being able to assess that journey during and after is the hallmark of a strong organization.
Resources
- Improving Performance: How to Manage the White Space in the Organization Chart by Geary Rummler and Alan Brache
- Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein
- Engaging the Six Cultures of the Academy by William H. Bergquist and Kenneth Pawlak
- Decision Making for Student Success: Behavioral Insights to Improve College Access and Persistence by Benjamin Castleman, Saul Schwartz, and Sandy Baum
- Seven Principles for Effective Change Management
- Personal Change Readiness Assessment
- Organizational Change Readiness Assessment
- How Good Are Your Change Management Skills?
- Change Management Skills Assessment
- Baldrige Award Assessment and Organizational Learning: The Need for Change Management
- Excellence in Higher Education by Brent Ruben
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