Building a Culture with a Good Work Ethic
Every leadership team wants a company culture where people feel like they get their work/life balance right AND at the same time everyone works really hard! Clearly these two ideas are somewhat in opposition to each other but I’m going to give you some ways to maximize for both as best you can. After all, in general an employee who feels happy will naturally want to work hard for the company (and probably for themselves!). I’m going to call this ‘ideal’ having a ‘good work ethic’ because arguably someone who works all hours, feels exhausted and drained and ultimately burns out does not have a particularly great work ethic.
It’s helpful to think about building a culture of a good work ethic in 3 buckets because you essentially have 3 levers to pull here: First is how you think about screening applicants before they join your company. It’s much easier to create the culture you want if you filter for those folks in the first place. Secondly, think proactively about how you create a culture that people feel they belong to. Creating that sense of belonging is going to help people want to work hard for each other and that’s ultimately a much stronger motivation than getting people to try to work hard for themselves. Thirdly you want to think about how you’re reinforcing the work ethic you want to see - not just the ‘working hard’ part, but also the ability of the individual to set some healthy boundaries for themselves. Both praise and constructive feedback are important here.
1. Screening
Interview questions: Now I don’t want to pretend to be the expert here on interview techniques, but I will suggest you spend some time designing some good quality questions which will help you determine whether someone is a good cultural fit for your company. In terms of work ethic, a good scenario question to ask is “Describe a culture that you’ve worked in (it doesn’t have to be the one you’ve just been in) where you felt you really thrived. Also describe one in which you didn’t thrive”
References: Don’t be afraid to ask about work ethic when doing reference calls/emails on people before you make a hiring decision. Be direct: “How would you describe their work ethic?” Then let them talk without interrupting!
2. Belonging
This part could be a whole book really, but just to give you the high level: People tend to work hardest for others. When people feel that sense of belonging to a community they often go above and beyond for their team - life shows us multiple examples of this. The more proactive you can be about this the better, and as always, small tweaks go a long way.
Check alignment: Are people as aligned on the company mission as you think they are? Often I’ve found they are not. Not sure? Just ask them what the company mission is and why it matters to them. You’ll soon see how clear you’ve been! A second order (but still vitally important) check, is does everyone understand how their individual goals contribute to the overall company goals? In my experience people aren’t great at mapping this and really do need help creating that narrative. It makes a massive difference to how connected they feel to the business. If people don’t clearly understand how what they do day-to-day impacts (either directly or indirectly) the company goals and ultimately the mission, it can leave people with a sense that what they do doesn’t matter. No one feels motivated to work hard if they don’t see the impact of their work or feel part of something bigger. Ensure your managers are having that conversation with individuals so they can see the impact of their work.
Connect the community: As with lots of these things, proactivity is key here, especially with a move to more remote working with a distributed workforce. Ideas and tools for connecting your company’s community come in many different forms but one thing remains constant - ‘organized fun’ from leadership is lame. My suggestion is to appoint, or get volunteers for a ‘community ambassador’ (or give them a cooler title!) who will be able to work with other folks to come up with a plan. Choose someone who is influential and a cultural ambassador - they don’t have to be senior. There can be ideas ranging from process and coms changes to fun afternoon’s out, covid permitting! Once you have someone and a plan in place, make sure you support them with some budget.
Be visible: If you’re a senior leader reading this, are you putting in enough time in front of the company? Do your employees know what you’re up to, what you care about this quarter, what big questions you're tackling at the moment etc? People say “Oh I have an open calendar so anyone can see what I’m doing” but having an open calendar isn’t good enough because, REAL TALK: no one is actually going to check it (or almost no one)! Being present as a senior leader has a big impact on how connected people feel to the company and it’s really easy to underestimate how important this is to people.
3. Reinforcing
Praise: As Patrick Lencioni says “When leaders fail to tell employees that they’re doing a great job, they may as well be taking money out of their pockets and throwing it into a fire!” We have a great video on praise in Elevate Academy but in essence being specific about the behavior you’d like to see more of is the key because it reinforces aspects of the culture you’d like repeated. As we’re talking about work ethic, you can praise people for the effort and hard work they’ve put in, for example “I’ve really noticed how hard some of you have been working lately and it’s really appreciated. It’s meant we’ve exceeded expectations this month, so thank you.” You can also make sure to praise for setting good work/life boundaries too.
Constructive feedback: whilst we want to be praising we also want to be course correcting at times where a good work ethic has slipped. Remember that often a ‘bad’ work ethic is just a surface symptom of something else, so before you go diving in to accuse someone of not working hard enough, for example, make sure you’re having a conversation about the right thing! They may be unhappy, they may not understand what’s expected of them because you’ve not done a great job communicating, they may be really worried about something etc.
Try something like: “I’ve noticed recently you’ve [been coming to team meetings 10 minutes after the start of the meetings / your work output has been less over the last few weeks than usual/ you’ve missed the last 4 deadlines etc.] I feel a bit worried about this and I’m wondering if there’s something going on under the surface of the water that I’m not seeing. How do you see things from your perspective?”
Good luck and let me know how you get on!
Be the leader you would want to work for. For more practical management tips to take your leadership to the next level, visit Elevate Leadership and become a member of Elevate Academy.
Lucy Georgiades, Co-Founder and CEO
In London and Silicon Valley, Lucy has spent over a decade coaching Founders, CEOs, executive teams and leaders of all levels. She’s spent thousands of hours helping them work through challenges, communicate effectively, achieve their goals, and lead their people. Lucy’s background is in cognitive neuropharmacology and vision and brain development, which is all about understanding the relationships between the brain and human behavior.
Lucy is an Oxford University graduate with a Bachelors and a Masters in Experimental Psychology and she specialized in neuroscience. She has diplomas with distinction in Corporate & Executive Coaching and Personal Performance Coaching from The Coaching Academy, U.K. She also has a National Diploma in Fine Art from Wimbledon School of Art & Design.
