At Sequel’s latest A Coffee With MD Suzanne Peck and Jane Sparrow, founder and director of the culture builders, discussed how to create a new culture of connection in an increasingly hybrid workplace.
Jane focused on five key themes that influence a successful ‘third culture’: the human need to feel valued, the need for connection to the bigger picture as well as each other, creating the right working structures, being able to focus on what matters, and creating an environment that enables us to be at our best.
Suzanne
Hello everybody, I’m Suzanne Peck and I’m MD of Sequel Group and I’m also President of the IC professional membership body the Institute of Internal Communication. Welcome to this month’s Sequel Presents.
We’ve brought this Coffee with… webinar together to give our audiences access to the best case studies and experts on some of the topics that are really influencing and challenging our world right now.
Today’s session is on creating a new culture of connections in a hybrid workplace and I’m delighted to welcome our guest speaker Jane Sparrow. For those of you who don’t know Jane – and frankly is there anybody out there who really doesn’t? – she’s founder and director of the culture builders and has enabled people to perform at their very best. She’s worked with so many leading organisations including Centrica, Sony and HSBC and is a three-times published author as well as a fascinating speaker, so I feel very lucky that we’ve got her here with us today.
To open up the questions, Jane, I’ve read articles in which you talk about creating a new culture which serves the people who work remotely as well as those who work in an office so teams are connected and can perform and thrive regardless of where they actually are. Can you explain a little bit more about your thinking?
Jane
Of course I can! I mean it is my passion and so I’ll keep it fairly short but when we look at culture in this world at the moment, and connections, we think of it almost as the third culture. So if you think about how you have your needs and I have my needs and my way of working and actually what we need to define is what’s the third culture in which we can both operate to our best and make sure we can achieve what we need to achieve but in a way that’s going to allow us both to thrive. And so we talk about really intentionally as a team creating this third culture, but then within that what we talk about is four core elements and the need to be really clear and working across an intentional force.
So the first is human needs, remembering that we all are humans and we all have a need to feel valued, to manage how we show up in terms of our wellbeing and so on. So remembering we’re all different as well. So human need is a big part.
The second element we think about is connection and the fact that we need to be connected both to our bigger picture in the organization in which we operate but also connected to one another, so those networks are really important for us as well.
The third element we talk about is working structures and making sure that we have the right working structures so that third culture works really well for us.
And the fourth is focus and environment and making sure we’re able to focus on what matters and have the environment that helps us work at our best rather than an environment or a lack of focus which impacts our productivity.
Suzanne
I just want to explore this idea about human needs a little bit more. So how can internal communicators in particular best help organisations in making employees feel connected and valued?
Jane
It’s a great question, because the core part of who we are is to feel like we matter and if you think about life a year ago, where perhaps we left our homes more and we’d come into contact with people on our journey to work. We might make eye contact with someone on the train who moves out of our way or we might say good morning to the person on reception or the ticket office, and then we go and have a coffee and have a little exchange with a barrister. All of these little micro moments before we’re even in our workspace tell us that we matter as human beings, and that’s gone for many people right now. So for internal communications as a profession, I think there’s a massive opportunity – which many are taking – to help people feel valued; to really help them feel like they matter.
And there are of course many ways we can do that. There are the formal ways in terms of sharing the right stories; there’s also the informal ways and doing things like making sure teams are talking about their trophy stories – the things that they’ve done that are the good news stories. We’ve got teams that we work with across the world now where they start every meeting with a good news story, and it’s not formal; it’s just two people who pipe up with something that they’ve learned, contributed, something in their wider lives even that’s something good to share. So to keep that level of connection going. I think the other thing for internal communicators is, as always, and you know this is my thing, is the miracle that is our managers and our team leaders. So it’s really equipping them well to be able to communicate, to connect with people and of course the two are different aren’t they? Connection is what people really want, not necessarily communication, and I think there’s a huge opportunity for us there to help build confidence and competence in our managers to really help them do that too.
Suzanne
Staying on that for a moment then, it seems to be that as internal communicators we kind of need new skills like coaching and supporting line managers. How do we make that shift from being the mistresses and masters of the channels and the message to moving into this new space?
Jane
It‘s a great questions and of course it’s quite time consuming as well. So there’s the knowledge and skills piece which we can help our leaders with at all levels and working perhaps with our learning and development partners to be able to put that in place. There’s then the on-the-job attitudinal type stuff which I spend a lot of time doing, which is working with leaders and managers to coach them to coach and reminding them – I’ve lost count of the thousands of people I’ve reminded in the last few months – to ask a question when someone comes with a problem, rather than just give them the answer. Because just giving them the answer is the quick thing but actually asking them a question and helping them work through how can they improve their own their performance, how can they own the way they are working within that third culture, what do they need from you to help them? All of those kinds of conversations are the ones that if we’re role modelling and demonstrating with all of our stakeholders then all of that is a big step in helping them learn how to do the same with their own.
Suzanne
What I’m interested in as well is what are the new skills that we might need as internal communicators in this hybrid world?
Jane
I don’t think coaching is new for many of us in terms of communicators, but I think the need to accelerate any development in that, maybe for new people in your teams coming through, is important, but also to really dial up how much we demonstrate. We’ve got the coaching muscle but at the moment when it’s a relentless amount of pressure on most people in the profession, how do we make sure that we’re using that muscle as much as possible? So I do think there’s something around using what we’ve got actually, in terms of skills, because the tools are there for most of us.
I think in terms of what else we might add to it is being really really good at connecting with people, with teams and being visible. And helping managers do the same. It is important, and part of that is sharing just little examples, so there’s a skill there, but there’s also a habit around sharing what others are doing that works. So I’ve found that when I do sessions I talk about one CEO that I work with and who, right through the last ten months has called five people a week just to say ‘how are you doing, what’s on your mind right now, what are you finding is working, what is more challenging?’ He started it during the lockdown in the UK, but he didn’t end it then; he’s kept it going throughout this whole period and the level of connection people are seeing with that is incredible. Now that in itself I think is a nice story, but the point I make is that I tell that story to lots of people and it’s a very small thing but the number of people who’ve gone ‘hey, that’s a great idea, my version of that might be two people a week’. I had a leader say to me the other day ‘gosh the miracle in the middle and that example, well I’ll do three people a week in the miracle in the middle and connect with them’. So I think using as many examples as possible just to stimulate and inspire people is a habit rather than a skill that we all need to be developing and using.
Suzanne
With the new habits we need to form, how important is that for us for next year? Do we need to change to some extent how we have been working, because the genie’s out of the bottle isn’t it? We can’t really go back.
Jane
Totally. The genie really is out of the bottle and I feel that it has been relentless for everybody and there’s been an adrenaline rush for months that is not sustainable. Andy by the way my biggest fear for lots of the execs I work is that next year they burn out because everybody is going at such a pace. But I do feel that next year is about getting intentional and a lot of the work I’m doing with people at the moment is saying January is probably going to be pretty grim actually, and that’s not to bring doom and gloom because I’m an incredibly optimistic person, but if we look at the likelihood, certainly in the UK with families coming together, cases perhaps spiking in January, it’s dark, it’s cold, it’s never a great month for people, and so let’s get ahead of the curve. Let’s control what we can control and let’s think now about how can we use communication, both content and the channels we’ve got and again get our managers, our team leaders, to be thinking about how do they connect with people in January, and create the new habits for next year that mean we’re actually intentional and leading as opposed to trying to play catchup because of the circumstances.
So just on the January thing, the one thing I’d say to anybody listening is what is your January plan? Don’t wait until 1 January to put your plan in place for that connection with your teams and your stakeholders because we can make such a difference in terms of lifting people up, but if we try and do it as soon as we come back in January, we’re too late. We’ve got to get the content now, ready. It’s a bit like some of my clients have got advent calendars of success moments running and I almost feel like we need the January equivalent so that people come back with as much energy as they can and that we’re using our influence to create as much energy as we can.
Suzanne
I think it’s so important because we read so much about how pandemic fatigue is prevalent. We’ve got Christmas coming up which we all need to be perfect this year more than ever.
I just want to turn to technology and tools because they were vital during this year. We relied on the tools and technology so much, but many people are saying this ‘always on’ connection isn’t’ sustainable, so what would your advice be for a healthy hybrid working culture?
Jane
It actually goes straight to the core of what we call ‘the bank of me’. Two of my books are around this and the notion that we’re all a human bank account and we do things every day that deposit in our account and withdraw from it. And we encounter things every day that deposit and withdraw and we need to be in the black, not in the red. That means therefore, in this hybrid world, being really intentional about managing ourselves, our colleagues and our teams across five areas.
The first is physiological. Have your plan for January – or now, don’t wait for January. How much are you moving each day? Have you got that plan to be eating the right things, hydrating, moving, sleeping – all of those things?
The second element we talk about is emotion and making sure we manage our emotions really well and how we help others manage theirs as well, spotting if one of us is low and helping to lift one another up.
The third is focus and making sure we’re focusing on what really matters rather than what’s consuming us, and making sure that we’re really putting the mental focus into what matters.
The fourth is motivation, and I think this is a big one for everybody actually in terms of a hybrid world, and it’s around are we doing enough of what we love, because if we’re sitting in front of a Zoom screen all day, it can be very draining, but if you put little bursts in between those Zoom meetings with things that give you motivation and really make you feel good, then that’s going to help you with your hybrid working.
The fifth is personal growth and the real importance that we feel like we’re growing all of the time, and I know a number of people have told me this is the one that they’ve let slip because it’s just about getting through the day whereas actually, really making sure that you’re getting through the day AND learning something in the process – even if it’s ‘I’ll never do it that way again’ it becomes part of it.
I think those five and the big thing that underpins all of that is unplugging; actually being able to say I am going to unplug, not just from my device but from my mind as well and just because today I’m maybe not in the office, I’m in my home office. What’s the transition so that I don’t just leave my desk and walk straight into the kitchen or indeed close my laptop if I’m already in the kitchen where’s that little micro moment of transition, whether that’s a walk or a call to somebody so that if you live with somebody else you’re not walking in as you the internal communicator, you’re walking in to that relationship as you as you and what you need to be, whether that’s a partner, wife or daughter or whatever.
Suzanne
Finally from me, what other advice for 2021 would you share with us as communicators?
Jane
Look after yourself first is my biggest piece of advice because I feel that execs are burning out and I feel the same for internal communicators. The passion and commitment I’ve seen from people in this profession has been way beyond. We’ve seen it before, but this has been a year when comms has really had to play a part, so look after your own human bank account would be first piece of advice, because it’s not suddenly going to get easier in January, so look after you so you can be the best you can be and get your teams and your colleagues to do the same.
Second piece of advice: connection because what I’ve seen is that at the beginning of the pandemic in the UK people were great at connecting and sharing the good news stories and sharing that they were valued and connecting people back to the vision, but then that kind of disappeared over time. And that level of connection at a human level but also connecting people to the big vision as well as maybe the little vision, and that might just be this month.
And the third thing is to continue to give confidence and positive nudges to all of those colleagues and managers in particular that are doing a good job because in this hybrid world we don’t get as much feedback from one another. Even now you’re giving me feedback because you’re nodding and smiling and that’s really important, but if you’re working remotely you’re not getting that kind of feedback and, as a manager, very often you don’t know if you’re doing a good job in communicating or not, so don’t forget to say ‘hey I heard you did a great job yesterday’ and give those positive nudges so you continue to build confidence in those people that need to do the heavy lifting with their teams.
Suzanne
I think it’s fair to say that this year we’ve all had to tap into the far more empathetic human side of ourselves, certainly as managers and as communicators
Jane
For sure, and that empathy, I would say also ‘active empathy’. I talk to a lot of people and when I do 360s a lot of leaders will come out and say ‘but they’re saying I’m not empathetic’ and I say ‘you are, but you’re not actively empathetic’. You might say you’re putting yourself in their shoes, but you’re not speaking that, you’re not showing that you’ve got that empathy, so that point is really worth reflecting on because it’s something that I find particularly with leaders has resonated because of time. They kind of go ‘yes, I’m thinking about others, I’m putting myself in their shoes but then I move on rather than acknowledging and actively giving that empathy’.
Suzanne
Brilliant. I’ve got some questions coming in as well. The first one is: We have an uneven hybrid workforce – two thirds of our staff are fully on site and a third fully remote and we’ve noticed a real sense of ‘us and them’. How do you recommend we can tackle this?
Jane
Brilliant question and it’s one I’m asked a lot at the moment. One of the things that we found really worked – and this is a practical example – is doing things that help the team that are together in the physical space remember that they need to be connecting with those that aren’t in the physical space. The big thing here is not whether people are included, it’s whether they feel included if they’re the ones that are remote. For many global teams this has always been a challenge but increasingly it’s going to be a challenge here, and one of the things that we did in Asia that really worked was let’s imagine there’s a team of seven and four of them are in the physical space and three are remote. The team would put seven chairs in the room so there were three empty chairs for the people who were joining remotely. What that did was physically nudge them that those people were not only part of the meeting but that when they clicked ‘leave’ at the end that they needed to make sure they updated them on the conversation that then happened afterwards. And what they did was for each time someone to take a role as the team connector and they had a WhatsApp group where they would just put a message out saying ‘we just talked about the weather’. So even if there wasn’t a continuation on the topic, they would say that and the impact of that on those three was huge because it made them feel that they weren’t missing out, so that ‘us and them’ is something to be very mindful of as you say. But looking for small things like that which help people feel that level of inclusion is massively important. And of course inclusion is a massive topic anyway, but it plays in at that very practical level, I think, in that hybrid world.
Suzanne
How do we get a high response rate in our surveys asking employees about the effectiveness of comms channels because of this idea of being always on and possibly overwhelming people?
Jane
Yes, and getting them to engage in the survey response at all, I guess. I’ve found that making a personal connection helps in terms of doing surveys but also calling 10 or 20 people at random and asking them for input, or going to team meetings that exist already and grabbing a five minute slot because although it takes longer, in terms of insight and ability and to influence and remind them about what exists, that five minutes pays off. What you then can get is a quick conversation about what you’re using, what’s most effective, what’s helping you. So at the same time as having the conversation you’re reminding them that they [the channels] exist, and of course we go back to human need – they feel valued. So it’s great that lots of pulse surveys are going out and I’m a great believer in getting that insight, but also couple that with getting as many little conversations as you can in different formats.
Suzanne
With your experience of working with global organisations, are you seeing cultural differences in approaches to the hybrid connection idea?
Jane
For sure. And the big thing to remember if you are working globally is that you’ve got not only different human needs but also different cultural needs to be mindful of. I work with some teams that are in groups of English-speaking countries rather than geographic clusters and you find there are time differences then, if you’ve got the UK and Australia, and how do you bring everyone together to feel connected then? So you’ve got a cultural thing to think about and you’ve got team style. How do people like to collaborate and communicate? Where are your introverts or your extroverts, and adapting your approach becomes even more important in that more disparate working pattern.
Suzanne
Who do you recommend to be on our Christmas reading list for this break?
Jane
What has to go on the reading list is the latest book that I wrote which is The Bank of Me – the remote working edition – which has got lots of tips in it, but now you’ve allowed me to plug that I would also say anything around habits, so the power of habit and how habits work, because helping others to create and keep really good habits is a brilliant thing to do and so is the skill element, getting your insight and getting some inspiration from the books that exist, and there are many around the power of habit I would definitely put on my reading list, as well as just some great trashy novels that are going to make you feel like you’ve had some regeneration because I doubt you’re doing much of that at the moment! So I’d have a business reading list and a trashy novel reading list. And the other one I’d recommend is The Five Languages of Love by Gary Chapman. We point people a lot to this and get them to think about it not in terms of love in its traditional sense, which is what it’s about, but in terms of appreciation and the fact that different people respond to different types of appreciation in different ways. And again I think there’s something there around helping us to value one another and getting others to value one another that is worth listening to. We did a podcast around it a while ago around the five languages of appreciation.
Suzanne
Does a very flexible hybrid culture work if a company has a very meeting heavy culture or does it need a bit of a rethink?
Jane
One of the things that I have seen, and I bet some of you have seen this, is the way people meet has changed. On one hand it’s become a lot more task and transactional which we need to get away from. But on the other hand what it has meant is a lot more short, sharp check-ins. I’ve worked with a lot of people where they’re having a team huddle in the morning and then a team cuddle in the evening, the point being it was a short, sharp meeting in the morning to get focused and then a quick regroup at the end of the day to say ‘what are the highlights of the day and what are we focusing on tomorrow?’ That real quick half an hour or 15 minutes if you’ve got a very heavy meetings culture helps because you’re not moving away from that need to feel either connected or controlling, which is often the meeting culture. Or communication, let’s face it, good meetings are about communication, connection and collaboration. I think if you’re already making it heavy, just reducing the time of them means people aren’t having to give them up but you become more productive. And maybe replacing some of them with short, sharp check-ins will start to change the behaviour that hopefully you’ll be able to keep long term.
Ends