One thing I liked about Brene Brown's Daring Greatly was how it addressed the shame cultures often observed in organizations. Here are her points that I considered most important.
Until next time,
The Business Bro
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In Daring Greatly, Brene Brown defines leaders as those who hold themselves accountable for identifying potential in people or process. Her definition for leadership matched up with my experiences and I resolved to apply her words to my work anytime I was able.
Over time, I realized something important about ‘potential’. In most cases, it was not a question of taking a ‘B’ performer and showing the way to an ‘A’. It was not a matter of finding someone about to climb up a hill and suggesting they try a mountain instead. No, reader, what I realized is that most people are stuck at the bottom, looking up at the summit, and pretty sure they are doomed to remain on flat ground for all of eternity.
The reason for this inertia was almost always related to shame. When people do not share bad ideas or refuse to give needed feedback, it reveals an underlying shame of being wrong. The people who fear being wrong will not take the risks required to move an organization forward. An organization with a culture of shame slowly strangles each person’s natural curiosity and leaves a workplace barren of any initiative or innovation.
The way to tap into potential, I learned, was a three-fold process. First, as a so-called ‘leader’, I needed to identify potential in people or process. This meant paying close attention to everything going on and trying to fit the strengths of individuals or teams to various projects or initiatives. I had to be patient – this was not an approach conducive to overnight success.
The second key was to model shame-free behavior. I needed to be open to admitting what I did not know and had to be the first to share whenever I made an error. This was, undoubtedly, the most difficult step. But as I learned to ask for help in gathering information or fixing errors, I found colleagues gradually started to offer me information or assistance without my asking for it. The feedback loop allowed me to get more done in the critical role of identifying potential and made the environment more comfortable for others to ask for help or admit mistakes.
The final step was to use a set of questions Brown put together for identifying how shame has infiltrated a culture. Here are her ten questions for assessing culture:
1. What behaviors are rewarded/punished?
2. Where and how are people spending resources such as time, money, and attention?
3. What rules are enforced, followed, and ignored?
4. Do people feel safe and supported when talking about how they feel or asking for what they need?
5. What are the sacred cows? Who tips them and who stands them back up?
6. What stories are legend and what values do they convey?
7. What happens when someone fails, disappoints, or makes a mistake?
8. How is vulnerability (such as uncertainty, risk, or emotional exposure) perceived?
9. How prevalent are shame and blame? How do they show up?
10. What is the collective tolerance for discomfort?These questions served as a highly useful progress report for me to identify the most relevant obstacles in my efforts to cultivate potential. Every month or two, I would sit down and review the list. The answers to these questions often pointed directly at the biggest challenge I needed my team to meet in the next few weeks.
Of the ten questions above, I've highlighted #3, #5, and #7 because I consider them the most useful. For the most part, the answers to these questions reflect what people did, not who they are. As Brown points out often in Daring Greatly, a big step in getting someone out of shame is to direct negative feeling towards guilt. People who feel guilty worry about what they did, not who they are, and framing feedback with this point of view makes it easier for the recipient to change.
A team operates with the same ethos. A leader seeking to maximize the potential of a team must focus on a team’s behavior, not their character. From there, it becomes very much possible to build up a shame-free culture focused on an ever-improving decision making process.
