Improving Workplace Culture
This framework is always customized to fit your unique situation. We use the framework to help us create a way forward that will make an impact on your culture. To discuss how this might apply to your team, click here.
Let’s take a look at each of the 4 parts of the framework in more detail:
REFRAME
Rather than telling individuals how things need to change and what they need to do differently, “Reframing” allows for discovery and understanding without blame or shame.
This approach creates an environment for healthy dialogue, and allows participants to look at their workplace culture objectively and discuss how thinking patterns and assumptions can be challenged in the face of frustrations.
Reframing applies strategies from TheraRising Inc. that have been featured in more than 35 media outlets, including Forbes.com, The Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, MSNBC, the ABA Journal, HR Magazine.
Reframing typically is a full-day session with a group of up to 30 participants. During this phase, you will learn:
- Why negative assumptions pick up momentum and spread, and how to eliminate the behaviors that spark power struggles and mistrust
- How to reduce anger, tension, and disengagement
- How to turn blame into a shared responsibility
- How to shift the focus off of people and personalities toward the root causes of workplace tension
Discover how all of these areas directly impact your workplace and learn to Reframe blame into constructive problem solving, and healthy dialogue.
REBUILD
Many teams, departments, and organizations develop unspoken norms and behaviors that slowly destroy strong workplace relationships.
During this phase, your team Rebuilds them to achieve the kinds of habits and practices that are necessary to work better together.
Reframing prepares your employees with the right mindset to do the vital work of Rebuilding. They will take the strategies learned in Reframing and apply them to their team.
Rebuilding consists of 2 phases: Our Team Commitment & A Day in the Life. Each are tailored specifically for your group.
Rebuilding Phase 1
Our Team Commitment
4 hour session
It is recommended that teams complete this session immediately after or within a few days of the Reframing session. This is a powerful exercise for groups who need to address any level of tension that exists among them. Individuals feel relieved to have a strong sense of purpose, and renewed commitment to each other and their work efforts in order to be more productive.
Through a series of facilitated exercises, your team will work together to:
- Identify patterns and norms that have been most destructive to their group.
- Work together to identify and replace destructive norms with what is necessary to keep the group cohesive.
- Develop mutual agreements and renewed commitments.
- Discuss the inevitable occurrence of “forgetting” or falling back into old patterns of relating to one another, and how to address that in a way that keeps communication open, defensiveness down, and cooperation up!
As a result, this session will become one of the most powerful motivators for behavior change as your team is able to define what needs to change in order to rebuild trust, respect and cooperation.
Rebuilding Phase 2
A Day in the Life
4 hour session
Your team will participate in a powerful listening exercise called A Day In The Life, which provides greater insight and understanding into each other’s roles and responsibilities, and the pressures that they face on a daily basis. Departments gain invaluable insights from each other, and they identify key factors that help each other succeed.
By participating in this facilitated exercise, individuals will:
- Gain a deeper understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities.
- Develop skills to communicate what their group needs from other departments to strengthen their relationships, and what they can offer to the others for success.
- Gain awareness of each other’s pressures, deadlines, and more, and develop ideas to help each other succeed.
- Build a stronger sense of teamwork and the value of working for one another. This will create a valuable resilience in working relationships, and much higher productivity and efficiency.
Each person will walk away with a specific action to take and a scheduled touchpoint with someone from another department.
RESTORE
Restoring often involves developing strategies that naturally create opportunities for stronger bonds in work relationships.
So many current workplace recognition systems do not produce quantifiable results, because they focus on the wrong things. Creating an Employee Recognition process that works to increase business results in a must! Consider these statistics:
- 83% of companies suffer from deficiency in Recognition and they are underperforming their competitors.
- Companies that scored in the top 20 for recognition rich cultures were 31% lower in voluntary turnover.
- Correct recognition systems increase engagement, increase employee morale, and increase customer service scores.
In addition to Recognition, part of restoring a culture is to:
Take into account the issues that came to the surface during the Reframing and Rebuilding phases, we dig deeper with the objective to remove existing barriers that get in the way of making progress.
Actions might include:
- Identify a specific barrier and work through a process to uncover the real problem and workable solutions.
- Resolve a rooted conflict between individuals that cannot be dealt with in a group setting. Helping individuals resolve the tension between them can release any group to function stronger as a team.
- Empower your employees with the right toolkit to build their confidence in sustaining and maintaining all the progress they have made. We guide the process toward greater reliance on the steps and process that your people created.
“People will support a world they help create.”
RESILIENCE
Resilience is the result of INVESTING in your most important asset, your people.
Collaboration, connection, and unity might seem like buzzwords for an organization, but they should not be taken lightly. They are the foundation that keeps your people working stronger, more effectively and more creatively. Creating opportunities for ongoing personal connections among your team will help them withstand the storms of workplace frustrations without falling into blame and mistrust.
We work with you to create a sustaining plan that your people can maintain and carry forward.
A commitment to your people and the desire to see your workplace thrive will create Resilience, allowing your people to work through frustrations and to work together more effectively.