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This week we discuss Building Organizational Culture.
Joining us is Guest Host Karen Pundsack, director of the Great River Regional Library system here in Minnesota.
The Basics
You know the difference between being in a workplace with a terrible organizational culture, and one that supports you and your professional development. If you have worked in a terrible place, you know how hard it is to get motivated to work – or even to come to work. We talked about this in our Season Two Bonus Episode on Stress Management.
When your culture is good – that’s great! People generally enjoy their job, they like to come to work, and their colleagues and patrons are generally a source of good feelings. As a leader in this environment, you main job is not to mess it up. Keep the lines of communication open, keep sharing positive ideas and energy, and stay out of the way.
On the other end of the spectrum are too many libraries that have a toxic work environment. People who work in these places are frustrated by these bad working environments. Giving their best efforts is not even an option; getting through a day relatively unscathed is pretty much all they are trying to do. Managers are terrible, patrons are mean, colleagues are either not doing any work or focused on back-stabbing instead of working for success.
Overcoming a toxic environment is not easy. But there are a few steps managers can do to help to make it better. Everything will require buy-in from your staff, but here are some places to start.
- Model the behavior you want. If you want people to be polite, helpful, friendly to customers and each other, and generally positive – it has to start with you. It does not end here, but there is no chance anyone will demonstrate better behavior than yours.
- Change things around. Move the physical environment, put desks in new places, bring in brightly colored folders, paint a wall. Make things look different and more cheerful. Bring in a few plants, offer healthy foods or candy.
- Ask people what they want. It is not always a straightforward and helpful as you might want. But taking time to ask people what they want from their job and from your library can give you some sense of issues. And, you get a feel for the people who are going to refuse to cooperate with any changes or improvements. (Refer back to Episode 305, on discipline and termination, when these problem people are not solvable.)
- Make some plans and just dive in! Try some things, see what happens. Talk with staff as you make plans and put them into play; try to work with their thoughts and feedback as much as you can. Even if what you try to do to make the environment better crashes and burns, staff will at least see that you cared enough to do something.
“Good” means whatever you decide it means, so creating a definition of a good culture in your specific library is an important start. It cannot be just your vision of a good workplace – it needs to work for everyone. Then this is a valuable – and hard – topic for a staff meeting. After everyone gives ideas on what “good” is, what gaps do they see between today’s reality and that definition? How do they see being able to move from here to there? What can everyone do to make things easier on each other as you transition?
Set realistic goals for improving the culture. It did not become toxic overnight, and it will not get better that fast. But keep repeating your determination to make it happen, keep emphasizing the importance of a good work environment.
This is a quick look at building a good organizational culture. You can think of this like weeding your collection, or garden: if you keep on top of problems, the rest of it will be much nicer. So pay attention to your culture, and keep working to make it positive.
Thanks to our Guest Host Karen! And check back in with us next week to discuss Communication.