Fall in Love with Your Business All Over Again

"Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better."

-Maya Angelou Tweet

 

This piece of wisdom from the great Maya Angelou is one of my favorite quotes because it reveals so much about our work here on earth. Each day we work towards being better, and doing better. And in that, one of the greatest things we can do for ourselves is to grant grace for what we didn’t know in the past. Allow yourself to do better as you become aware of the solution, and allow yourself to let go of past mistakes or ignorance.

When we apply this to our leadership at work, there are two good questions that we can begin to make part of the reflective process that will allow us to make better decisions to support our culture, and the overall well-being of all of our employees as well as ourselves.

  1. Ask yourself if conflict in your office is caused by a single issue, or if it’s a matter of the culture. What you fix depends on this answer.

    Trick question! It’s always a matter of culture!

    When we’re dealing with conflict in the office, the answer is—It’s always the system. As humans, we can’t separate behavior and emotional reactions from the contextual situations that caused them.

    That’s where a Business Psychology Consultant can help you to perform a root cause analysis, and then guide you through taking the time to step back to analyze how to proceed. Let’s look for patterns and find a solution together.

  2. How Do I Look for patterns?

    It could be YOU! Your attitude and approach to creating culture may actually be doing harm.

    What are your subconscious beliefs around conflict? A Business Psychology Consultant can help you to reframe your beliefs around conflict and help you to ask if it is actually a bad thing?

I sometimes like to ask my clients if the problem might be that there is actually too little conflict in their office?

What? I know. It’s an interesting thought. In a good culture, we want original ideas that might need some selling to get the team on board, robust discussions about how we should go to market, and compelling debates about what new product or service we should invest in. These are all great examples of conflict that should be encouraged around your board meeting table! Ideally, your culture should be safe and encouraging in these moments of conflict to keep the conversation going until you hit that next great idea.

What we don’t want: clashes around personalities, mean spirited arguments about tuna sandwiches in the break room, or disagreements about what is a fireable offense. These are often the first things we imagine when we think of conflict as a problem!

We want healthy debate around the big stuff to make sure we hear all relevant information and make the best decisions possible.

With that in mind, take a look at what conflicts are coming up in your office culture. If it’s primarily silly little things, that could actually be a really good sign. We’ll probably always run into complaints about lighting, chairs, toilet paper, or someone in the office wearing perfume. But those little conflicts may or may not be indicative of larger the cultural problems that cause good employees to leave your company—they could be symptoms of larger issues signs that people don’t have bigger fish to fry.

Let’s work together. Investing in team development improves more than just culture, productivity, and profits.

When you work on team development, your business also grows and transforms. The people, the processes, and the culture markers help to define your success path. And as your team grows, your own career success will take on new heights as well. This means you should prepare to take on some of your own goals as you solve the kinks in your office culture. You can give yourself permission to try even bigger and better things!

"I have found that every time I asked permission, the answer tended to be no so I had to make my own yes."

-Issa Rae Tweet

What can you give yourself permission to do in your life and your business? There are probably several things you’re holding back on because you don’t think you’re worthy of their rewards—but you are. Take a look at what goals you could accomplish if you just gave yourself permission, and if you need support in actioning the success steps send me a message! Let’s help you fall in love with your business again!

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