In this blog, Jen, Jess, and Hoots explore the relationship between conditions, affirmations, trust and vulnerability and how they feed into one another as a system. The importance of culture always drives us back to these fundamental building blocks. Every team must begin with examining the foundation by understanding what culture really means to the group, defining trust as a team, and incorporating conditions and affirmations into their daily activities. If you want to learn more about why culture is important and/or how important trust and vulnerability are to culture, you can check out our previous two blogs.

Without conditions or affirmations, one would never have the confidence to trust or be vulnerable. The conditions that take place on Jen, Jess, and Hoots’ 4 a.m. phone call are that of honest and humble inquiry. When we receive feedback on these calls, they’re automatically received from a perspective of pre-filtered trust with the understanding of positive and intentional open communication. No one has to check the intention of the comment, which allows for easier acceptance and deeper reflection on the feedback being provided. Without the wasted effort of filtering feedback, action becomes evident and clear almost immediately.The interesting thing here is that the more and more the filter becomes established, the deeper and deeper the reflections take root.

What are conditions?

Conditions are established by the members of the culture. Together, the team determines what is and is not acceptable behavior. Environment is what happens when we are not intentional about the conditions that we are establishing as leaders of a culture.Conditions account for the human element, whereas the environment does not. By incorporating the following conditions, a team can proactively develop a positive culture:

• Community
• Fairness
• Innovation
• Psychological Safety (Article by Kabri Lehrman-Schmid)
• Clarity

What are affirmations?

Affirmations include emotional support and/or encouragement that one receives from the other members of a culture. Affirmations can be classified as self-fulfilling (internal) or other-fulfilling (external), but both drive support to better understand your current conditions as a human being in a given culture. Affirmations could be delivered via words or actions and help to nurture conditions that support trust and vulnerability. With properly timed affirmations, you are able to spread your impact to the masses!

Affirmations become part of the feedback loop that either drives your cultural system to a virtuous or vicious cycle. This solely depends on the intentionality behind the culture that you are steering. Affirmations in our culture cycle help us to better understand what works and/or what needs to be adjusted. This is similar to the check (or study) action from the well-known Plan, Do, Check, Adjust cycle created by Dr. William Demming.

How do we discover conditions and affirmations?

We discover conditions and affirmations through slowly making ourselves vulnerable, little by little, until we can trust that we will be accepted no matter what. Feedback is what allows teams to customize culture to the people that make up that culture. When we are establishing and maintaining culture, we are able to give and receive radically candid feedback.

We must create conditions that emphasize that feedback is not an attack and is actually intended to help you grow. If the conditions do not exist for people to be open, vulnerable and transparent then you will not receive the affirmations necessary to drive a virtuous culture.

It is important to note that neither giving or receiving feedback is easy. Both take practice and should always be done with the best of intentions.

Receiving Feedback

As we obtain feedback we must understand that this is only one person's view of a situation: feedback is not gospel. Feedback can be right, wrong, or indifferent. It is when you begin to receive trending feedback that you want to consider taking action, if the consensus is that you should make a change. The only applicable response when receiving feedback is, “Thank you.” We must resist the urge to rationalize or justify why a person has the feedback they are sharing as itt only leads to arguments and less radical candor moving forward. This is what establishes an unintentional, intentional vicious culture.

Giving Feedback

The normal view of positive feedback is based on how feedback makes you feel. For example, if you receive encouraging feedback, that is positive. In the book Chasing Excellence by Jake Harrell, he suggests that we flip our view of positive and negative feedback. Jake recommends looking at positive feedback as anything that can help you remove an excellence barrier. Actionable feedback will not always make you feel good, but it could be the best thing to help you make improvements. This is important to note as we talk about affirmations and how similar they are to feedback. Affirmations will not always make you feel good, sometimes affirmations will come from a place of support and care for you. This is a way that people show you how you are received by others.

The next question…

As we listen deep with humble inquiry, we often miss the opportunity to ask the next question. When we use phrases like, "Tell me more," or "What do you mean by that?", we allow people to self-discover additional information, which helps with decision making and provides clarity around a situation. When people start to answer questions, they will not always give the whole story. As leaders in the industry, we must listen with our eyes and see with our ears. If we listen to the specific words that others are choosing and pay attention to the actions they are taking, then we will know how to ask the next question. The important part of listening for the next question is to not go into the situation with loaded questions. Allow the conversation to guide you directly to your next question.

During the early morning culture conversations, the next question pops up so often that Hoots often finds himself answering the next question without it even being asked! This allows for the actual next question to drive even deeper reflection and learning.

The authors have been on a journey seeking the ‘culture calculation’ for over a year now. We trust that you are starting to see the pattern that we have discovered. If not, there will be one more bonus blog that will be coming to you in hopes to deliver a system that will allow practical application. Also, there could be an invite for you to dive in to experience the early morning Jen, Jess, and Hoots conversations by just showing up to a culture of love, care, compassion and people! But first, a personal story on conditions and affirmations from Ms. Jen Lacy.

A personal story from Jen Lacy

What creates the conditions that allow us to trust, provide feedback and be vulnerable? This blog digs deep into each of these pieces. What I want to do is give you an example that was shaped over time with emotions, feelings, walls and eventually unconditional love. That sounds a little squishy, but it never felt that way.

Growing up in a single father household as the oldest sister of three brothers, my role was more of a caregiver than a child. Our father was our rock. He shaped us into who we are today. He was also not one to hug, or kiss or talk about emotions. He had a job to do, and his focus was to raise his children the best he could.

What does that have to do with culture? Everything. Each of us come into our work relationships and personal relationships with the idea of what it takes to succeed. Those ideas are based on our experiences, our failures, our hurts and mostly our self worth. Do we show up with an open mind and a willingness to trust? I don’t. My first instinct is to protect my thoughts and feelings.

If I allow myself to trust, I could be disappointed. If I allow myself to be vulnerable, I could get hurt. This year marks 20 years since my daddy passed away. It has taken every one of those 20 years for me to fail, screw up, learn, disappoint, reflect and find my impact to truly understand what trust, love, care and compassion mean and the importance of them in each of our lives. I did not fully trust or give any relationship my whole focus. The armor I wore to protect me also deflected the love, care and compassion others tried to give me. Personal relationships with partners, family and friends were never given my attention or made to be a priority. I got hit square in the face with the birth of my girls. Until those moments, my focus was on protecting me. My heart shifted with these two new reasons to love.

In 2018 my firm was pursuing a $400M project. I was invited to participate in an intense 3-week exercise that would determine the awarded contractor. On the evening of the project kick-off meeting, my 8-year-old daughter had a music recital. Like many of us, I had to make a tough decision based on what I felt was most important. It scared me because I felt, either way, someone would be disappointed. I made the call, and booked a flight the next day to make sure my daughter knew she was the priority. As I walked into the project a day later than everyone else, I felt nervous, worried and a little selfish. Could they possibly understand my decision? What I received when I arrived blew me away. Every person acknowledged I was missed on day one, but immediately told me I made the right choice. That moment changed how I approach my life choices, but it also gave me a new perspective on the importance of love, care and compassion.

It forced me to remember the reason I go to work is to be able to live that life outside of work. If that life was gone–all that worth, purpose, time, value would be for what? This only happened when I stopped trying to predict, control and anticipate the outcomes and fully live in the moment. When we talk about conditions, affirmations and feedback, it starts with acknowledging the things within our circle of control and also letting go of the need to do anything else but listen. Once we find that place we can hear what others are saying, but mostly what we are saying to ourselves. Those words carry the most value and give us power to have love, care and compassion for those around us.