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Cultivating Culture and Providing Psychological Safety
Kai Miller
5 min read
The chief of staff instinctively focuses on people, with a determination to foster trust and psychological safety within the organisation.
'Our strategy is something which can be built, and you know it's important, but the more important thing for us I think is about focusing on the human capital.'
It is perhaps unsurprising that a room full of socially adept and people-focused chiefs of staff should so enthusiastically quote Peter Drucker’s famous maxim that ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’.
In the context of organisational alignment, however, Professor Trevor said, ‘It's not that I think that human capital is more important than strategy. I think it's actually more difficult to align, so it's not about importance, but it is about difficulty and I think it's the leadership challenge. But the reality is that we need all of those things. The best talent in the world without a strategy to guide them is a waste of talent. And you can have the best strategy, but if you don't have the talent to fill it, it is just irrelevant.’
In a session led by Professor Sue Dopson participants identified the cultures of their own organisations using Goffee and Jones’s 1996 model which is based on assessing the sociability and solidarity of organisational cultures and, depending on the combination of high and low scores, describing them as networked, fragmented, communal, or mercenary.
Participants did not think that they were solely responsible for culture, but it was notable that they were highly alert to what was going on in their organisations, and were aware that they could contribute to shaping change.
'The previous chief before me was very ‘everyone do your own thing, we’ll only come together if it's something that affects all the partners’. But then when I came in, I realised that was highly inefficient because you can't achieve the purpose of the office effectively. And if all the department heads are off doing their own thing, and we only come together during crises, it doesn't make sense. So I brought everyone together and they started meeting so they would start communicating. But that doesn't mean they were super collegial and egalitarian in this situation. But they started communicating, so we moved from fragmented to networked.'
'Probably until about a month ago we were very communal. And then because a major thing happened at our company, everyone lost trust in our CEO. We've kind of shifted out of fragmented and then, because we potentially might be going through layoffs headcount reduction soon, I think we're going to be switching to mercenary soon where it's like Hunger Games and everyone’s fighting for themselves… It really just revolves around trust. Because I think that's the key thing and then for me, now it's like as the chief of staff, how can I help build trust back within the culture of the company for our CEO? But also just for everyone else?'
A particular strength of the chief of staff is being able to recognise and navigate between different organisational subcultures – not just the departmental subcultures, but those based on age, gender, cultural background, and any other differentiators.
What lies behind this ability is often simply curiosity and an openness to understanding how people may be very different. One participant described how they discovered how to engage a group of engineers.
'We asked the engineers, ‘what do you want?’ They say, ‘We like solving problems. So when people like you and your external consultants come in, we're not even paying attention. It doesn't mean anything to us. Give us new problems to solve. We'll work. We'll really enjoy that. And that's when we'll work together.’
It was a little startling, but I learned a lot from it. We learned a lot from it. And then just focusing on the different groups, subcultures, understanding what makes them tick, what they'll like, what it would it take for them to be engaged.'
Finally, participants discussed the importance of creating a culture of psychological safety in which it was possible to speak up, admit mistakes, and raise concerns. This is difficult in any organisation: even when leaders are keen to encourage it, they underestimate how hard it is and overestimate their own approachability. Perhaps the chief of staff is the only person who is trusted enough and approachable enough to create that safe space.
Rob Goffee, Gareth Jones: ‘What holds the modern company together?’ Harvard Business Review, 1996