How To Deal With a Psychologically Unsafe Workplace – The Authentic Way

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For those who were able to attend our webinar on Psychological Safety we want to thank you for attending and for the overwhelmingly positive responses. If you missed it, here is the link: https://youtu.be/80oVGPcXimc
Please pass along this link to anyone you believe would find value from it. Our hope is that it will generate some productive dialogue with your team and the people in your life.
The number one question we received from the webinar is, “How do you effectively deal with a psychologically unsafe workplace?”
Here are ten suggested strategies. We get it. You’re likely busy today. If you don’t have time to read all these go straight to the last one.
We sincerely hope to see you in the upcoming Masterclass.
Know you aren’t alone. When you are in an unsafe situation and feel like you can’t be honest, it’s natural to feel isolated and alone. However, in reality, everyone meets this kind of experience at some point in their life and chances are many of your colleagues are dealing with the same experience. You’ll want to resist the tendency to create a “culture of complainers,” but it is important to create a support network – people who provide encouragement and who challenge each other to take responsibility to change.
Be honest about the avoidance and assess your investment. Reflect on how you have avoided facing the reality of the situation. Hiding is an understandable and human response, done in a variety of ways: gossiping, complaining, blaming, or simply withdrawing. Although it is safe for a while, the problem with hiding is that you stay stuck wherever you are hiding. Honestly and carefully evaluate if you are committed to facing this. It is a risk to courageously stand up in any relationship that does not feel safe. We can’t promise that this will be an easy, comfortable journey or that it will result in a transformed workplace or relationship. What we can guarantee is that you will come out of it a better, stronger person.
Connect before you expect. This is a fundamental leadership principle that we teach in all of our leadership programs. However, it doesn’t only apply to your team or to the important relationships in your life. It can also apply to people that you don’t feel safe around. Before going any further, be sure that you have done everything you can as far as encouragement, appreciation, recognition, and commitment to your work.
Identify precisely what you don’t feel psychologically safe about. Ambiguity is a formula for mediocrity. If you are going to change something, you have to shift from a vague, inarticulate emotion to a well-defined understanding of the problem. For example, do you feel judged, dismissed, or evaluated unfairly – and if so, how? Do you feel someone is bullying or harassing you – and if so, what exactly are they doing? Do you feel that someone in a position of authority is expecting something from you that compromises you in some way – and if so, what exactly are they demanding? Do you feel like your ideas are not respected and valued – and if so, how?
Distinguish between safety and security. Safety is not the same as security. Safety is external in that it originates from the environment around you; security, on the other hand, is internal. It originates from within you. While the line between the two is sometimes muddled, be careful that you don’t expect your boss to make you comfortable, secure in your position, or happy. Facing some discomfort, increasing your confidence, and growing your job satisfaction are on you, not your boss.
Face the lack of safety responsibly. Approach the person you don’t feel safe around, or your manager, with both honesty and personal responsibility. This means being as precise as possible about what is happening – without blame and without compromising who you are. Express your commitment to do your part to learn from the experience and to make the necessary changes on your end, without diminishing your self-respect.
Control what you can. It’s never a good investment of time or energy to attempt to change another person. If you set out to change someone else, you’re destined for frustration and despair. It’s simply not realistic. That said, although we can’t completely control the world around us, we can influence how we act within it and the way we react to it. Each person’s behavior impacts the formation of an organization’s culture, and your small, seemingly insignificant contribution does matter, even though its impact might not be immediately apparent.
Ask for an agreement. While listening to the response to your concerns and requests, at some point you need to identify a clear request and get a well-defined agreement as to whether the person you don’t feel safe around will make the necessary changes. What is within your sphere of influence is to identify a request and seek an agreement to respond to that desire.
Weigh your options. If there is no good will, the responsibility lies on you to assess whether it supports your self-respect to stay in that relationship. One option is to leave. Another is to decide to leave at a later date. Another option is to stay as authentic as you can be and remain in the relationship even if it isn’t 100% safe. Another option is to continue to hide in a toxic situation and avoid facing the reality. What’s important is to recognize that the choice lies in your hands.
Assess your growth – and persist. Every challenge creates a growth opportunity. While you may find yourself saying, “Enough already! I’ve had enough growth opportunities this past year to last a lifetime!” keep your chin up and keep walking. Know that if you are committed to staying authentic, growth will be your reward. Dag Hammarskjöld, the Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, put it this way: “When the morning’s freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles quiver under the strain, when the climb seems endless, and suddenly, nothing will go quite as you wish – it is then that you must not hesitate.”
A psychologically unsafe workplace is not something anyone should have to tolerate, but unfortunately this is the reality for far too many. For committed leaders, creating a psychologically safe workplace is among the most important steps you can take. For those grappling with how to deal with the situation, sometimes the best you can do is to honestly face your emotions and find a residue of growth. What’s important is your own self-respect. Don’t let anyone take this from you.
Feel free to reach out to us for support or guidance.

CREATING PSYCHOLOGICALLY SAFE WORKPLACES – It Will Depend on All of Us

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There are people in our world who do not feel safe because of the color of their skin. There are people who don’t feel safe because of their gender. There are people who don’t feel safe because of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation. This has to stop. It’s time to decide, once and for all, that inequality and this kind of fear are unacceptable.
Living without fear begins with the way we raise and educate our children, relate to each other in our communities, and approach each other in our workplaces. Why not start with the realization that there are people in our society who do not even feel safe coming to work. They don’t feel safe to speak honestly, to offer ideas, or to be themselves. They fear that sharing concerns and mistakes will mean embarrassment or retribution; that if they are honest, they will be humiliated, ignored, or blamed. They fear asking questions when they are unsure of something. They sit on their hands, stay within the lines, underperform and become dissatisfied. When people are afraid, they stay dangerously silent, they disengage, they lie, and they leave if they can. Or worst of all, they quit and stay.
Far too many managers – both knowingly and unknowingly – still believe that fear is what motivates. Too many managers are unaware of how unacknowledged stress and anxiety breeds fear around them. Brain science has amply demonstrated that fear inhibits learning, productivity, engagement, innovation, and fulfillment.
As we emerge and re-engage from this pandemic, the need for people to feel safe as they face uncertainty and anxiety is more important than ever. And a great opportunity lies in front us to reset the compass and create fearless organizations and lives. Let’s decide to change the world by creating safe, authentic places for people to live and work. Here are seven strategies:
1. Take 100% accountability. The issue of fear will never recede in our world until it recedes within ourselves. Taking accountability means committing to examine the level of fear that we knowingly, or unknowingly, create around us. Changing the world starts with looking in the mirror. Taking accountability also means being willing to understand how our past impacts our perception of our current reality. Due to our reaction to past trauma, abuse, and shame, many people do not feel safe living in their own body, tainting every relationship in their life, particularly those in authority. Before blaming your boss for disrespecting you and not creating a safe workplace, understand how your past impacts the lens with which you view the world. Changing the world means taking accountability for facing, healing, and coming to peace with our past. While organizations are accountable for co-creating a safe environment with their employees, security must come from within each one of us individually.
2. Take care of yourself. Given the enormous level uncertainty in the world right now, resist the natural human tendency to “push through,” and instead, slow down and define what truly matters to you. Use this time to create a safe place within. Creating a safe space around you starts with feeling safe with who you are. Self-care isn’t always comfortable or easy. Self-care means respecting yourself enough to know what you need and creating disciplined routines that ensure those needs get met. Make sure you get support for yourself so you can create safety and support those around you. We ultimately treat others the way we treat ourselves.
3. Bring a servant mindset and a generous spirit to your work. According to Lance Secretan, “leadership is a serving relationship that helps people grow and makes the world a better place.” It starts with being a “we” person rather than a “me” person. It’s about supporting people to get the work done rather than controlling and manipulating; and helping them be the best they can be in the process. Leadership is ultimately about caring, because leadership involves caring for people, not manipulating them. If you don’t genuinely value everyone’s unique contribution, creating a psychologically safe organization will remain elusive and superficial.
4. Be human. At this stage of the pandemic, people are experiencing a variety of emotions. They are nervous and anxious, fatigued from fear and uncertain about the future. There’s grieving, ambiguous loss, resentment, and a mixture of caution and optimism as we emerge into a new reality. There can be awkwardness with people you haven’t seen face-to-face for several months and uncertainty about new expectations and norms. Take time to listen, to be there for those you serve, and to look for opportunities to connect and have the conversations. Most of what you’ll hear you likely can’t fix. What people need to know is that you care enough to take the time. It’s a time to grant grace and exercise patience. It’s a time to practice being human.
5. Get rid of performance appraisals. Stop evaluating, grading, supervising, and treating people like children. Replace parental, disrespectful reviews with ongoing feedback, honest respectful conversations, shared ownership, two-way accountability, and mutual agreements that support both personal as well as organizational success. Be a partner with your staff, not a parent.
6. Be curious, humble, and vulnerable. Great leaders know they aren’t the smartest person in the room. They surround themselves with capable people and then take time to learn from them. They know that no one is better than anyone else. We all merely bring unique gifts to our lives and our work. Making it safe means being vulnerable and open to learn from everyone and asking for help when you need it. Being vulnerable means sharing what matters to you and listening to what matters to those around you.
7. Invite the bad news and say thank you. If you’re going to live or work together in the spirit of humanness, you are going to have to accept that there will be bad news. Great leaders don’t pretend that it isn’t there and cover up the facts. They embrace the negative and see it as a growth opportunity. Making it safe to bring the bad news isn’t about blame. It’s about ownership, personal responsibility, courage, and honesty. It takes a secure leader to be grateful that people trust you enough to bring you the hard stuff, and open enough to learn together how you’re going to work collaboratively to fix it.
In summary, creating a fearless, psychologically safe workplace does not happen by accident. Just because you see yourself as a good leader, doesn’t mean that people around you necessarily feel safe. You have to be intentional. A safe environment doesn’t mean that everyone always agrees and are polite to each other all the time. It’s about a genuine commitment to honesty and respect. It means having clearly defined expectations of each other, along with high standards and working in partnership to achieve those standards. It also means we accept that we are all human and that we are going to fall short at times and it’s okay to talk about it, learn from it, and recommit to a new course of action.
To create psychological safety, positional leaders need to make an explicit – formal and informal – space and time for open, ongoing, acceptable discussion of error, failure, and shortcomings. Conflict will inevitably arise, and we need a safe place to speak candidly about what’s bothering us, with each person taking responsibility to look at their contribution to the conflict. We need to be intentional about inviting participation and sincerely valuing every person’s input. We also need to be intentional about recognizing and expressing sincere appreciation. What we appreciate appreciates. And, perhaps above all, we need to grant grace that it takes time, patience, and persistence – let’s give the human spirit a chance.
For a more in-depth study of psychological safety in the workplace, I recommend Amy Edmondson’s book: The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety In The Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.

Stop Evaluating People and Start Holding Them Accountable

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In recent months, smart companies are finally seeing the futility of the old, outdated rule-based, bureaucratic “evaluation systems” of performance management. Many organizations I work with are abolishing their “rank and yank” systems that assign employees a performance score relative to their peers, while punishing or firing those with low grades. Other organizations are wisely rethinking their practices. Whether you agree or disagree with UCLA researcher Samuel Culbert’s assessment that performance reviews are “a curse on corporate America,” it’s nonetheless clear that performance reviews and evaluations are finally losing their appeal.

Why Performance Management Fails

First, the world has changed. Today’s employees want open communication and collaboration with their peers and with their bosses. They want partnerships, not parents. Today’s employees are also far more apt to want to know more immediately how they are doing and if they are meeting expectations and heading in the right direction. The world isn’t on an annual cycle any more for anything.

Second, being evaluated is demeaning. It’s based on an outdated parental, parent/child model of supervision that is founded on the belief that because a person is given a title they have authority over people. What right does anyone have to evaluate another person? No wonder performance reviews breed all kinds of unnecessary fear, resentment, and resistance. Leadership today is about service, not submission, supervision, and self-centeredness.

Third, if organizations want to develop highly engaged, contributing performers, managers must be equipped to coach and empower them. Today’s workers don’t see their managers as experts in specific subject areas the way their predecessors did. After all, the information they think they need is readily available to them online. Instead, they look to their managers for coaching and mentorship and find purpose through learning, contributing, and growing on the job.

The truth is that employees don’t need annual performance reviews to know how they stack up against their peers. Companies need to stop merely managing performance and start actually developing it.

The Alternative: Accountability Agreements

Instead of evaluating people, start holding them accountable. Here’s how:

Step 1. Build trust. Accountability without trust is compliance. Make the connection. Be trustworthy. Keep your promises. Be accountable. Genuinely invest in people lives. Be interested in what matters to them, what motivates them, and how you can support them to grow. People need to feel safe so they can be honest without fear of punishment. The key is not just walking around; it is opening up, paying attention, and being in touch. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

Step 2. Engage. Accountability without passion is drudgery. Do all you can to help and coach your employees to find their unique abilities, passion, and goals and how work fits into the context of their life. Be sure you have done everything you can to help them find a fit. Fit people; don’t fix people. Stay away from evaluating people and focus on how to support each other to grow and achieve clearly defined success.

Step 3. Clarify Expectations. Ambiguity breeds mediocrity. People need to be clear about what is expected and how success is defined. Clarify operational (competency) expectations, as well as describing in behavioral terms the kind attitude that is required and what results are promised. Before you make an agreement, be sure the willingness, the resources, and the capabilities are in place.

Step 4. Clarify Agreements. A request is not an agreement. If you want to hold someone accountable, you must get their full 100% agreement. If you don’t get an agreement to a required request, then go to Step 6.

Step 5. Clarify Support Requirements. To be committed and engaged, people need to feel that they can talk openly about the support they require to achieve their accountabilities. They need to feel that you are committed to do all you can to help them find the resources and capabilities to do their job and grow in the process. What support is needed? Your employee’s negotiated support requirements will be your accountability to them. The support requirements of your employees will be their accountabilities to you.

Step 6. Clarify Consequences. With no consequences there will be no accountabilities. Always start with positive consequences (motivators). Motivators are the internal or external results of delivering on your accountabilities. Motivators are meant to inspire you to achieve your accountabilities. If these don’t get the job done, then go to negative consequences.

Step 7. Follow up. Follow up means a clear understanding of a plan for follow-through, including how often you need to meet and with whom to ensure that you hold yourself and each other accountable for honoring the promises you have made to each other.

Is Your Boss A Bully? Or Just A Poor Communicator?

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In recent months the topic of bullying has surfaced in my leadership development programs. Although I haven’t thoroughly researched the topic, my observation is that there is an increase in abusive and bullying behavior in the workplace. Perhaps it is related to the economy, increased stress at work, or maybe people are getting more courageous, bringing it to the forefront and are no longer willing to be abused. Even if you are not experiencing bullying, I hope the following will help you to communicate in any of your relationships.

A coaching client shared a recent experience with her boss that went something like this:
“My boss asked me to come to her office. As soon as I sat down she laid into me about how unproductive I was, how my performance had slipped drastically in the past six months, and how I needed to step up my performance or in my next review she would start to document my work with ratings that would put my future career in jeopardy.”
While this behavior is obviously indicative of a controlling, bullying person, how do you determine if this is a bully or a boss that doesn’t handle stress well and is a bad communicator?
Following is a process that I suggest you can use to find out.
Step 1. Don’t communicate when you are in a high emotional state. As I learned from my colleague and friend, Valerie Cade, an expert in workplace bullying, “to be honorable, you have to meet dishonor with honor.” Getting angry or defensive in response to destructive communication is only throwing fuel on an already damaging fire. If you are hurt, angry, or in any way upset by this kind of feedback (and who wouldn’t be), take a few more moments to listen, then give yourself permission to say something like, “Thank you for the feedback. I want to get to the bottom of this, and in order to do so I need to step away and get some perspective. Let’s come back when we can problem solve this rationally and strategically.” Then politely excuse yourself.
Step 2. Get support from a confidant. Allies are trusted friends, colleagues, or coaches who provide perspective, wisdom, encouragement, support, and honesty. It is vital, in the work of leadership, to know we aren’t alone. The most important kind of allies are confidants: people in your life who create a safe space to be who you are, who will listen to your truth and will, in turn, tell you the truth and help hold you accountable. Confidants ask questions like, “What’s going on? What can be learned from the mistakes and failures? Can you learn something for the future? What are your options?”
Step 3. Once you let go of the emotional reaction, schedule a time to meet with your boss to problem solve a solution that responds to their concerns. When you meet next, bring a notepad and ask only one question, “What do you need from me to ensure that I get my performance right, so that you will never again accuse me of these things. I want to understand exactly what I need to do to turn this around.” Then sit and listen and make notes. You don’t have to agree or disagree. The goal is to understand what your boss is asking for. If they need more time to clarify this on their own, then of course, give them the time to do so.
Step 4. If your boss starts to attack you, stop and ask them to clarify what behaviors they are expecting. Reiterate that you are here to solve the problem, to be a part of the solution moving forward, not the problem going backwards. In any of these steps, do not allow yourself to be put into a situation where you are being criticized, demeaned, or bullied. Take charge of the conversation to shift it from criticism to identification of solutions or requests.
Step 5. Once you hear your boss out and list the behaviors they are asking you to change, then negotiate an agreement between you. Conflict comes from unmet needs. You don’t resolve conflict with more conflict. You resolve conflict by getting to the root of the problem. The negotiation process may take a few meetings. Give yourself and your boss the time and the space to carefully clarify the expectations, agreements, and needs for support from each other.
Step 6. Assess Intent. This is the step where the rubber hits the road, where you assess if your boss is a bully. Bullies have no intent to work toward a solution. Bullies have themselves been bullied. They have no interest in problem solving, in helping you find a solution, and in helping you succeed. They only have interest in criticizing, controlling, and manipulating with the intent to bully. You can assess their intent by giving them (with an open mind and a spirit of generosity) a few chances to move toward a solution. Give them the benefit of the doubt in the first meeting. Maybe they are just stressed and are communicating poorly. But if after a few tries they still have no interest in moving toward a solution and helping you understand and change your actions, take the appropriate action toward taking care of yourself. If they are, in fact, a bully, here are a few options to consider:
a.    Get support from a trusted outsider – either an HR manager inside your organization or an outsider who specializes in bullying. Don’t ever attempt to deal with a bully who has positional authority over you on your own.
b.    Take full responsibility for your willingness to work on a solution, and be honest about what you are up against.
c.     You may have to consider leaving your organization. Be sure you have  covered all your bases, documented all of your interactions and done everything possible on your end to resolve the issue.
Please note that these are very general points. If you need support with any of these steps, contact our office for a confidential and complimentary half hour consultation, and we’ll help you find the resources and support that you need.

A RESPECTFUL WORKPLACE – Holding Each Other Accountable To Create One

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Just about every organization will have respect, in one form or another, as one of their espoused values. We are told that a respectful workplace is one where all employees are treated fairly, diversity is acknowledged and valued, communication is open and civil, conflict is addressed early, and there is a culture of empowerment and cooperation. This all sounds wonderful, but there still remains far too much bullying, intimidation, and incivility in workplaces where people spend much of their lives.

So what is your process of ensuring that the value of respect is actually manifested in your culture? Respect is one of those platitudes that receive a great deal of attention, but are you ensuring that it is actually lived – both at work and in your family?

I have a passion for accountability and below is a suggested process for holding yourself and others accountable for living any value that you wish to instill in your organization. I’ll use respect as an example.

Step 1. State your intent. When I open a workshop I make it very clear that respect is a value that I hold to be vitally important in my work. I then state that if anyone perceives in any way that I am not respectful of any person within the group, they can call me out on it – either personally or publicly. As a positional leader, you have to lead the way to make your intention clear. You set the tone. You must model the way.

Step 2. Turn values into behaviors. Unless you can clearly measure a value, you can’t hope to hold anyone accountable for living it. And a way you make a value measurable is to describe in precise terms, the exact behaviors that demonstrate the value, along with the results that the behaviors should bring about. In my workshop example, I tell participants that, “all my behaviors need to leave you feeling 1) safe – free to be who you are, and 2) better about yourself. If you don’t feel safe, and if your confidence is not enhanced by our time together, then I am not living the value of respect. And if this is the case, I invite you to bring it to my attention at any time, either privately or publically. I promise no repercussions for having the courage to do so.”

Step 3. Turn behaviors into agreements. Accountability is the ability to be counted on. By making an agreement that you will act with respect in the behaviors you described, you create a condition for success. What you agree to must be perceived by everyone as acting in alignment with your espoused values (in this case, respect). This is why every agreement must be accompanied by a support requirement. The support you require is that people bring it to your attention if there is a perceived incongruence. To cultivate accountability, you have to make it safe for people to have conversations.

Step 4. Continually reinforce your intent. If you are serious about creating a respectful workplace, then shine a light on respectful actions whenever you have the opportunity. Catch people being respectful. Describe what you saw in their behavior that was respectful and how it aligns with what you are committed to build. Before you start your next meeting, take five minutes to hear a story about how someone on your team acted respectfully. You, as a leader, will need to model the way by wandering around and identifying and tracking respectful behavior. Lead by telling the story first, until others have the trust and confidence to start sharing what they observe.

Step 5. Follow through. There is a difference between value statements and values. With no consequences, there can be no accountability. With no accountability, all you have are empty value statements, but no real values. Recently I was helping an executive team write their value statements. Respect was on the top of the list. We then clarified exactly what respect would look like on this team, what we all agreed to do to act respectfully, and what the organization could expect – and require – in terms of respectful behaviors. We then started to talk about one of the senior sales people who out sells everyone but is the most disrespectful person in the organization. After considerable discussion, I explained, “You don’t have to fire him, but if he continues to behave disrespectfully, and you keep him on as a sales person because of his sales competence, I suggest you cross off the value of respect and replace it with profit, because that is what you are telling your organization you ultimately value.”

Everyone wants a respectful workplace. Using these five steps can get you there. It’s imperative to remember that a respectful culture begins with self-respect. Anyone who abuses others doesn’t value himself or herself, and people who respect themselves have no tolerance for disrespect.

Most importantly, leadership means making it safe to have the conversations while ensuring there are no repercussions. Being respectful isn’t about being perfect or pretending to be flawless. Instead, it’s about acknowledging mistakes and being willing to talk about perceived incongruences. Respect means supporting each other to grow and develop in an environment that fosters mutual learning. Remember, we all have bad days or moments when we need the occasional reminder to stay vigilant.

HAVE VALUES LOST THEIR VALUE? When Can Respectful Be Disrespectful?

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If you have walked through the hallways of many corporate offices these days, chances are you have seen a nice set of value statements or guiding principles proudly hanging on the wall. The problem with these fancy value statements is that what is so often misunderstood is that there is a difference between a value and a value statement.

For example, you may have had the experience of staying in a hotel where somewhere in the lobby there is a statement that in effect says, “our number one value is our customers.” And then when speaking to the front clerk you wonder if she even read this statement recently.

It’s relatively easy to develop a value statement. I’ve been hired to help write many of them. To develop such statements, most leadership teams go to a retreat center where they can get some inspiration. They then bring them back, and, like Moses, roll out their inspiring “ten commandments,” putting them on the walls, website, and computer screens.

But what’s important is not how inspiring your values sound, but how soundly your values inspire others. In other words, how are you holding yourself and each other accountable for turning these “statements” into real values? How are you making the values real? How are you getting those decorative statements off the wall and into the hearts of every employee? How are you making sure that no hire makes the cut unless they prove that they live the values? How do you ensure that no one gets promoted unless they clearly demonstrate the values in their leadership? If there are no consequences for not living the values or recognition or incentives for living the values, then you don’t have values; you only have statements.

Let’s use Respect as an example…

If you have seen a set of these value statements, you will in all likelihood have seen the word “respect” somewhere on the list.

I measure respect in two ways. You are welcome to borrow or steal my way of determining whether a leader is respectful. After all, I likely stole them from a leader I respect. Alternatively, you can come up with your own measurement. What’s important is that everyone in your organization understands precisely what respect means in their specific world and everyone is expected to live that way.

First, I expect myself to act in a way that you will feel safe in my presence – both psychologically and physically. You can define safe in any way you want, but I am accountable in all my relationships to create a place where people feel safe to be honest, to make mistakes, and to be who they are. If you don’t feel safe in my presence – for any reason – then I am not acting with respect.

Second, I expect myself to act in a way that when you are around me, you feel better about yourself. If you feel worse about yourself in my presence for any reason, then I am not being respectful. And anyone, at any time, can come and address their lack of concern without repercussions.

While I claim to have a sincere desire to act respectfully at all times, I also know that I’m human and am not going to be perceived as being respectful all the time. And I expect to be challenged by the people in my life when I’m not respectful.

It’s disrespectful to claim to be respectful and then not respect people for talking about a perceived lack of respect. There is always a gap between what an organization claims to be and how people actually behave. The key isn’t about perfection or even trying to be perfect. Instead, it’s about an open conversation when there is a perceived gap.

Until you can clearly measure your values with defined behaviors, until you can have respectful conversations about a perceived misalignment of values, until you can hold yourself and others to account for their choices, and actually have some defined consequences for not living the values, you haven’t got values. You only have statements.

What is your process for holding yourself and others accountable for living your espoused values? Drop me a note: http://www.irvinestone.ca/contact/ I can help you with that.