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We asked if your own career development would be more important to you over growth within your workplace culture this year.
You said that being part of a community matters more than single-minded ambition. Respondents want to develop collaboratively. Culture is king…now we’ve all heard that phrase before, so let’s start off on the right foot and make it happen in 2022!
The two distinctive types of culture
How you approach behaving, thinking and feeling at work is distinguished via your thoughts and your emotions:
Cognitive culture is defined as how employees think about the work
Emotional culture relates to how you behave at work: and includes conscious biases relating to what we know is acceptable to say and feel at work
The three pillars: culture, strategy and structure
To affect an effective workplace culture, all of these ‘pillars’ should align with shared values, attitudes and practices that contribute by and large to employee satisfaction.
Of course a positive culture occurs where there is good workforce engagement. Your organisation may have defined the “why”, but the culture is the “how” and it’s important for leaders to set the tone for how workloads are managed. Culture is subtle, yet it's the powerful element that directly influences engagement and determines team success. Last year, Kineo's partner intelliHR hosted a webinar, The Big 3: Culture, engagement and performance where employee engagement and challenges employees have with their work and their teams was explored in depth.
Effective collaborators want to adapt and fit into a team dynamic
A commitment and mindset for collaborative working will be key. Collaboration, generally, is true team working. A great culture is brimming with effective collaborators. This incorporates strategic thinking with team input as a formula to achieve the strategic outcome of collaboration.
The Institute for Collaborative Working published Understanding the Psychology of Collaboration, a research paper that breaks down the attributes of effective collaborators.
“Having a team bias for an individual means that they are able to work in teams jointly towards a common aim, have a holistic view of the project/organisation, a focus on joint goals and awareness of politics and opportunities in order to promote the benefits of collaboration.”
Attributes to nurture growth within culture
We’ve selected these qualities that stand out as essential attributes for effective workplace collaboration:
- Strategy-minded - a flexible approach while looking at the bigger picture
- Team focus - delivering to a group approach rather than controlling and looking for personal recognition
- High communication: good listening attributes and openness to sharing - exchanging and contextualising information, seeking opinions of the group and working towards a unified approach.
- Creative out-of-the-box thinking
- Empathy - understanding the perspectives and position of others
- Ethical - being trustworthy, valuing the integrity of others, their ethics and values.
With a flexible strategic approach to achieving common goals, coupled with great communication and a respect for core common values, growth within culture is attainable - and with that it provides a clear and open pathway to achieving group goals.
Tools to help growth within culture
Positive Workplace Culture is a digital learning course designed for all employees in an organisation. The training provides an awareness of the impact of workplace culture, including factors that may impact on the development of a positive workplace culture.
Learners can glean an understanding of:
- why understanding workplace culture is vital to your organisation
- how workplace culture impacts on everybody in the work environment, and
- steps that can be taken to create, maintain or improve workplace culture.
A free trial of the Positive Workplace Culture course along with 25 additional ethics and conduct titles, are simply a click away.
Kineo. We’re here to help.
