3 Pillars of a Productive Work Culture

I know that culture seems like this big, ambiguous, intangible idea, and sometimes it is hard to put into words.

If you just took a few minutes to tell me right now, how would you describe your culture at work?

Well, it might be difficult to define. It is important to intentionally design one that can attract and retain top talent, especially in a small business where you don’t have the same amount of resources in recruiting or in the hiring team to compete for amazing talented employees.

When I’ve had the opportunity to work with different organizations, I found that the most beautiful sticky cultures often have 3 things in common.

The first one is that there’s a solid culture of feedback. In my first job out of college, I was a program director at school educational centers. This organization had an amazing culture of feedback. We had students that came in twice a week for an hour, and within that hour they received at least 3 high-fives from different people on our team. They received positive and constructive feedback to let them know how they were doing in their tutoring session. This service that we were providing to our students impacted how we showed up to our colleagues. We also gave each other high fives throughout the day. We gave each other positive and constructive feedback every single day.

We felt invested in it. We knew where we stood in relation to our own personal and professional growth goals, and we always knew that feedback was given with the best of intent. Every single one of our members felt like we were growing incrementally. Score had this incredibly sticky culture that was hard to find elsewhere.

As you consider your own organizational culture, ask yourself, when was the last time you received meaningful feedback?