The Shared Cultural Attributes That Help Our Favorite Clients FLOW
The average person spends 90,000 hours- one third of their life at work. That’s almost hard to comprehend.
It certainly stands to reason that if you’re going to spend that much time with your fellow humans that you’d want to be surrounded by amazing people doing meaningful work.
As a hiring manager, you have a great deal of responsibility in building teams that function at a high level and enjoy working together. That’s no easy task. It’s terribly hard to maintain a healthy company culture as the company scales.
Through my two decades in building executive and engineering teams, I’ve seen that the happiest, healthiest and most inclusive teams are also the most productive and most profitable teams. That’s why our specialized work in team building is so important in identifying the BEST additions to an organization at a given point in time.
One of the first things we ask about when sitting down with prospective clients is how well their core values are defined and, importantly, to what extent the leadership team lives those values on a daily basis.
We’re incredibly proud to have partnered with organizations that live their core values at a deep level like Freeplay.ai, Campminder, Tilt, Gnip, SendGrid, (I love their four H’s- Happy, Hungry, Humble and Honest), UrbanSitter, BiggerPockets, Democracy Works, FindHelp and SO many more.
These organizations put their employees wellbeing first through ensuring conscious, curious, healthy, inclusive, and of course, innovative engineering and executive cultures.
Our favorite clients share these core cultural attributes;
Co-Elevation
A phrase I love from Keith Ferrazzi that he used at the Conscious Entrepreneur Summit – “Co-Elevation”- literally raising one another up, growing personally and professionally, and keeping one another accountable to high standards. Together we rise. Group accountability to a common goal and to one another is super powerful.
Embracing Curiosity, Autonomy and Asynchronous Collaboration
As our friends at Tilt Software like to say “Asking questions in a safe space means growth for you and growth for us”. We couldn’t agree more, especially in challenging situations. Isn’t it better to ‘get curious’ and gather more information, to understand the other person’s point of view and perhaps arrive at an innovative solution that works for everyone? Similarly with regards to fostering autonomy in a fast paced innovative environment , Tilt says “You do you…with us…together”. Give somebody the trust to figure out challenging problems on their own, to collaborate with others in both live and async conversations, and you will have empowered, happy, productive teams.
Have Integrity, Be Admirable and Take Ownership
The first one comes from our hearts. Being in integrity with ourselves is at the core of it all. Being in integrity with our teams, our timelines, and of course our clients. It all extends from there. Our friends at Campminder talk a lot about Being Admirable in all cases- Honoring our word and choosing candor, respect, and kindness. This of course applies internally and externally. Finally, taking ownership. People WANT to have ownership and not be micromanaged. As Campminder says, “drive for results with passion, grit, and determination. When faced with a challenge…we persevere”.
Prioritization of Wellbeing as a Central Value
This one is easy to put on the website, but it’s not always easy to live, especially in a fast paced business. The healthiest organizations embody this- that health and family comes first- and they show it by taking time off for their kid’s plays, they actually use their PTO, they don’t send Slack notifications at all hours to their teams and expect immediate responses. They have their own ego’s in check, and they know how to rest- not just push hard all the time. There is no such thing as a successful business without well rested, healthy employees and leadership teams.
Experienced, Empathetic, Emotionally Intelligent Leadership Teams
This one can be rare but it’s so important. Some leaders harden in unforgiving markets and some soften. It takes a special group of leaders who have run the ‘scale the damn startup’ marathon a few times and know precisely how hard it can be. They are able to put themselves in their teams’ shoes and understand that humans are not to be treated as commodities. They are driven but kind. They are able to take feedback, to have hard conversations and be able to admit when they’re wrong. They listen more than they speak and they often embrace ‘fearless self inquiry’ in their own growth as leaders and they encourage their team to do the same. They lead by example and their deep business acumen is rivaled only by their caring spirit.
We LOVE helping scale engineering and executive organizations that live and embody these unique values.
Are you ready to build the happiest, healthiest and most resilient teams?
We can help.
