The LeaderLab: Powered by LifeLabs Learning

Grow Kind: Reinforcing Organizational Ethos

• LifeLabs Learning • Season 3 • Episode 32

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As your company grows, how do you maintain its purpose, mission, and values across teams at scale? Joie Lim, LifeLabs Learning’s Impact Lead, joins The LeaderLab this week to talk about how leaders can protect an org’s ethos by reinforcing the behaviors that align with the company’s ideal identity.

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Vanessa:

Welcome to the Leader Lab, the podcast powered by LifeLabs Learning. I'm your host, LifeLabs Leadership Trainer and Director of Product Strategy and Operations, Vanessa Tenisian. Join me and my lab mates as we distill our findings into powerful leadership tipping point skills, the smallest changes that make the biggest impact in the shortest time. We'll also welcome members from our learning community who share how they experiment with these skills in their world of work and beyond. Welcome back, Leader Lab listeners. We're continuing the conversation on how to grow kind. What do you do when your business is scaling that will ensure that people are not only surviving, but thriving? And to continue the conversation, we have Joie Lim. Joie is our Impact Lead at LifeLabs Learning, which means she knows a thing or two about what it takes to get your business to the next level. And she's also a boxer, which is pretty badass. So welcome to the lab, Joie. Thanks so much for having me, Vanessa. So I am so curious about the concept tool we're going to be experimenting with today to help us grow kind.

Joie:

Yeah. So I'm really excited to be talking about how companies can grow kind because what we know is that this really stems from organizational resilience. And I've actually been doing a ton of research on what organizational resilience is. And the main focus of our conversation today will be on one of those domains that builds resilient organizations. And that's maintaining a strong ethos. One of the things that we know about companies that grow kind is that they're very intentional about how they reinforce their ethos as the company grows and scales.

Vanessa:

You already got my attention, but I think we need some definitions. Can you tell us what ethos is?

Joie:

Ethos is the element of an organization that makes us us, a collection of our purpose, mission, and values. It's our

Vanessa:

identity. So we got this bucket of ethos. Ethos is what makes us us. And then now we have this understanding that we need reinforcers.

Joie:

How does that work? Reinforcement is really the systems and or people that provide us with positive or corrective feedback to help influence behavior or actions. Reinforcement actually comes from a lot of the work that B.F. Skinner did, an American psychologist, most well known for his research on operant conditioning. The theory that behavior is influenced by reinforcement and reinforcement theory is really the process of shaping behavior by controlling consequences of that behavior.

Vanessa:

Man, I feel like I'm in a college psych class all over again. You're just dropping the names. But what it sounds like is in order for us to get a behavior to stick, we need a reinforcement. It might be helpful for us to think through some of the ways that we can reinforce our ethos. Did I get that right?

Joie:

Yeah, exactly. Really, the idea here is that at the end of the day, behaviors are options. And that's often what I tell my clients because we focus on skill transformation. And so So employees have the option to exhibit a certain behavior. And what we want to do is make sure that the healthy choice is the easy choice, right? And so we really want to make sure that we're reinforcing the behavior that aligns with that ethos on a larger scale so that we can see behaviors in accordance with what we want our identity to be.

Vanessa:

Yeah, definitely. It reminds me of so much scholarship that's been done in the world of habit formation from Charles Duhigg and James Clear and BJ Fogg. But like bringing this back into the work What are the steps that somebody would need to take in order to design a reinforcer that supports their ethos?

Joie:

If you're designing a system that you want to reinforce your ethos, there are four steps. The first step is identifying the part of your ethos that you want to reinforce, whether that be purpose, mission, or value. Then we want to behaviorize that. So what does that look like in practice? What does it look like to be exhibiting that value or behaving in alignment with that purpose?

Vanessa:

Hmm. The

Joie:

third step is selecting the system that you want to reinforce that ethos with, whether that be performance management, a communication system, whatever it may be. And then last but not least, we want to review the opportunities to reinforce that ethos within that system. So where can we reinforce those behaviors?

Vanessa:

Okay. So we have a four-step system for ethos implementation. I love it. And of course, I'm like sort of chomping out the bit. So can you walk me through?

Joie:

Yeah. Let's do a bit of an experiment here. So first and foremost, what part of our ethos at LifeLabs Learning would you want to reinforce? We can pick either purpose, mission, or value.

Vanessa:

I'm a values-driven girl, so value is my choice. Okay, great. Which value do

Joie:

you

Vanessa:

want to reinforce? Oh, that's an even sexier question. Let's see. Always be learning. I mean, I think it's one of the markers that truly makes us us. For me, it's tippity-top.

Joie:

Let's talk about behavior. Behaviorizing that value. What does it look like in practice? What does it look like to be behaving in accordance with always be learning?

Vanessa:

Always be learning looks like being curious, you know, asking questions, strong opinions, loosely held, like being willing to have conversation about things. And then there's also the deep need for reflection and course correction if necessary. So I would say like those are the four huge components. That's the way that I would behaviorize it.

Joie:

Great. So now it's like a system that we want to reinforce always be learning. I

Vanessa:

think we're going to go with strategic planning. And the reason why I say this is because I know a number of our clients have challenges with their strategic planning. We're in the midst of our strategic planning cycle right now at LifeLabs, you know, calibrating BPS, shout out to Robin. I'm curious how we can ethos up strategic

Joie:

planning. Me too. Yeah. Strategic planning. Got it. So that is perfect. Now let's talk about how do we see always be learning showing up in our strategic planning system? Like I as it is currently? Yeah.

Vanessa:

Okay. What comes to mind with the strategic planning session is like the one question that's like, what will you learn in doing this work that is legitimately part of the planning template? So that's one of the places that it shows up. Secondly, I would say that the template asks guiding questions along the way. So it doesn't just say like measurable objective. It says like, how will you know that you did this well?

Joie:

And I would even add, there's a retro section that talks about how can we reflect back on how the project once we're done with it and see what went well, what could we do better next time. There's also an opportunity to pull for feedback and include different stakeholders. You'll see that in our strategic planning system, we are reinforcing that always be learning value and what that is doing. It's making it a habit. When I go into any conversation, or even if I'm just talking about a project informally, it's honestly a habit for me at this point to think about, okay, what do we want to learn from this? How will we know if we did this? as well. And that in itself is really reinforcing that behavior on a larger scale outside of the strategic planning system itself, which is really what maintaining our ethos is all about.

Vanessa:

Wow. I feel we got meta on so many levels with this particular topic because honestly, I didn't even recognize that behavior being reinforced in strategic planning until you had me talk it through live with you here. And I got to say, Robin, you are a Jedi in master. That's what I got to say. Shout out to you. So I'm feeling really good about the fact that our strategic planning process really kind of highlights one of these values that we have. But what if it didn't? What if I was not prompted at all to be learning throughout the process? What do we do then?

Joie:

Yeah. Great question. Well, first and foremost, I think we'd have to ask the question, is it important that we're reinforcing this particular part of our ethos in the system? I think that LifeLabs Learning does a really great job of knowing that our values are critical to the way that we do our work. And so in each of our systems, you will see all of our values being held because that is really important to how we do what we do and what makes us us. And so if we weren't able to pull examples, what would happen is that while this might be a value that we say is important on our company website, it's something that we obviously give to new employees. It's something that we say we do. Eventually over time, as we continue to grow row and we don't see any reinforcement of this value in our company, our always be learning value would disintegrate over time. And eventually people would just see this value as something that we say is important to us, but there's actually no evidence of people behaving in alignment with that value. And so it's no longer what makes us us. It's no longer part of our ethos because we're not walking the talk.

Vanessa:

Yeah. I mean, it reminds me of a number of companies who will not be named who have the values emblazoned on a wall or on t-shirts or backpacks or you know whatever else you can print on and they're just not doing it it's more like a an aspirational state than something that they try to maintain within their workplace which honestly leads to folks behaving in ways that are not so great and i'm so glad that you're saying that the value would essentially disintegrate because it's not being reinforced people will not behave in ways that aren't recognized whether that be through the feedback they get from others or through the system itself being a conduit for that behavior. That brings us to our Leader Lab listener experiment. So Joey, what should we have our listeners experiment with in their laboratories of life?

Joie:

Yes. So pull the four-step process into your company by identifying a company value through your ethos that you really want to reinforce. Then identify the reinforcers. Then assess how much that value shows up in that system. And a bonus point, if you can do it, is chart out some ethos adjustments for how you reinforce that value.

Vanessa:

I'm so excited for folks to be figuring out what makes them them so that way they can grow kind. Thank you so much, Joey. Thank you. And that's a wrap of another episode of the Leader Lab Podcast, powered by LifeLabs Learning. If you're loving the Leader Lab, subscribe so you never miss an episode. The Leader Lab is executive produced and hosted by me, Vanessa Tenisian. Alana Berman is our creative director and senior editor. Juliana Jack is our assistant editor. Lauren Feller is our associate producer. And Yadier James is our senior producer. You can find all our episodes, transcripts, and more at lifelabslearning.com slash podcast. While you're there, you can learn more about our learning programs to help you build an engaged high-impact team faster. See you in the lab.