Because if you start rolling out a bunch of policies, present things that are actually more behavioral norms, you're going to start to create a team that feels like this rule book sort of dictatorship that, that folks don't really understand, you know, the difference between, well, why is me proactively speaking up in meetings and me not harming a client's safety on the same playing field, right?
So we don't want to overuse policies.
Welcome to the managing made simple podcast, where you get a masterclass in managing your team with ease and 15 minutes or less. I'm Lia Garvin, your host and team operations consultant through this show and my programs with small businesses and corporate teams. I condense a decade of experience driving team operations in some of the most influential companies in tech into strategies to save you time, money, and most of all stress.
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Let's go. I can't even tell you how many times I've been talking with a business owner or manager and they've said, I want to be a better manager. I just don't know the steps. Tell me what to do and I'll do it. And frankly, I've felt that way too even when I had been managing people for a while because this stuff is hard and it changes all the time.
So the last time someone asked me for the steps, I made a cheat sheet. Head to lia garvin.com/scorecard for 20 things you can do this month to be a better manager. This is literally your tell me what to do and I'll do it. Steps to motivate your team and get better results. There's no time like the present.
Grab the scorecard or write freaking out. Lia garvin.com/scorecard. Welcome back to the show. If you are finding your team not really following what you want them to be doing or, you know, not really modeling the team culture that you've established, or you feel like you're always reminding stuff, the thing not to do is to start introducing a bunch of policies.
Okay, when we're talking about behavioral change, policies really aren't the right sort of set or description for what we're wanting here. What we actually want is team norms. So that's why today I am talking about what is the difference between policies and norms and really how to enact team norms that are going to help your team members take responsibility, feel personally accountable, and create that culture that you want.
Okay? So first, let's talk about what is a policy? You know, policies are things that signify compliance is needed. And if compliance is needed, it's typically that there's some sort of legal ramification if that policy is violated, right? So large companies and small use these for, you know, discrimination and harassment policies to make sure employees are protected.
Um, maybe a company that's doing something with, with the medical field, they're using it for protections for patients. Okay. Jim or a med spa is doing it for safety, right? So. Policies come into play when I think there's, again, there's, there's a legal ramification, there's a safety concern, but it's not about team members just like showing up and like participating in meetings.
Okay? That's not a policy. Because if you start rolling out a bunch of policies for things that are actually more behavioral norms, You're going to start to create a team that feels like this rule book sort of dictatorship that that folks don't really understand, you know, the difference between, well, why is me proactively speaking up in meetings and me not harming a client's safety on the same playing field?
Right? So we don't want to overuse policies. Because policies often also signify like it, you're immediately terminated if this thing's broken. Right? Because again, safety, legal, all these things are at play. So what do we use instead? Well, we want to set expectations, I say it every week, and we want to establish working norms around these things.
So this actually came up a few weeks ago in an entrepreneur's group I'm in, one of the folks asked, Hey, I'm trying to get my team members to step up more proactively and come forward with solutions, not just problems. You know, should I establish a policy around this? And I thought to myself, no, policy is not going to address this because that makes someone think like, well, what does it mean proactive?
What if I have a problem and I don't have a solution? All that creates in my opinion is, is a culture of fear and creating a policy whenever we're not seeing something we like. But like I said, for things that are more around behaviors or, you know, cultures that you want to create on your team, we really want to use working norms.
So for that exact example, let's talk about what I suggested in that moment. Well, I said, Hey, what you're wanting is to create a norm around how we do things in this company. In this team, in this company, we proactively bring solutions forward. When we have a problem, we also come with one or two ideas of how we might address it.
And when we have that working norm, now you can create a culture around it. So when you're in a meeting and someone asks a question, you can say, Hey, you know, I'd like to hear what's one, you know, what's one way you think you might address that. If it's in Slack or a group chat in, in someone says, Hey, I'm really stuck here.
You know, saying, Oh, we always, we always volunteer one or two ideas with that. So you can create a repeatable pattern where folks start to catch on that. This is how we do things. Now, another example that's come up a lot in the recent past is. You know, with hybrid work, okay, should I have a policy of three days in the office versus a norm?
Now, this one is a little bit more subjective, okay? If you are going to be enforcing that folks have to be there a certain number of days per week, then yeah, it does potentially become an employee policy. If you're saying, Hey, we like to be in the office, you know, every Wednesday or we three days a week or whatever, because we can collaborate, but we really are more flexible first, then maybe it's a norm and you get everybody other when you have lunch on Wednesdays or you have collaboration meetings or you have some incentive there, but it's not necessarily a policy.
Um, vacation days, right? That's a policy having to record your vacation days, you know, in some sort of tool or ask in advance. Budget approvals, how much money you can spend without an approval, things like that, these are policies, but I really strongly believe that the best way you are going to create the culture that you want to have of accountability, of proactivity, of collaboration.
Is by establishing, this is how we do things here. And we take pride in that work and we want to do that. And we're all here bought into the same thing. And when a recent episode I did with the CEO of the bar agency, Justin Benson, he talked about how he established team values that essentially became working norms.
And I love that approach because you talk about, this is who we are, what we believe in, and this is how we work. And they're all aligned. So your values influence your working norms and they influence the culture that you create. So he had an example of, we do what we say we're going to do, okay, that's the value.
The norm and the behavior is, hey, if, if I commit to signing up for a task or if that's my job, let's say I have to miss a day and I'm out, I make sure to cover that thing. Or if we have a deadline, I stay late that night because I said I was going to do it. And that is our norm and our value around it.
And so he didn't have a policy that said you can't have work turned in late or you stay at work late if you can't finish something. No, because that feels so punitive. Right. Or it's, it's confusing. Like, well, what about this? What about that? People will come up with all these scenarios because they're afraid because the policy is like, you do it or you're fired.
Now as it values a working norm, he shared in the episode, he's never had folks really break that norm because they're bought in. They believe in it. They understand how to be successful there. So you create that personal accountability by having working norms instead of so many stringent policies. So again, I really encourage you to look at if you have a long list of policies.
To look at them and say, okay, which ones are related to legal, to more of a compliance thing to safety, those, yeah, policies really make sense. Which ones actually are more behaviors that I want to instill in a very different way that I want to get people more bought in and feel like they're brought along the way around.
That's where I would switch it to talking about those in terms of working norms and expectations around how we do things in this company. So you might find you have a lot fewer policies and a lot more working norms. And then you reinforce those by bringing those up all the time. You talk about them in team meetings, you, you model those behaviors.
It's always got to start with you. You, maybe you have like team awards and you, you celebrate when people really are modeling those behaviors themselves. Right? So there's a lot more that you can do with celebrating and kind of like the carrot versus the stick analogy. You can really incentivize the positive behaviors through working norms as opposed to having feel punitive through having too many policies.
All right, and you're going to figure out what makes the most sense for your business and your team. Now, if you're in a corporate setting, then you maybe aren't, don't have the space to establish a bunch of policies. So you do have to rely on working norms and I think that's okay. But again, if you do have the ability to create policies to not get trigger happy because it can feel heavy handed and punitive.
As always, if you have any questions, email me at [email protected]. Reach out on LinkedIn. If you have things that you want me to talk about on the show, I love, love your questions, whatever way I can help because this stuff's complicated. I always say it. Managing your team is the hardest part about working in general, running a business, being a leader, all of it.
Yeah. It's tough because we're dealing with people. So the more support you can get, the more, the less alone you feel, the better you're going to do and the better you're going to support your team. See you next time. That's all I have for today. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Managing Made Simple podcast, where my goal is to demystify the job of people management so that together we can make the workplace somewhere everyone can thrive.
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