A good culture will attract good employees a bad or toxic culture will eject good employees. A good culture is like a flywheel; once it starts spinning in a positive motion it picks up momentum and then it just keeps spinning in a more positive manner. If your culture is strong enough it will drive out people who are a cultural fit – they will feel out of place and will not stay with your firm.

 

Conversely, if you're not careful in your small business your culture can be hijacked by other employees. Many small-minded employees with low ambition are not really focused on the quality of their job (aside from doing just enough to keep it) or the direction of their career but instead are focused on their comfort level at the workplace, or even worse, playing little games with other co-workers that they might not like for whatever reason. This phenomenon seems to happen less frequently at larger companies, mainly because the culture at those companies tends to be more androgynous and firmly entrenched.

Corporate culture is more than just a handful of core values cleverly displayed in an acronym framed on the wall outside an executive’s office or sent in an email from the owner to “all employees”. It's dress code, it's how people treat one another, it's how conflicts are resolved, it's the general “vibe” of the office. As a small business owner, you're facing an uphill challenge recruiting quality talent. From the applicants perspective they're looking for a an eye-catching business to put on their resume; work experience that will seem appealing to future employers and make them and their accolades look impressive, so regardless of how noble your cause is and how much value you provide to your clients, if your business is not a household name or a Fortune 500 company getting quality employees is a never-ending challenge.

Culture runs downhill like water from a mountaintop. It generally flows downhill based on seniority within the company so if you're the owner of the company then you can rest assured that every employee at the company is watching:

• How you talk

• How you walk

• Your mannerisms (all of them)

• Your attire

• Your demeanor

..down to your haircut and the shine of your shoes. Every minor detail is being watched and mirrored subconsciously (or consciously) by the rest of the firm. Sometimes this phenomenon is called “Social Mirroring”, but in the rest of the firm's mind they feel that if they can duplicate as many attributes as possible from someone that they view is of higher social status, then they can attain the same level of seniority and income as the person who they’re trying to mirror. As a small business owner, you always have to be mindful of how you act towards every employee every second of the day. Consistency and fairness are key…If you're having a bad day, too bad. Your wife just left you? Get over it. You're getting audited by the IRS and your dog just died? Oh well. If you're not smiling and professional at work (or at a minimum, professional), it's going to have a negative effect on morale. Also, if you're the type that overreacts to issues, or rewards “squeaky wheels” then you're going to eventually create a culture that delivers just that. Your corporate culture is a manifestation of who you are as businessperson and as a leader.

As a small business owner, often you might need to be out of the office at client meetings, proposals, business lunches and dinners, etc. The fact that you're out of the office should not mean that it’s a free-for-all within your office. There are some employees…particularly the employees that are attracted to smaller businesses that have a “when the cat's away let's play” mindset towards work and will use the opportunity when the boss is away to terrorize other employees, or at the very least act up and not act consistent with their behavior when the boss is in the office. A good exercise is to occasionally call in to your office when you're away and pose as a prospective client. You have to be careful with this…don't pose as a current company client, but you can definitely pose as a prospective new business client for the company or as a prospective vendor and speak to a specific person within your company and see their demeanor and test how efficient things are when you're not there. I've heard stories of this being done and often it’s a real eye-opener.

One mindset not to have is a “my way or the or the highway” mindset. Another mindset to avoid is one where you feel you’re omnipresent and all-knowing because that could not be further from the truth. If one is really self-actualized, they will realize that they have blind spots in their business vision. Blind spots being defined as areas where a person doesn’t see things accurately or have no vision at all. If you are not a sole proprietor and you have employees, you should train them so that they can provide guidance and vision in areas where you’re not strong.

One example of this would be if you're not great at motivating people to then try to develop that ability within others at your firm, or to hire someone with those attributes for that ability so that the motivation and development of certain staff aren’t part of your responsibility but instead are part of the new hire or part of the other employee’s job.

If you realize that one of your weaknesses is handling employees and staffing and you delegate that task to another person/another position within the company you have to have the wherewithal to allow that other role within the company have the authority that you have grated them. Don't make give an employee a responsibility of oversight of employees and/or HR issues (ex: Office Manager, HR) and then allow employees to bypass that position and go straight to you with grievances. I have seen this circumvention happen frequently in small businesses where specific employees will either leverage the admin person against the owner or be selective with who they approach with their issue depending on their desire for a specific outcome. If this selective conflict resolution is given traction within the company, what then happens is a good cop/bad cop or Ma & Pa relationship the admin position is then leveraged against the owner of the firm. Three problems here: 1) It undermines the position of the admin / HR person in the eyes of the rest of the company because they have seen others circumvent the standard process and be successful. In life, it would be great if we could all speak directly to the president of every company that we ever interacted with, but it’s not practical in practice. 2) Remember that you delegated this task to a subordinate position previously because you knew that this was a weak spot of yours but now you're actively engaging in a task that know you're not strong in? 3) The employees know what kind of outcome that they're going to get before they even offer to speak with you. The whole reason why they're speaking to you in the first place is because they've already predicted an outcome in their favor, otherwise they wouldn't circumvent the process in the first place.

As hard as it might seem and as much as you might want to have an open door policy, if you have a small business and you have a formally defined admin or HR supervisor you need to be able to support their position fully. If an employee comes to you with a grievance you’re automatic response should be: “Have you run this by (the Admin / HR position) first?” The only time that you should ever take a direct grievance from an employee is because the employee feels that the (Admin / HR) person is doing something illegally or is not performing the job correctly or will act in a way that will exhibit some sort of bias. That is a serious issue in of itself and is one that would need to be addressed immediately to determine the validity of the accusation.

Your employees will mirror your behavior, mode of dress, and mannerisms subconsciously, and then over time make them their own.

Small businesses will have a harder time to get quality applicants than large companies, which doesn’t necessarily mean that their new hires won’t be technically qualified, but they may not be highly adept in terms of working within the framework of a positive work environment.

Don’t be afraid to call your business and pose as a prospective client once in a while in order to get first-hand feedback on your culture when you’re not in the office.

Everyone has blind spots and business owners are no exception. Be mindful of yours and try to leverage another position (i.e. the Office Mgr/Admin/HR Manager) as a second set of eyes at minimum and if possible to delegate the HR/Admin oversight to that position so that your focus can remain on driving the business forward and not be used by other employees as a lever to them get their way. Allow Admin/HR position to have proper authority, otherwise the first time you allow employees to go directly to you with an issue that should be handled by your head admin person, you will have undermined the admin position to the point where it will have no authority in the eyes of your employees.