Why You Should Never Refer to Your Employees as “Family”
If the last few years have reminded us of anything, it’s that work in America takes up the majority of our days.
Before the work from home era, and even still when we think about our computer login time, we spend more time with our colleagues than our own family members. A recent Vox article stated :
“Work hours for salaried employees have been slowly rising for years — in 2014, the average such worker put in 49 hours a week, with 25 percent working more than 60 hours.”
As a leader, you want to make sure that your people are happy and supported at work. A happy employee is not only good for morale, its great for your bottom line. In effort to make employees feel connected to the organization, many companies will use a “we are a family” mentality with their teams and offices. The intention of a family mentality is to build trust and a sense of togetherness amongst an organization. If we think of each other as family, then hopefully colleagues will work together, employees will be loyal to the company and everyone will work harder. But here’s the thing…
You need to refer to your employees as a TEAM, not a family.
Why?
Family can be dysfunctional and toxic.
Teams can be strong.
Teams are chosen.
Teams are built with lots of work from everyone.
Using a team mentality brings 4 things:
Discipline
Adaptability
Accountability
Community
Discipline
The team is only as strong as each individual. If you aren't keeping yourself strong and showing up for your mind, body and spirit everyday, you can't show up for the team. It's easy to burn out. It's easy to brag about how hard you work/ how late you stayed up/how fast you go. It takes more discipline to slow down and reflect. It takes more strength to consciously take a step back and keep seeing the bigger picture. Ultimately, your employees can sustain their energy if they are self aware of the boundaries they need to maintain stamina at work. That takes discipline. Ultimately, encouraging and empowering discipline for your team, will allow them to thrive.
How do we do this?
Create a space where employees can practice discipline. Don’t celebrate employees who worked overtime or set a standard of burnout by rewarding it. Not everyone loves a structured schedule but you can still encourage employees to set aside time each month for brainstorming, ideating, and staying creative. Even if they aren’t in a creative role, there are things they can be doing to boost that idea tank and come up with better solutions for the entire team. A lot of time that means, getting creative means stepping away from your computer screen and doing something fun or restful.
Take a look at your meeting schedule for the week. Are there any meetings that people can take off camera? A walking meeting perhaps? Or meetings that can just be an email, to give your employees time back to focus on their own productivity and wellbeing.
Don’t use your 1on1 as a “nice to have”. This is a crucial time for your to check on your people and identify their capacity, hear about challenges, and celebrate wins. If you need a helpful structure for 1on1 agendas…let’s chat!
Adaptability
Things change. The opponent hits you with a play you didn't see coming. Life doesn't stop to look at your plans. When we work together, as a team, we bring the best of all of our strengths. We can pivot. We can work alongside each other to bring out the best work. We want team members that are ( or are on their way) to being an expert at what they can bring to the table. This way, when we come together, it's magic.
How do we practice this?
Look at your transparency. How often are you giving honest and transparent updates to your team? By doing this, you are allowing your employees to the do the same, and identifying challenges before it’s too late.
Look at your systems and processes. It sounds backwards but when you have a structure for how to operate in place, it will actually allow a lot of creative freedom. No one will be worried about the process of getting a task done because that is already set for them. These processes will give them plenty of capacity to create solutions and innovate new ideas. If everyone knows that group discussion happens on slack and final approvals happen in Asana, you take the guess work out of the processes and place the power to adapt to challenges, in your team’s hands.
Accountability
The team doesn't work unless all of us are playing the same game. It's a choice that we make to show up everyday. It’s a choice to put forth our best effort. Bringing a shared language allows us to play by the same rules and hold each other to the company standard.
How do we practice this?
Review and update your organizational chart. The org chart should be revisited quarterly, its not a one and done type of resource. Do you have a centralized place for who is responsible for what? Are people aware of who is leading a project or initiative? If not, let’s talk.
Community
The best part about a team is that we are never alone. We can lean on each other for support. We learn together, we grow together, and we WIN together. As humans, we were made for community. In a team sport, we don't win on our own. When we come together and feel supported by each other, we thrive. We don't want to play on our own field. We want to learn and grow together because it is that much more fun to celebrate.
How do we practice this?
Start by celebrating wins. The little ones, the bigs ones and all the wins that happened because of teamwork. Choose a centralized place where this should happen so that everyone can be involved. Do you want written celebrations in your messaging platform? Callouts in the weekly all hands meeting?
Invite your team to give and receive feedback. Creating a space where challenges or constructive feedback can be given will be crucial to growing your team’s success. Those 1on1s are a great place to start but if you need more ideas for how to make room for hard conversations to happen, let’s talk!
Next time you welcome in your employees to an all hands meeting and want to say “ we are just a big family here” try using the term “team” instead. Notice how cultivating a team using these best practices above, changes the dynamic and success of your business. Unless you really do work with your family, then, this rule need not apply.
