Wellness, Leadership, and your Team!
Why Workplace Culture Matters More Than Ever
I believe the power of a supportive culture and a solid organizational community is vital to the success and sustainability of any business. Research consistently shows we spend nearly 90,000 hours of our lives at work. That reality and figure alone validate the importance of a healthy work environment. Given we spend approximately ¼ of our conscious awake time at work, why wouldn’t we want to be in a productive workplace environment that feels inspiring, meaningful, psychologically safe, and worth our time?
The Core Pillars of Healthy High-Performing Teams
Across multiple organizational studies and leadership frameworks, they generally highlight common characteristics of a positive culture that include:
Safety and trust
Supportive, people-first leadership
Attention to well-being vs missed days/sick days
Alignment between personal purpose and company goals
Creates a sense of belonging.
The trouble is, establishing this is rarely simple.
How Culture Erodes - Often Without Anyone Noticing
The above characteristics verify how the workplace environment positively affects an employee's experience, productivity, retention, and loyalty. However, today’s work environment can feel isolating, especially for remote employees, and the lack of social skills among leadership and the workforce can unintentionally damage the supportive culture.
Crafting meaningful relationships can be daunting, out of your comfort zone, difficult to begin, intimidating, or tricky with certain personalities. Organizations that focus on process, compliance, and standardisation win in some areas, but can fall short in building relationships, purpose-driven work, a supportive leadership team, and a culture where front-line team members feel heard, safe, take risks, and are confident to speak up. So where do we start? Like anything, steps must be taken.
Leadership Behaviours That Create Change
The popular author, Dale Carnegey’s many proven strategies to “win friends and influence people” are still used today. How do we change our culture and get out of our comfort zone? Think of starting with a simple smile, and how impactful remembering names or a personal detail about someone is. Then, encourage workmates to speak about themselves as a way to establish trust. Most people are comfortable with this topic. Keep the conversation going with thoughtful questions, smoothing your approach. While Dale humbly confesses he was not the perfect leadership model throughout his life, he admits that he must continually practice these strategies but often fails, falls short, or never takes a step. It sounds like it is out of his comfort zone.
Even the Experts are not Perfect
He also admits to being annoyed by how colleagues expect perfection from him. He noted that he was a farm boy at heart, outspoken, and all the fame or financial success would not guarantee that he wouldn’t screw up. I found this refreshing to read and vulnerable to admit. Think of his own honesty as a bank deposit into my trust account. A deposit that increases my trust in what he was saying. This personal confession lowers the bar for us mortals to attempt to rise to this challenge to improve our social skills. For me, my husband calls me out when I am frustrated, and my leadership steps backfire, or how my tact can be lacking. In essence, leadership humility and knowing you will falter are to be expected.
Learning, Growth, and The Real Path to Competence
How do we build competence? My work as a professional CSIA Level 4 Course Conductor is a prime example of continuous learning or as my analogy suggests, step-taking. As a professional ski instructor, you never really “arrive”. There are always more steps to refine, adjust, tweak, and experiment with. The instructors we train are not expected to show up fully competent as Masters; in fact, we teach four stages of learning with these terms:
Understand the task - You understand what you need to do.
Acquire, you’re still new to the concept, your precision is low, and at your pace.
Refinement - As you progress, greater efficiency, coordination, speed, and control are experienced.
Consolidation - your autopilot fires, and you become adaptable and can make tactical decisions.
Helping People Take Courageous, Supported Risks
Think about this concept in your work environment. Sit with it for a moment. How do you set people up to step forward, lean in, challenge themselves, learn, be okay to fail, and have the courage to rise again? Identifying where a student is in the “stages of Learning” can build their confidence, rather than repeated failure causing fear, paralyzation or feelings of worthlessness.
According to Brene Brown, author of Dare to Lead, she encouraged “leaders to find potential in people and processes to have the courage to develop that potential.” As mentioned above, Brene also sees that stepping forward comes with setbacks; however, if handled correctly, it can lead to a robust culture, innovation, and overall growth.
In 2025, I listened to several leadership MasterClasses that included thoughts from Coach Kryzewski (Coach K) and Jocko Willink, and both men found that effective leadership focused on building trustworthy relationships, alignment with values, strong culture, and a common vision to improve performance and outcomes.
Step Back So Others Can Step Up
Jocko dispelled the Navy Seal notion that leading with a commanding force or an authoritarian style of leadership does not hold lasting power. He highlighted how he preferred to lead with a desire to train and prepare his teams thoroughly, so they can powerfully step up, and then, he steps back, becoming a silent leader.
Teams That Compete and Care for Each Other
Coach Krzyzewski, affectionately known as Coach K, emphasized his approach, which included athletes bringing in their egos, but following culture standards they collectively agreed upon. This guaranteed “you will win and get better as a team”. This approach held teammates accountable, was clear, productive, and they ultimately cared for one another. If the emotional well-being of your team is ignored, unproductive behaviours will appear. If bullies exist, they will create toxicity within the team atmosphere. If one team member puts another down, everyone struggles. If the behaviour is ignored, disappointment from the victim is felt and the surrounding colleagues lose faith in their leadership. On the ski hill, you only move as fast as the slowest skier in the group.
So, what is your work environment like?
Do your leaders influence those they lead?
Is your team brave enough to speak up?
What is your style of leadership?
Has time been spent defining personal values, company values & vision, or attention given to processes and standards?
Do you know what actions are killing your culture?
Can you identify renegade leaders who resort to old-style dominance leadership methods?
Are people brave enough to speak up or take a step up?
Does your culture see failure as something to expect, an opportunity to embrace, or are people frozen, scared to be exposed?
If you’d like to review your leadership team, please DM me and we can customize a plan that suits your business needs.
If you find yourself wasting time managing tough personalities, let’s talk?
If the temperature of your team is off, but you’re not sure where to start, let’s take a step together.
Ever so grateful,
Jackie Lloyd MA
