Culture – a family affair?

My role as a management educator and coach takes me into different organisational cultures, and I really enjoy that privilege.

I can be with librarians or police officers one day, construction workers the next and the following day working with entrepreneurs running highly successful businesses. It is fascinating to get to know these different walks of working life, the different ways of “how we do things around here” and the challenges those “ways” may pose for individuals.

And no matter which culture I work in, Transactional Analysis (TA) helps me to solve problems and build better relationships and to be more confident “comfortable in my own skin”. Now that has got to be worth knowing about!

Eric Berne (psychologist founder of TA) wrote a book in 1966 called Structures and Dynamics of Organisations and Groups and among other gems in there he wrote about his concept of group culture based on his model of individual personality, Ego States.

If you are familiar with TA, you will recognise the Parent, Adult, Child model. When diagnosing an organisation’s culture, Berne said it was possible to see that the rules, traditions, beliefs, values, rituals and prejudices were located in the Parent of the group, and this he called the Etiquette.

The tools, knowledge, skills and methods of the organisation could be located in the Adult, and this he called the Technical.

The emotions, friendships, fears, hopes etc were located in the Child, which he called the Character.

If we look at the Houses of Parliament, the laws of the land, the oath that Members of Parliament swear, the dress code and the rules they follow around Maiden speeches for instance are all part of the Etiquette. The Technical is the debates, Prime Minister’s Question Time etc and the Character comes out in the shouting and loud challenges to front bench spokes men and women!

The Character also has a flavour of “what can we get away with under the rules”. The scandals of 2009 to do with Members of Parliaments’ expense claims is a useful illustration. Allegedly, claiming a certain amount of money for expenses was something that some MPs had done almost as if they had a right to it. The claims office had been sanctioning these claims (Etiquette), the expense forms were the Technical means, and the Character came out in the beliefs of the MPs who saw this money as theirs by right, and something they “could get away with, under the rules”.

This model can be used to diagnose a “cultural personality” (Drego, 1983). She took the Etiquette, Technical (which she calls Technicalities), Character model and introjected it into the structural ego stage model, and called it The Cultural Parent (Drego, 1983).

So it is like the group acting as one – with a dominate personality that is the culture of the group, or organisation. If you are a Star Trek fan, think of The Borg – a very predominant Cultural Parent!

I have worked with organisations where the Cultural Parent is nurturing, where staff are provided for (generous holiday arrangements, opportunities for job share, consideration given for bereavements etc). Many local authorities certainly used to be described in this way, and although things are a little different these days, much of this culture still remains.

Other Cultural Parent personalities are more controlling (staff have to clock in and out, ask permission to leave their work stations, receive only the minimum quota of holiday etc).

Many family run businesses can be a fascinating mixture of both controlling and nurturing.

In many cultures, senior managers can often complain that staff members will not take responsibility but when their systems are looked at more closely, it can be seen that individuals have little control or power, are often not really aware of the limits of their job role and receive little guidance from their managers.

Pearl Drego identifies that an unhealthy Cultural Parent wants to:

• keep things the way they are
• repeat old history without change
• assume responsibility for others that those others can well assume for themselves
• keep power over others and destroy anything that threatens their (the managers) control
• provide punishment for new and untried behaviour, even when it is working

In today’s challenging climate it is imperative that managers and staff have the skills and the support to achieve individual and organisational goals. The more complex the organisation, the less it can be micromanaged (Bernd Schmid and Arnold Messmer, (2005). People need to be confidently competent and able to take responsibility for carrying out tasks effectively.

So how can a culture of responsibility prevail?

Senior managers can be supported to communicate clearly with their staff. They can be coached and tutored into managing performance regularly so that a positive relationship, with clear dialogue is fostered throughout the management structure. They can learn to delegate effectively so that their team members will take responsibility in a safe and supported way.

By apparently giving away power, the power of the manager grows as the team benefits. This is much more comfortable than the manager spending much of his or her time fire-fighting – which is a clear route to a stress-filled day!

If you want to change a culture, it is the Etiquette that needs to be worked on – changing the rules, the codes of ethics and making sure they are adhered to will have a long-lasting effect. It will not happen overnight - changing a culture takes time. It can be quite a painful transition period while the organisation is moving through that change and systems have to be put in place and refined and given time to bed-in.

Above all, there needs to be a steady hand at the top of the organisation, someone who has drive and energy, who is supportive but not smothering and who models the behaviours they want to see throughout the organisation.

Others will take their lead (literally!) from the top and will bring about change through consistent application of performance management systems, taking all opportunities to give positive strokes, contracting clearly and accounting for staff.

In this way, the organisation nurtures its talent to achieve its goals and go beyond!