Translating workplace culture into client benefits

When it comes to workplace culture, most people recognize that a stimulating and engaging workplace culture drives new business and contributes to its team members’ personal and professional development. However, creating that secret sauce to engage and empower employees remains one of the most elusive and coveted goals for any organization.At The Shepherd Group, we’re concocting our very own sauce with several homemade ingredients. Our sauce is a supportive environment that we maintain through strong communication, being in the know and ensuring that everyone in our team wins. Let’s start with communication.CommunicationCommunication is so much more than just talking at each other. Rather, it’s a way of life for us to share experiences and ideas. When we’re in dialogue, we discover opportunities that may have gone unleveraged, which helps us create value for clients and attract new business. Because at the end of the day, ideas and opportunities do not benefit anyone if they’re locked up in our heads and we’re too scared or forgetful to articulate them.Sharing is also about vulnerability because people cannot communicate effectively without getting access to each other’s worlds and headspace. This can be scary, but it pays massive dividends and is really easy to kick-start. It’s possible to communicate everywhere, like sitting down for a coffee at lunch and sharing, or just asking if there’s anything we can do to help each other.Sometimes people are afraid of each other or else, so steeped into their daily activities, they neglect to share and communicate with one another. When this happens, we check on each other to identify and proactively prevent breakdowns before they even occur.Be in the knowOnce we’re in communication, being in the know comes naturally. That is, we are not starting from scratch with someone because we have an inkling of what they may be going through. We’re no longer strangers to each other after opening up and we can continue to pursue the conversations we’ve already started.Just as we put clients in the know about things impacting their lives, we strive to put each other in the know about each other. And although we all have different goals, there is a sense of deep satisfaction knowing that we get to be part of each other’s journeys and contribute to the deepest yearnings and most ardent strivings of each of our team members. This leads us to our final ingredient.Everyone winsWhen we truly understand what is at stake in each other’s lives — a mortgage down payment, college tuition for our kids and so on — we realize that winning is not a zero sum game. In fact, we win only when everyone wins. You can see how this ingredient connects everything else: hoarding opportunities or focusing only on our individual achievements becomes irrelevant in the sense that no matter how much one person achieves, if someone else had a breakdown, the first person did not win.Breakdowns are an opportunity to come together as a team and family. If someone is experiencing breakdowns and not winning, none of us win. That means no matter how well any given team member is performing individually, they’re not winning if everyone else isn’t winning.In this way, we see our individual accomplishments as contributing toward other people winning. Our lives and the work we do are not a zero sum game where one individual’s win comes at someone else’s expense. When you win, I win because I know you’re growing and developing as a person and that your win will help everyone else achieve their objectives.How many people can truly say something like that about their workplace?Translating culture into client benefitsIt may seem odd that we have yet to address client satisfaction and meeting client needs. But the point is that a strong internal culture shows up in the results we deliver for clients. This is because all of the same principles that inform our team’s dynamics apply directly to our client operations.For example, getting to know our team members is part of our approach with clients in that we are best able to meet your needs once we connect with you on a personal level. If we create an environment where you’re comfortable sharing, we are better able to meet your needs.Because our goal is to help you, we win automatically when we help you reach a place where you’re blazing forward and accomplishing your goals. In practice this means we consider that we won only when you won in the first place.