Are Your Stories Killing Your Culture?
Picture this: You’re sitting in a meeting, and a colleague leans over to whisper, “Don’t bother trying to change that. We’ve tried it before, and it always fails.” Sound familiar? You’ve just witnessed a powerful force in action — the workplace culture story.
As an expert in workplace culture, I’ve spent years studying how stories shape our work environments. What I’ve discovered from working with some of the world’s best cultures might surprise you. It’s not just that culture influences our stories; our stories actually create our culture.
We know from research that stories provide certainty, generate commitment, build trust, guide behaviour, share learning and assist with the integration of new team members. Stories are the primary means of passing down cultural knowledge, values and beliefs from one generation of employees to the next.
But — and it’s a very big ‘but’ — only if those stories are positive.
If the stories told share a sense of either what’s possible, worth doing or best avoided then they provide wind behind the sails of a culture and steer the ship to an aspirational future.
If the stories are negative, then they will anchor the culture to a past that they are trying to move away from. A past of poor behaviour, low ethical or fiscal responsibility, unproductive norms, unclear structures or unachieved results.
In my work, I see five kinds of culture-killing stories. Each of these will have a beginning, middle and end in the way that most stories do.
The beginning will provide negative context on why something can’t be done; the middle will focus on an example, sometimes real, sometimes passed down or imagined; whilst the end will almost always provide some direct advice that you’re expected to follow, to continue to fuel the story for current and future employees.
The five negative stories are:
- Strategy-based
This type of story centres around the vision of the organisation. The stories involve narratives around aspirations, objectives and goals. Examples include:
‘We’ve had these kinds of targets before and it always ends badly’
‘We should be coming at this another way’
‘There’s no way we’ll deliver these projects’
2. Structure-based
This type of story centres around the way that the organisation structures itself in order to deliver its objectives and achieve its goals. Examples include:
‘We need more/less of…’
‘There are too many managers and not enough workers’
‘Nothing will change until we get a seat at the top table’
3. Capability-based
The narrative of this type of story — usually labelled as gossip — centres around the capability or behaviour of an individual or team. Examples include:
‘[Name of person] isn’t good enough for the job’
‘Don’t expect anything good from that team’
‘Steer well clear of [name of person]’
4. Process-based
This type of story centres around the way that work gets done on a day-to-day basis, specifically processes or collaboration. Examples include:
‘It’s impossible to get anything done in this company’
‘We are a siloed organisation, it’s hard to share information’
‘That’s the way we do things around here’
5. Nostalgia-based
The narratives of this type of story focus on the way things used to be and can often recall activities, behaviours or cultural norms from decades ago. Examples include:
‘In the good old days we used to be able to…’
‘I preferred the old ways of doing things’
‘You just can’t say anything anymore without upsetting someone’
Stories can be told by anyone at any time, although in my experience, the higher up (in terms of hierarchy) these stories are told, the greater the impact they will have on the culture of the organisation.
Those stories that have legitimacy need to be addressed immediately, particularly if they relate to the behaviour or capability of an individual or a group of individuals. However, most stories that I come across require reframing or confrontation.
I helped one team — whose organisation had grown tenfold since its establishment — to reframe their nostalgia from ‘Wasn’t it great when…’ to ‘What did we learn from…’.
Nostalgia is a positive way to maintain intrinsic motivation, momentum and loyalty.
Where the stories have no basis in fact, are opinion-based, or else are simply derogatory to another human, then they should be challenged. This can be done simply by not engaging with the story (thus removing its oxygen) or reminding the storyteller of their obligation to focus on fact, not fiction. Where it doesn’t feel safe to challenge, then concerns should be escalated to someone who is able to do so.
Author Terry Pratchett once said, “People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact it’s the other way around.” This is never more true than in workplaces. If you want to create a positive culture focused on possibility then maybe you need to start by asking yourselves, ‘Are we creating a positive story to inspire our future or are the stories that we tell ourselves killing our culture?’.
You have a choice.