You Can Feel Culture Before You Can Measure It

Why Workplace Vibes Matter More Than You Think

"It's the vibes, stupid" - James Carville, 1992 (not really, but also kind of).

Plugged-in politicos know the origin of this well-worn phrase (as well as the actual quote, not my misappropriation), used now as shorthand by Monday-morning quarterbacks to explain away poll results they find either surprising or stubbornly predictable. As goes the economy, it's hypothesized, so goes the electorate - campaign fundamentals be damned.

What can organizations glean from this? While they may not find themselves helpless passengers to the tides of macroeconomics, there's a lesson to be learned here for leaders. Just as political analysts study the economic winds of the day to understand the direction the electorate may be headed, so too can organizations pay close attention to another factor that, more than most, can act as a leading indicator to shifts in their own workforce. This indicator is, of course, vibes.

What are "vibes"? Aside from being a word I'm accused of criminally overusing to sound hip, vibes reflect the pervading feeling of a physical space, group of people, or activity. Vibes are also, by their very nature, frustratingly hard to measure or define but to use another infamous quote from a bygone era - you know it when you see it. While difficult to define, vibes are critical to understand as they also represent the undistilled perception of an organization by its people. Vibes don’t reveal themselves in employee surveys, exit interview feedback, or customer reviews. Vibes demonstrate themselves often in the most unremarkable interactions. Here’s what to look for to better understand the vibe of your organization:

Authenticity: Do people show up as their true selves, bringing all their quirks, eccentricities, emotional variations, and vulnerabilities with them every day, putting them on display for their peers (and thus, subject to judgment)? If yes – good vibes.

Deep Focus: Do people often get lost in their work, diving into tasks, projects, or initiatives head-first? Do they demonstrate a strong desire to “get it right” or “do it better” as opposed to a “just get it done” mentality? Do they take the time to deep-dive and seek out information or training to become experts on the task at hand? If yes – good vibes.

Productive Disharmony: This one’s a sneaky one. Most leaders would assume a harmonious team – absent regular disagreements, differences of opinion, or conflicting perspectives – would be one where the vibes are excellent. Not so! A team experiencing truly good vibes, much like a group of close friends, will bicker, argue, and disagree regularly. This is not because they are at odds with each other all the time, but because they are comfortable with each other. To disagree openly is a tacit indication that one is willing to risk the vulnerability of conflict with another person. If your team is willing to settle their disagreements out in the open: good vibes!

Accountability: Feedback is a gift, as it provides each of us the opportunity to improve upon a shortcoming we were not previously aware of – the opportunity to be an incrementally better version of ourselves. Another excellent indication of good vibes is a free-flow of feedback in all directions (this includes upwards, leaders!). Like disagreement, the act of giving and receiving feedback requires vulnerability from both parties, and is a great indication that vibes are good within an organization.

What’s the revelation here? How many organizational surveys have asked about the last piece of feedback you’ve given or received? What about the best disagreement you had at work? Do they invite individuals to share the personal hobby they love to nerd out about, or something they were sad about recently? While organizations don’t dismiss these observations as wholly unimportant, they often opt for different assessments of job satisfaction as they are simply easier to measure. Data on benefit utilization, advancement aspirations, training and development suggestions, or workspace feedback get collected and parsed to gauge how employees feel about coming to work. Even when these metrics measure positively, too often we hear leaders still feeling blindsided by turnover, disengagement, and low performance. Why? Bad vibes!

Understanding, and more importantly doing something about the vibes of an organization require patient observation of the seemingly mundane. Even when it’s clear vibes are off, leaders find themselves hesitant to act. Why? Each of the elements of good vibes requires a tone-setter. Someone must “blink first”, and set the example for authenticity, vulnerability, curiosity over expedience, willing disharmony, and so on. If we can’t live those things ourselves, as leaders, how can we expect our people to know that’s the expectation?

What can you do about it? The good news is: while measuring vibes is nebulous, creating an environment that promotes them in the first place is an act of intention. Like organizational feng shui, orchestrating good vibes is a skill, and one that the training experts at Integra can help you cultivate:

- Our Everything DiSC® and Multi-Generational Workplace programs can help teams understand their authentic selves and how to share that with the people around them.- Our Critical Thinking, and Organizing Time, Tasks, and Projects programs can help teams create and protect time for that critical deep work.

- Our Psychological Safety, Resolving Conflict, and Exploring your Emotional Intelligence programs can help shape a beautifully (and productively) disharmonious team – eager to share differences of opinion in service of solving collective problems.

- Our Managing Staff Performance, Managing Professionalism, and  Performance Appraisals that matter can impart the skill of  effective feedback, starting with leadership, to create an environment where the gift of feedback is given and received regularly.