Tyler WagnerFounder, Authorsunite.com · Authorsunite.com and Partnerprofits.io Founder - #1 WSJ Bestselling Author - Book Publisher - Book Marketer - 4,000+ Authors Served - Millions Of Books Sold By Clients - Investor

How Your Employees Should Feel... | Stan Slap | Authors Unite Show

Name: How Your Employees Should Feel... | Stan Slap | Authors Unite Show
Uploaded: 2020-10-16T17:13:08+00:00
Duration: 2 min 18 s
Channel: Tyler Wagner
Description: In this interview excerpt, the host asks how companies can maintain a culture where employees feel comfortable sharing opinions while still providing the…

16 Oct 2020 · 2 min

Watch on YouTube

2:18

In this interview excerpt, the host asks how companies can maintain a culture where employees feel comfortable sharing opinions while still providing the structure needed for larger organizations. Stan Slap responds with a metaphor of a risky trapeze act, emphasizing that many managers initially think they manage profit, processes, or geography, but ultimately they manage people—and often fail to recognize they also manage culture. He defines culture as a self‑protective organism formed by employees' dependent relationship with the company. Slap argues that for any cultural initiative to succeed, every manager—from executives to entry‑level—must be equipped to own, understand, and transmit cultural competency. Without this universal ownership, top‑down cultural plans become dead or diluted. The discussion highlights the tension between rigidity and flexibility, the need to keep “pipes open” for cultural dialogue, and the critical, yet missing, skill of cultural stewardship among managers.

Chapters

It could be any size company, but it seems to me that to have a good company culture, you need to create some sort of like comfortability with your employees. And when I say comfortability, what I mean is like them being comfortable to share their opinions openly within the organization. And I feel like that's the balance that a lot of companies get bigger that they struggle with because, you know, as you get bigger, you kind of have to have more, I suppose, like structure and guidelines for things to work. But if it gets too rigid, then there's like no room for error. And if there's no error, then there's no growth. So how do you find that like kind of balance beam, if that makes sense?
Yeah, I, although to use that metaphor, if it were a trapeze act, there'd be a lot of casualties. So we do it again. I mean, we do it by opening this up. One of the things we do is if you ask a manager, what do you manage? Ask a manager in any company, so what do you manage? They'll tell you they manage a P&L or some revenue responsibility or maybe a business process or function or in a big company, maybe even a geography. If you just stare at them long enough where they go, oh my God, it's a trick question. What else, what else, what else? Eventually they're going to say, people, is it? Yes, it's people. Yes, I was going to say people. That's right, I manage people. Well, good for you, but you can be waiting a lot longer for them to tell you they manage a culture. And again, a culture is not a bunch of employees, it's the self-protective organism that's created when employees form a dependent relationship with a company. And unless every manager in the enterprise, executive to entry level, knows how to take a handoff from the top and drive it through their own cultures, then any grand plan is DOA, or diluted beyond recognition. So one of the ways you blow those pipes open and keep them open is you transfer this competency to every manager in the enterprise, which is, it's still the greatest missing competency amongst even the otherwise smartest management teams. What's the culture? How's the culture work? Why is the culture important?