A just organisational culture is not just good for business, it’s good leadership

27th September 2022

Daily Maverick

If there’d been a just culture in place at companies like McKinsey and Bain, or at Transnet and South African Airways, maybe State Capture would have been nipped in the bud.

In Christianity’s Book of Revelations, the four horsemen of the apocalypse — disease, famine, war and death — are the traditional harbingers of the end of times. In relationships, there are also four horsemen which signal impending catastrophe, according to Dr John Gottmann.

In this case, the four horsemen are: criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. Gottmann designed the model as a predictor for relationships, especially the underlying stability of marriages and the potential for them to implode in divorce. The horsemen are interlinked in a dance of cause and effect.

It is easy to see how Gottmann’s model can extend far beyond marriage, as a valid metric for any relationship. It can be applied to the workplace, in the interpersonal relationships between managers and supervisors and staff. It can be used to explain the behaviour of voter blocs in the broader society, especially in systems where identity politics has come to the fore. It is possible to see how if one group is blamed for the perceived ills of the total and the contempt that is engendered for that group, it becomes defensive and ultimately stonewalls.

The end result, in situations where all the four horsemen are present, whether over the lunch box on the work floor or at the ballot box, remains the same. In the workplace, people leave or switch off — “quiet quitting”. At general elections, it’s the growing apathy to even take part, or to vote in a potentially destructive fashion.

As corrosive as the four horsemen are in the bedroom, they are more dangerous in the boardroom. Human dynamics go horribly wrong when actions of individuals in a leadership team aren’t great. When the company performs badly, it’s the leadership that takes the knock, but when the solution is to focus on results, it’s the relationships that buckle.

The converse is as true: solely focussing on the relationships can let the bottom line sink without trace. Sure — it’s the leader that gets blamed and sometimes rightly so. Leaders must accept that in good grace. But in reality, leadership teams are experienced adults — and shouldn’t and mustn’t evade their own accountabilities by projecting blame onto a single leader, in a parent-child scenario.

But it doesn’t have to be a one or the other scenario. The way that high-performance teams are constructed and fashioned is predicated on internal tension. Every high-performing team is comprised of different kinds of personalities and skill sets; some behave as racehorses, the others as carthorses. Each one is equally important to their task; each one might pull in different directions; there will be conflict.

Over and above the personality differences, they might not all be there for the same reason; they might have conflicting agendas. That’s fine to a point. To homogenise a team is to kill it. But it doesn’t mean that heterogeneous teams driven by purpose and performance can’t function and do so at a very high level.

What all must see is how to help the business meet its mission in a way that builds assets and reserves. Not drains them and crashes the business. Just seeing how one’s own department must succeed without understanding how the whole business must sustain itself is what holistic doctors call the “septic focus”. This hand might be shouting for attention because it’s not working or in pain but looking at the body holistically, it’s a brain tumour in early stages which must be excised or the whole body will die. The brain needs primary attention, not the hand.

The key is how we manage these tensions. Some of the stressors that lead to conflict can be healthy — and incredibly rewarding, they can inspire people; from professional athletes to astronauts, brain surgeons and even politicians to go higher, to go faster, to take risks to achieve things that might have been considered impossible beforehand.

Members of a team have to be held accountable to ensure that each one does what was expected of them — and to the required standard. Criticism of conduct can often segue into blame, and people who get criticised often get defensive. A CEO or board chair should be able to recognise this and shepherd the process so that it doesn’t end up with individuals starting to stonewall.

Stonewalling can range from staying mute to malicious corporate compliance, completing assigned tasks at the last moment and in bad grace, in a manner that renders the task irrelevant, to actually disengaging. Effectively “working to rule” — the union activist’s sure way to paralyse a business.

Just as there are four horsemen of a relationship apocalypse, so too are there four antidotes. It is possible to criticise, but it’s important to do it in a way that is fair and looks for solutions, rather than simply apportioning blanket blame and closing down the debate.

Defensiveness may be the first response by those receiving critical feedback — and it is unhelpful, because it lays the groundwork for victimhood. Victimhood is a kind of self-absorption that allows that person a perpetual excuse to avoid taking accountability because the criticism is always seen as being as a result of the criticiser’s prejudice against them or lack of action to support them — even though the criticiser may well actually be more accountable for the remedy than the boss.

The only way of stopping this is for the CEO or the chair to get the parties to take a step back, gain perspective and properly, actively listen to the complaint, and if it is justified, act on it; if it isn’t, call it out and let it be clear whose accountability that actually is.

Contempt is an absolute game-breaker. It normally flows from a culture of perpetual criticism of a person or group of people that then fosters feelings of superiority by the person exercising it. None of us in South Africa need reminding of what that leads to — or the legacy that we are still dealing with in almost every part of our society.

And contempt flows upwards as much as it does downwards. The simplest antidote to contempt is gratitude, gratitude for the person in question. Gratitude leads to respect.

Stonewalling is the defensive weapon of choice by those who are treated with contempt. One way to deal with this is for the CEO or chair to intervene decisively, de-escalate the situation and then work with both individuals to address both issues. The better way is for all those in the dynamic to strengthen their discipline to act maturely and see what their own contribution to the issue is.

Tension and conflict do not necessarily have to lead to a divorce — in the bedroom or the boardroom. But to avoid it requires a commitment to communicate, honestly and openly, and critically, a commitment to be prepared to listen. As a CEO or a board chair, this means encouraging a robust culture of very direct feedback. A just culture rather than a soft culture; a resilient culture rather than an aggressive one.

CEOs don’t need to hear what people think they need to hear; they need to hear what is actually happening, as well as what people actually feel about it. Too often, what people are feeling obscures their ability to see what is actually happening from more than their own perspective. To see clearly, trying to understand the perspective of those people you are reporting to as well as your own perspective is a high management and leadership art.

We exercise great leadership when we use this kind of clear information to lift our teams and colleagues by acting on this feedback and our own insights. Doing it the right way means ideas are heard, planned and actioned, not ignored. Doing it the right way leads to the creation of a just culture that fixes the organisational system and then holds everyone fairly accountable for the quality of their decisions.

A just culture is one where anyone, junior or senior, can speak out about the reality of a matter, without fear of being discriminated against or fired for doing so. A just culture allows everything to be seen, to be recognised, to quickly be brought to everyone’s attention and be noticed, and therefore quickly made sense of and corrected.

A just culture also means being prepared to be called out when your own thinking is partial, lazy or self-interested.

If there’d been a just culture in place at companies like McKinsey and Bain, or at Transnet and South African Airways, maybe State Capture would have been nipped in the bud.

If there had been a just culture at the Gauteng Provincial Department of Health perhaps Babita Deokaran would still be alive today.

A just culture is the antithesis of the kind of corporate apocalypse the fourth horsemen portend. The good news is that, while we might be struggling to end disease, famine, war and death, we can make a real difference in the workplace — we just have to accept and manage our egos and start listening, sharing and acting.

Dean Jon Foster-Pedley