Investing in Lasting Culture Change with Mita Mallick

A Gaslighter is someone who “says one thing to you the individual, but another to a larger group.” An example of gaslighting might be a manager who agrees to have you present a proposal at an important meeting, but never sends you the a calendar invite. When confronted, they deny ever agreeing to you attending or presenting the proposal. Afterward, you hear others say you told your boss that you had to take a vacation day and weren’t able to make it. In other words, you are promised or told one thing but another version of the “truth” is told to people around you.

Red flag language may not always indicate gaslighting but is harmful nonetheless. It often times creates tension between workers and if persistent, it becomes a cause of voluntary termination (quits). Common red flag language in the workplace might sound like:

Mita Mallick offered this advice to companies experiencing excessive employee turnover: build a community. While culture is what companies promote and offer, employees are really in search of a belonging to a community. To create a community-like culture, employees must feel they are treated with respect, are valued, and have a seat at the table. That sense of belonging creates loyalty and helps keep employees right where you want them – on your payroll, not the competition.

Hiring employees who fit your culture has become a buzzword recently.. Unfortunately the metrics and criteria to create the selection filters for culture fit are often very subjective. It brings into question how HR and hiring managers can discern between diverse talent who aren’t skillfully qualified and those that don’t fit the culture without introducing various forms of bias.
The foundation of culture fit and community are often based on similarity, creating harmony, and avoiding disagreement. Culture and community often infers that employees share common values, reach similar decisions, approach work similarly, and share common goals. But what makes one fit well into the community may be the very thing that excludes diversity of color, gender, ethnicity, and even thought. It’s not that hiring employees who fit your culture is a bad idea. It’s just tricky to navigate and more complicated than just hiring people who “share your values.”

To hear more about hiring for community and culture,

Struggling with employee retention. Mita offers good advice: conduct and analyze exit interviews. “Treat exit interviews with the same respect that you treat customer reviews.” In other words, customer reviews are seen as an indicator of what needs to be done to continue turning a profit. Exit interviews do the same thing and should be approached the same way. Exit interviews also offer the added benefit of holding managers accountable and expose management problems that are festering culture killers.