THE POWER OF CLIMATE
by
Bill Marvin
The Restaurant Doctor™

This is a continuation of our 8-part series on how to be more effective as a manager in the "people business." The first article in this series suggested that whether running your operation seems like being lost in the weeds or spending a day at the beach is strictly a function of your perspective. The beach is available to you but you can't see it from the weed patch. In the second installment, we looked at different models of management (the cop vs. the coach) and explored the idea that in the age of service it is our human skills that will determine the degree of our success. Then we explored the power of presence - of being totally in the moment with people - and how lack of distraction draws people to a more positive state of mind.

Next we introduced the notion that a person's state of mind determines how the world looks to them which, in turn, determines how they behave. In other words, behavior is just a symptom of a level of thinking. The concept is so simple and yet revolutionary when we compare it to the way we always thought things worked. Then I shared a personal example of how this understanding might be applied to a real world situation. In our final look at people as individuals, we considered that every person has a unique personal culture. We pointed out that the message you deliver is always in the feeling behind your tone of voice and we pointed out that managers are role models whether or not they want the job. The potency of your personal example is that your staff will treat your guests exactly the same way you treat your staff. Now that you have a few insights into people, let's turn our attention to organizations.

Organizations are just like people Organizations are simply groups of individuals and like individuals, they respond based on the level of thinking of the people in them. What we called state of mind in individuals we call climate in an organization. Climate is like the collective states of mind of all the people in the company. You might also think of climate as the level of mental health in the organization.

When it comes to climate, the majority rules. If most of the people in a company are in a positive frame of mind and think the thing to do is be as good as they can be, that is what will tend to happen in the organization. Negative people will not get any support from the group and will tend to leave. On the other hand, if the majority are negative and think you should do as little as possible and get away with as much as you can, that will become the norm. In this climate the people who want to excel will leave for lack of support.

Just as individuals are more joyful, creative and service-minded in a high state of mind, the more positive the work climate in a company, the more upbeat, service-oriented, efficient and effective the organization will tend to be. Teamwork, guest delight and flexibility are also natural consequences of a high climate. By the same token, turnover, low productivity and resistance to change are not really problems, just very predictable symptoms of a organization running with an oppressive climate.

Climate determines behavior
So it is the work climate of the company that ultimately determines the behavior that the members of the organization are likely to exhibit. For perspective, here is how human relations consultant Robert Kausen, describes the correlation between climate and behavior:

"While the understanding about human functioning will vary widely among employees, psychological reaction to the human relations climate is predictable and consistent. Peak performance is possible only without distracting thoughts. The single greatest distraction for people is insecure (unhealthy) thinking. Only people with unusually high inner security (self-esteem) can remain unaffected by the ravages of an insecure climate. The rest either play the game (politics, indecisiveness, non-responsibility) or leave."

So despite what you may have been led to believe, people will actually be more productive in a stress-free, supportive environment than they will in a high pressure climate. In other words, you cannot force productivity or peak performance. Management's responsibility becomes the care and feeding of the climate as the most effective way to influence behavior. An anxious worker will relax as their own state of mind improves and people will naturally feel more secure and perform better in a supportive work climate.

People do not want to live in a state of turmoil, they just see no other option. When you understand what is happening, you can use these symptoms as indicators of the level of insecurity in the environment. Just wanting an environment that is safe and secure goes a long way toward calming storms. Taking a real interest in people and treating them with respect and consideration is a major step in building a healthy climate.

The climate starts at the top
The good news and the bad news is that the climate of an organization always reflects the person in charge. When the boss has a bad day, everybody will tend to be a little off track and slightly less effective. The most potent thing you bring to the job is your own mental health. On those days when you are a little off track, the best thing you can do is to head for your office and get caught up on paperwork. It is not a good time to be wandering around the organization, infecting everyone with your bad mood.

Because few operators are fully aware of the importance of the atmosphere they create, many unwittingly foster an environment that almost guarantees that their staff will not be able to reach maximum productivity or have a pleasant work experience. ("The floggings will continue until morale improves!") If your business has a depressing environment, it affects the mood of your staff and starts to bring them down. In a lower mood, minor events take on more significance. Your workers are less trusting of others and more inclined to find fault and complain. They are harder to please and more likely to leave.

Behavior is a symptom
If workers do not feel that their supervisors are looking out for their best interests, then the staff members will spend time looking out for themselves. When that happens, you are likely to see any or all of these symptoms of insecure thinking:

Looking out for Number One. Teamwork and cooperation cannot exist in a climate where people are worried about their own safety and security. This insecurity can also take the form of empire building or craving and hoarding information.

Malicious compliance, You may not be familiar with the term, but I am sure you are familiar with the behavior. Malicious compliance is when your staff does exactly what you tell them to do (and not one thing more) and do it exactly the way you tell them to, even if they know their behavior will not accomplish the results you are trying to get.

Increased sickness and absenteeism. People won't come to work if they don't want to. I'm sure you can find times in your own career when you became disenchanted with a job and called in sick under circumstances that previously would not have kept you from work.

Accidents and poor safety record. When people feel insecure, they are easily preoccupied or distracted. When people would have on-the-job accidents in places where I have worked in the past, it was usually not because they did not know what they should have done but because they got distracted and didn't do it.

Low morale. Suspicion, lack of trust, whining and complaining are sure signals that the climate has dropped. If the climate stays low, there is no way you can improve morale because everything looks like a problem to people. When the work climate improves, the petty sniping will just go away on its own. In a more positive environment, a tricky situation is just another thing to handle, not a personal threat.

Increased union pressure. Unions feed on businesses with low climates. When your staff feels insecure, the union's pitch can seem like a life raft in rough seas. Without dissatisfaction on the job, a union has no product to sell.

When you notice symptoms that the climate has slipped a bit, don't panic. Just take it as wake-up call - a message that you have not been paying proper attention to the care and feeding of your business environment. When I would encounter whining and complaining on the job, I would take it as just a signal that I had been spending too much time in the office. All I would need to do was pay more attention to the dining room staff or hang out in the kitchen, find out what the crew needed and help them get it. The natural result was that the climate improved and when that happened, the whining went away on its own.

To change work performance, change the work environment.
A lasting solution to most operating issues involves a change in behavior and the simplest way to change behavior is to change the work environment. When the work environment changes, thinking changes and most problems will resolve themselves without much further attention.

Understanding the relationship between actions and level of thinking, you start to see that there are no bad people, only good people who get stuck in unproductive thinking. Now some people can stay stuck in insecure thinking for a long time but that does not make them inherently bad people. If you have ever done anything really stupid in your life (and who hasn't?) then you know what can happen when good people get stuck. Give folks a little slack.

A compassionate leader understands that staff members are always doing exactly what makes sense to them given their state of mind at the moment and their conditioned thinking. Negative attitudes and poor performance are just innocent conduct, not willful treachery.

When you fully respect the power of climate, foodservice management becomes a much easier, much more enjoyable game to play. Rather than cluttering your head with techniques, all you need to do is understand what affects the climate. Then you just implement more of the ideas that foster goodwill and trust and eliminate those practices that contribute to fear and insecurity.

In the concluding article in this series, we will look some specific management qualities that will help you maintain a more positive climate in your organization.

for further information, contact:

for more information contact:
Bill Marvin, The Restaurant Doctor™
(585) 606-0000

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