Jenny Kitchen
Jul 21, 2017 · 6 min read

Building an open and honest culture

I’ve always thought of myself as an open book — I find it difficult to lie and talking to people comes fairly easily to me. It was never a conscious decision when I became a boss to be open and honest. I was just me; I didn’t focus on it, I didn’t learn it from a book nor study leadership qualities. I thought, great, well that’s easy.

But as time went on, I realised it wasn’t easy at all. Once you set the tone of the culture to be open and honest, you have to stick by this philosophy every day, in the good times and in the bad. I am a firm believer in this approach but it is certainly not the easiest way of running a business.

So what does this approach mean to me and for the digital agency I run.

Open conversations

We have regular, open conversations with the whole team about the running of the agency. The benefit is that I gain hugely valuable insight from all parts of the business, which then helps make agency-wide strategies far more effective. The team feel they have a say in the way that the company is run and this improves morale and engagement.

The downside is that as a leader you often have to make rapid decisions and if you’ve created that open culture, people expect to be consulted about any changes within the business. This iterative approach to decision-making can take time if there are opposing views and ideas, that need to be heard and then debated.

But I am a fan of fixing the right problem with the right solution — if decisions need to be made fast, you can still achieve this by changing your method of communication. Instead of sitting down with each individual to talk about the issue, find a different way of getting the same result. Two that work well for me are evening trips to the pub — yes it does mean people have to ‘work’ late but they do it over a beer and alcohol certainly helps honesty flow. And the other method that we’ve found works very well is doing a quick survey with Google Forms on what people think. Easy to create, distribute and analyse the results.

What I’ve learnt though is that it is absolutely crucial to know the difference between decisions that can be made at a group level and decisions, which need to be made by you, the leader. No matter how much information you share with everyone, they still don’t have the same holistic overview and insight as you do. And sometimes unpopular decisions have to be made for the health of the business. I haven’t had to make too many unpopular decisions in my time but I’m comfortable with the fact that if I have to, I will.

Giving honest feedback

Throughout most of my early career, although I felt I was personally very open, I shied away from having the type of honest conversations that could go terribly wrong. I’d prefer to keep the peace and not risk offending anyone.

Then I went through the next phase of having much more honest conversations but my delivery was typically in the ‘shit sandwich’ format. A piece of truthful but critical feedback sandwiched between two thin slivers of praise. Yes, you get the piece of honesty out but you don’t actually deal with it properly as you just move straight onto the praise. It’s certainly better than not saying it at all (most of the time) but because it’s all mixed together in different points you don’t have the chance to really unpick what it means and have the type of honest conversation that promotes change and action.

I’d love to say I never deliver these ‘sandwiches’ anymore, unfortunately that’s not true. But I certainly have much more truthful conversations now. They are harder. They can be awkward. But I no longer fear them, as the results that they give are worth every minute of uneasiness. And a very positive byproduct of having these honest conversations is that I spend less time worrying about what I will say. If I know that I need to influence someone or that the conversation may be difficult, I spend time planning it out, but it’s far easier to plan how to be honest rather than how to deliver a shit sandwich.

Being given honest feedback

If you set up a culture of honesty, you need to be prepared to not only give honest feedback but to receive it as well. This can of course can be hard. You’re the boss, you should have all the answers, and be right all the time, no? It’s easy to feel like you shouldn’t show any weakness as the leader but this is so short-sighted and insular.

Being receptive and approachable to people who have the courage to give you honest feedback (and as we know it’s not easy for them either) allows you to learn much more about yourself and your abilities. It helps identify areas that you need to work on but it also helps you understand things from other people’s’ perspective. People will all react differently to the same input (verbal or written) depending on all sorts of factors — how their day has been, the connotations they have about the words that you use, their experiences, their role, etc…

A lot of the time, it’s not a case of right or wrong, it’s just different perspectives on a situation. Things are rarely black and white. By listening to others and encouraging them to be honest with you, you will build stronger relationships and your collaborative output will be all the better for it. You can work together and focus on shared goals as opposed to mulling over unspoken words and fighting against one another.

Open finances

Our company’s finances are open to everyone in the business. Each month, I talk through the key figures and what they mean to the agency. The tools that we use show the profitability of our projects and also give a view of how much revenue/profit the agency is making each month. This second profit calculation is fairly crude throughout the month as overheads fluctuate but it is fairly accurate representation of the agency’s profitability overall.

We talk openly about profit and what this means to the agency. We set our stall out early on in our agency journey by adopting the philosophy ‘people before profit’. But this doesn’t mean that we don’t care about making a profit — we just invest a large proportion of profit back into the business and we split a percentage of it between everyone in the team. Some company cultures see profit as something that is only discussed among the leadership teams, but we hugely benefit from this being an open conversation within the agency.

It’s an incredible feeling celebrating financial successes with the team when targets are met but on the other hand, it can be really challenging to talk openly about why revenue and profits are down. It’s appealing to just glaze over it, but if you commit to this type of culture, you have to take the rough with the smooth. Although a different type of feeling, it is still hugely satisfying seeing teams come together when times are tough. And it makes those booze-filled celebrations taste even sweeter when you come out the other side.

In summary

The reality is that as a leader, you are no different from any of your team, you just play a different role within the company and have different skillsets. I can set a strategy, mobilise a team and get everyone working to the same goals but get me to design a website, and my three year old could produce something better (OK, that’s probably untrue, but hopefully it illustrates my point).

Are my views more important than others? Definitely not. Do I always have the right answer? Of course not. I want other people’s feedback to make things better whether that’s personally or for the business. It’s not always easy to hear but the results almost always outweigh the difficulty of the conversation.

Building an open and honest culture is certainly not an easy path but it is a collaborative and insightful experience and I believe my company is far better as a consequence.

I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on their type of leadership on here or you can get me on email. Or visit our digital agency, Yoyo Design.

Yoyo

We are a digital agency, building beautiful brands, products, and experiences to help our clients engage with their audiences.

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Jenny Kitchen

Written by

Digital agency boss of Yoyo, business junkie, mum of 2 under 3. Eternal optimist.

Yoyo

Yoyo

We are a digital agency, building beautiful brands, products, and experiences to help our clients engage with their audiences.

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