Be Well> Do Well> Stay Awhile: The critical role that supervisors play in creating the culture of an organization

One of the three drivers of workforce resilience is cultural practices that support well-being and resilience within an organization. Supervisors in child welfare play a pivotal role in creating and sustaining the culture of the organization. Consider that “culture” is the way things are done in an organization, and how it feels to work in that organization. No one has more impact on that than the supervisor. And the foundation of a culture is the level of psychological safety found in teams – and that is largely determined by the supervisor. Discover the pivotal role of supervisors in shaping organizational culture and creating a psychologically safe environment. 

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00:00:00:0 - 00:00:19:6
Unknown
You're listening to Radio Kempe. We value the sense of community that connects people and helps them find ways to move forward. Join us on our journey to prevent child abuse and neglect.

00:00:19:6 - 00:00:46:3
Unknown
Welcome and welcome back. This is Radio Kempe. I'm Kendall Marlow with the Kempe Center for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse. Neglect. Thank you for being with us today. In 2024, Radio Kempe is traveling with you to discover new voices and learn new things. We're open to that discovery. And thank you for joining us on this journey.

00:00:46:4 - 00:01:10:9
Unknown
This episode is the third episode in a series of conversations with the Kempe Center's very own Dan Cromer. And if you've been lucky enough to listen to the first two episodes, you know that Dan is committed to fighting the disengagement and chronic turnover of the workforce in our child welfare field. He doesn't think we're destined to a never ending cycle of frustration and burnout.

00:01:11:0 - 00:01:39:2
Unknown
Dan thinks we can do something about it. I did Laura, welcome back. Thanks, Kendall. Glad to be here. Dan, in our first episode in this series, you introduced us to what you call a practical approach to workplace place resiliency. And under your banner of Be well, Do well, stay a while. Then in our second episode, you shared simple practices that each of us can do as individuals.

00:01:39:3 - 00:02:11:6
Unknown
Gratitude exercise. Exercise. I'm still working on that one, Dan. Sure. Mindfulness. Acts of kindness and social connections. Today, we're exploring the cultural strategies that we can use throughout our organizations. So, Dan, I take it we're focusing less today on the individual employee and more on the organization. Dan, is that a productive path for us to go down? Isn't stress an individual thing?

00:02:11:7 - 00:02:43:2
Unknown
Something inside of me caused by the job itself? Well, thank you for bringing that up. surprisingly, Kendall, surprisingly, there's some real good research. and for me, anyway, once again, research that supports or confirms something that we already knew and that is there. There's two real sources of the stress that child welfare workers, suffer pretty regularly.

00:02:43:2 - 00:03:20:7
Unknown
Pretty routinely. Pretty naturally. you know, one is work the stress of the job itself, working with clients on a daily basis who are struggling, oftentimes traumatized families with not enough resources to to go around, oftentimes. And so, you know, the stress of the job itself, the stress of the work that certainly it's certainly there. And the other sources of stress and child welfare work, it comes from what you might call workplace stress, how it feels to work in an organization, how the work is done in that organization.

00:03:20:7 - 00:03:58:4
Unknown
So it's, you know, it's the people, the systems, the rules. and what's now clear is that workplace stress causes more stress for the worker than the work itself. So that's that's us with each other. This is, in some ways something we do to each other. no, it's kind of. You've been in the field long enough, and I've heard things like, I love the job, but I cannot stand the paperwork, or I love the job, and all I end up doing is go into meeting after meeting after meeting.

00:03:58:5 - 00:04:47:8
Unknown
I can't do the job because of all the requirements and the things that happen within the organization, those kind of things. And so what they found is that that's absolutely true, that compared to client related burnout, the thing that comes from the stress that comes from that, work itself is staff experience, experience experiences, excuse me, higher levels of burnout related to those agency level factors and and kind of which I think if you're going to really try to address stress in the workplace, it's work that workplace related added stress, is also really strongly associated with job stress by itself, job dissatisfaction, and importantly, intent to leave.

00:04:47:9 - 00:05:18:3
Unknown
All of those were more that were more, strongly associated with workplace related stress rather than stress of the job itself. You know, again, I think I might have mentioned in a previous episode, I'm a news junkie, and I've always read the business section, too, and everything I've ever read about people leaving their jobs is is that the one most critical factor in that is not the pay, is not the work conditions, is not the job itself.

00:05:18:4 - 00:05:48:9
Unknown
It's your relationship with your immediate supervisor. Is that where culture starts? Yeah. Kind of the whole idea about culture in an organization, especially in child welfare. And I'm going to speak really directly to that. Those kind of organizations, just because that's where my experience is. it's really true to a tremendously large degree. People leave their supervisor. They don't leave their job.

00:05:49:0 - 00:06:14:0
Unknown
it's I assume, like you're saying, that it happens in other, you know, other types of industries and businesses. But I know what happens in child welfare. so what what what kind of supervisor did this as a supervisor have that much influence over the culture? They they're, you know, they're I have to I have to say they're the most supervisor level.

00:06:14:0 - 00:06:33:1
Unknown
The supervisor is the most important determinant of everything in my mind in an organization. they're not the most, you know, they're not the only determinant, I think, but they're definitely the most important. You know, we hear, you know, you hear things over and over. You have I have my whole career, you know, supervisors are the keepers of the culture.

00:06:33:2 - 00:06:58:3
Unknown
Or as the supervisors go, so goes the child welfare system. And like you're saying, you know, people leave their supervisors, they don't leave the job. And I'm sure you know, it's not it's not that clear cut. But I don't think it's entirely untrue either. And what we do know from research is that supervisors influence employee turnover more than any other factor.

00:06:58:4 - 00:07:23:6
Unknown
So if you want to impact and have some kind of impact on retention, you have to focus on the role of the supervisor. So I'm a supervisor. I'm a manager, I'm a leader of some kind. I want the culture to be right in my organization. Do I give a speech? Do we do we print T-shirts? Do we have those motivational posters?

00:07:23:7 - 00:07:53:5
Unknown
I mean, that all seems like good stuff. Does that do the trick? What actually works? Yeah, that's all beautiful stuff. And, you know, we should go ahead and put things on the wall and, speeches, our speeches. And here's how I see the candle. how well, supervisors do their job affects every outcome in the system. And so, yes, you can you can be the leader of an organization and say, for example, here's how we want to work with families and have a beautiful speech.

00:07:53:6 - 00:08:13:2
Unknown
Bring everybody into an all staff meeting and say, here's how we're going to work with families. And then you can have beautiful posters on the wall around the office and that's not how caseworkers are going to work with families because of that speech or because of the posters in the hallway. I mean, just imagine, you know, this is how this is how it works.

00:08:13:2 - 00:08:44:0
Unknown
Kendall. when that young caseworker has a question about exactly how to work with a particular family, he or she goes to their supervisor. Yeah, that's where practice is created. That's where practice is supported. What they hear from their supervisor. and even more importantly than that, Kendall supervisors create the culture on their team. And then the collective culture of the organization is made up of what the culture of individual teams look like.

00:08:44:1 - 00:09:07:1
Unknown
And so that again, is just reinforces and reinforces. And if you are a supervisor, I think you already know this. Your role is as critical as it can be. So it's football season. So I'm thinking that what you're saying is the offense has a culture. The defense has a bit of a culture. The special teams unit has a culture.

00:09:07:2 - 00:09:29:3
Unknown
But together that all comes to a larger thing. That's that organizational culture. Yeah, exactly. And we got it. But and let me define some terms too, because culture is is thrown out in different ways. It's it's lovely. I think we like talking about it then because it's so vague. It can mean all kinds of things. Right. You're exactly right.

00:09:29:3 - 00:09:53:0
Unknown
Also here sometimes organizational climate. Yeah. There's there's a great one like it rains. What am I supposed to do about that in this organization. Yeah. Talk to us about those. It is it is broken down that way. And let me just do define some terms for you. Organizational culture is the shared behavioral expectations and norms in a work environment.

00:09:53:1 - 00:10:15:6
Unknown
And I mean simply it's the way work is done here. That's the that's the culture. Yeah. And I like to think about it when I talk to organizations about their culture, I just ask questions like, so what do you talk about here? Do you talk about successes and failures? You know, everybody talks about failures. Everybody has, you know, meetings about when mistakes happen.

00:10:15:6 - 00:10:43:7
Unknown
So we don't do those again. And that's fine. But do we ever talk about successes. Awesome. So if you do that's part of your culture. can I ask for help? We're gonna talk about psychological safety in a minute, because that's such a huge component of the culture of a team and an organization, you know, can I ask for help in this organization or some people that, you're supposed to do the you're supposed to know your job, you're supposed to do your job, and I've got my own things to worry about.

00:10:43:7 - 00:11:07:5
Unknown
So no, no, you can't ask for help on this team. So that's culture. And then organizational climate is how is the staff perceptions of the impact of the work on the individual. So basically how does it feel to work here. All right. It's really feeling level you know. And you've heard you know you talk to people in teams and they go oh my God.

00:11:07:6 - 00:11:33:0
Unknown
My my team is so supportive. Yeah. Oh God. It's just so stressful to work here or this is a place that just doesn't fun is not allowed. If you know, if you're laughing, people are going to come and talk to you about, you know, you might not have enough to do or you're in a job. Seriously. So, so the way I've seen it over the, over the years, Kendall, is that climate and culture?

00:11:33:1 - 00:11:53:0
Unknown
you can pick them apart if you want to, and I just don't think it's worth the time to do that. And so I just most people are used to the term culture, you know, what's what's it feel like to work here. So that's my definition of culture. It simply combines the two how we do things here and how it feels to work here.

00:11:53:1 - 00:12:14:5
Unknown
And both of those things create the culture. And with the culture. What I'm hearing you're saying too, it's people learn from what we do, not just what we say always. So we might say in our big staff meetings, this is the kind of organization where we support each other and we can always ask each other for help and all of that.

00:12:14:6 - 00:12:36:0
Unknown
But then if you go to your supervisor and you get reprimanded for not knowing the answer to the question you just asked, well, that's the real culture, right? Then I'm thinking I have to share. I did a training once. You're making me think of two supervisors who are in a training once. And as the day went on, Dan boy were they good.

00:12:36:0 - 00:12:54:4
Unknown
They were just so good, I could tell you would be lucky as a new caseworker to have either of those two women as your first supervisor, and they had both done that role for 20 years plus. And so I went up to him on an afternoon break. Then and I said, you two have obviously got a handle on this work.

00:12:54:5 - 00:13:13:9
Unknown
What do people need to know? What are we not telling them? And just tell me and know tell them. And here's what they said. They didn't have to think about it in. They said, tell everybody it's okay to ask for help. It's okay not to know everything. They said, we get cases after all these years where we've never seen that before.

00:13:14:0 - 00:13:38:3
Unknown
We go find somebody who has. But I strongly suspect in that. Those two supervisors don't just talk that way. I bet they actually work that way. And if you work for them, you'd have that value of humility and knowing it's okay not to know the answer to every family's problem. That's a perfect example of how we do things here.

00:13:38:3 - 00:14:09:3
Unknown
It's okay to ask for help here. I'm working with an organization right now that, like you're saying, the words are one thing and actions are another, where they say, we really care about resilience. We really, really do. And it's well known in the organization that hardly anybody uses all their vacation time. The supervisors don't do it, and therefore, you know, the direct direct service staff don't feel like they can do that.

00:14:09:4 - 00:14:33:7
Unknown
and so words, actions. Right. The differences. Yeah. In Denver and Kendall, I got to tell you this story, about the climate, how it feels to work here. This is my first really, really clear picture of what that meant. You know how it feels to work here. I was brought in to work with this, organization, a pretty, pretty large organization.

00:14:33:7 - 00:14:51:5
Unknown
And I was coming to my first meeting to meet with the leadership team and this big building I'd never been in before. And so I, you know, they sent somebody down to meet me in the lobby, and they're taking me up to where we're going to meet up in one of the top floors and going down the hallways, and finally get to an elevator in the back.

00:14:51:5 - 00:15:11:9
Unknown
You know, kind of the back room kind of place. And so the elevator opens and we start to get on it. And you know me, Kendall, I there's somebody on the elevator, you know, nice gentlemen. And I say, hey, good morning. You start them up. How are you doing? And he looked at me and he said, I guess you don't work here, do you?

00:15:12:0 - 00:15:35:2
Unknown
and I thought, Holy. Okay. I said, that's up. That's that's real good information about what it feels like to work here. Yeah. You're talking to people in a nice way. If you're smiling. If you're laughing. yeah. We don't do that here. It's not. It's not though. How do you help folks do that with be? Well, do well, stay a while.

00:15:35:3 - 00:16:10:9
Unknown
How are you working with these supervisors and folks? by their practices? What do you help them do? Yeah, well, there's two. What we do is training for first at the supervisor level. Just a day long training for them, specifically and then and and then monthly coaching after that is part of the implementation. with that group and the two things that we focus on in the training day are, you know, the first thing is how those five practices that we've been talking about and that that you hope the individuals are putting into practice, including the supervisors.

00:16:11:0 - 00:16:33:7
Unknown
But what we do is we encourage and look at ways that the supervisor can integrate those practices into the work day just easily connect the those practices, to the work as it goes, as they go through their day. So gratitude in your work day exercise in your work day. Yeah. There's I mean there's a simple one. There's a simple one for exercise.

00:16:33:8 - 00:16:59:1
Unknown
If you're if you're a supervisor, you are going to have supervision with your caseworkers weekly. You know, every other week, whatever it is. And so you just make a decision to yeah, we are going to have supervision and we're going to do it while we're walking around the building outside. and so I mean, number one, there's, there's you're, you're 15 minutes, 30 minutes of exercise that you, you hope to have in a day.

00:16:59:3 - 00:17:16:2
Unknown
They're done before you ever go home. And then the other thing is, you know, you're going to think better. You're going to problem solve better. Your brain works better if you're walking around than if you're just sitting across a desk from somebody else and all the other employees working there that day are going to see you doing that.

00:17:16:3 - 00:17:41:3
Unknown
Yeah. They say, oh, it's okay. It's even cool for us to walk together and be together when we're work and stuff through. It works better. It just works better. So the idea is that how you can incorporate it at work are simple. You know, for the mindfulness practice, for example, there's a lot of teams that just start each meeting that they have with just a minute of real deep breathing to kind of get centered in that space.

00:17:41:4 - 00:18:06:9
Unknown
or here's what I highly recommend to people and try to try to get to happen in organizations of where you, instead of one hour meetings, date them all day long. Every meeting is 15 minutes, not one hour. And so you have that space, if you will, of, you know, just ten minutes. And by the end of the day, if you're one of those people that have meeting after meeting after meeting, you're going to be at a much better place.

00:18:06:9 - 00:18:25:6
Unknown
You're going to do the job better by having a ten minute break than if you go to back to back. I mean, it's common. So common sense, of course, and we think you have to have meetings on the hour. And I just looked it up legally. You don't have to be done. It turns out it's not actually a legal requirement.

00:18:25:7 - 00:18:49:5
Unknown
Yeah. It's pretty simple to get ten minutes to breathe. Right. And so we just we just brainstorm with the supervisors about how these practices can be incorporated into the workday, you know, and gratitude you mentioned before a good example. There is just simply having a weekly check in with your team with the prompt. What is a win that you've had in your work in the last week?

00:18:49:5 - 00:19:12:7
Unknown
And I've seen teams their whole the whole feeling of working on that team shifted just because they were now talking and thinking and looking for a wins that they've had rather than, you know, every conversation being about this isn't working, that isn't working. What can I do? What can I do? and so that's a big that's the number one big focus.

00:19:12:8 - 00:19:39:8
Unknown
Yeah. And then the second focus and it's maybe the hardest thing in organizational work in general in any field is, is, psychological safety. that's and simply what we do with that is the reason we focus on that so much candle is that it's psychological safety is really the foundation for whatever happens or doesn't happen on a team.

00:19:39:9 - 00:20:09:2
Unknown
What is that define that for us. It's like I imagine people walking on eggshells around each other, you know, being careful, not to upset. And I've also, I'll say, I know I've been in workplace situations before where we talk a lot about that, but then if somebody suggests something outside the box that's different than what the leader just suggested, they get shut down right away.

00:20:09:3 - 00:20:40:4
Unknown
Right? And even if it's in polite language, that person has learned not to disagree with the boss. Yeah, most people are able to pick up on it pretty, pretty quickly. What's not okay on a team? Amy Edmondson is a Harvard professor who really came up with this whole concept of psychological safety, and she defines it as a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.

00:20:40:5 - 00:21:01:4
Unknown
and I've seen it. Another definition that I like is it's a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking. But that's that's got to be if we could talk to our well, for for a second, you're making me think that's going to be a huge one in child welfare because what are we doing?

00:21:01:4 - 00:21:35:8
Unknown
We're making safety and risk related decisions every day. Right. And feeling very much out there on our own, afraid to take risks. But everything's a risk. How do we cope with that when. So you can see how it relates to people staying in the job. You know, the number, the number one reason you want to even be thinking about psychological safety is, not only that, it's a foundation for everything that happens on a team or doesn't happen on our team, but psychologically safe.

00:21:35:9 - 00:22:02:1
Unknown
There are people who feel psychologically safe on a team are less likely to quit. there's there's your bottom line. and so if an organization has an interest in keeping people, they better have an interest in psychological safety. And this isn't just about avoiding saying things that are offensive or hurtful. Yeah. You're right. Okay. No it's not.

00:22:02:2 - 00:22:27:3
Unknown
It's psychological. Safety is not. And a lot of people have that kind of impression. It's not about being nice. It's not about being politically correct or coddling people, you know, on your team or absolving yourself or others of, you know, accountability. So we don't hurt anybody's feelings. It's not that way at all. It's creating an atmosphere where we hear and we want to hear, and we have to talk about mistakes and worries.

00:22:27:4 - 00:22:44:0
Unknown
And by the way, successes and everything else. We have to be able to to do that. And like you said earlier, if you have real psychological safety on the team, you're going to have people that come up with ideas that are out of the box, things that we haven't tried before and yet not all of them are going to be, you know, are going to work out.

00:22:44:0 - 00:23:07:0
Unknown
And we have to be able to do that if we're ever going to get better in this field. So have you seen this start to work in some of the projects that you've been working on? Is this, you know, I think as a leader, you're also you're always looking for as much bang for your buck. You know, what can be the kind of most impactful things that we do here?

00:23:07:1 - 00:23:47:5
Unknown
to make this a more resilient culture. Does this work? it does it does work, Kendall. And and it's a process. It takes time. And I it's interesting how you said that, too. I mean, I work with organizations, you know, you know, the work that we do. sometimes you talk to an organization, they go, yeah, yeah, we're excited, but we don't have the money to do everything well, in that scenario and that kind of situation, if you're going to do one thing, it's do something with the supervisors because that role is so critical that everything depends on that, on that role and how they how they manage that position.

00:23:47:6 - 00:24:13:5
Unknown
So that's where I encourage people to start. If they can't do it all, what the supervisors themselves tell you, are we taking people who are already overburdened and putting an additional set of obligations, or does this actually help them do their jobs? Oh, I love that. Kendall. they are under as much stress as anybody else, right? They're under the same kind of, you know, administrative rules and culture that takes place in the organization.

00:24:13:5 - 00:24:37:2
Unknown
And, you know, they're in my mind, I think they have more stress than anybody else. And so what's nice about that, in my mind is, having them understand the five practices, they certainly go through that training, that training day, too. So they really dig in to the five practices and then really recognizing where they can implement them into the work day.

00:24:37:2 - 00:25:00:9
Unknown
And so they're getting the advantages of doing that also. And they have to be seen doing those kind of things so that the workers understand, oh, it's okay. It's okay for me to take a break. It's okay for me to actually eat my lunch and just do that. which is an incredibly hard thing in his field because it's so busy, it's okay for me to breathe.

00:25:00:9 - 00:25:32:6
Unknown
Yes. It's okay for me to go to my supervisor and say, could I take the afternoon off? Boom. Yeah, you don't say that. If you don't have psychological safety, you don't ask that question. Right? Right. Well, how cool. Thank you Dan. So if we've talked then in the previous episode about individual practices again, and I was struck by those of you listening who have not listened to episode two, check that out.

00:25:32:7 - 00:25:52:0
Unknown
Very simple, very achievable things that folks can do as individuals. And it has to be that way. Kendall. they've got people have so much on their plate, you can't ask them to do this big, beautiful thing because you're not able to do it. and so it's not going to happen. So how can we how simple can we make this?

00:25:52:0 - 00:26:20:8
Unknown
How easy can we make this? Go back to that example of walking supervision. You're going to have supervision anyway. Let's take a walk and do it. Yeah. Boom. And then today we've talked about how culture can be built to support the really the resiliency of everybody in the organization and the role of supervisors in all of that. So next time down, shall we focus on leadership?

00:26:20:9 - 00:26:41:5
Unknown
Yeah, let's let's do Kendall because yes they have that's one of the three drivers we you know we have to they have a role to play, a big role to play. and let's delve into that next time we talk. Let's do that. Thank you, Dan Comber, for making each of us look at our organizations as an opportunity to strengthen all of us together.

00:26:41:5 - 00:27:09:7
Unknown
So let's get together next month. They then looking forward to it. Kendall. Thank you. Let's do it. So to our listeners, join us again next month for this series with Dan. Our next conversation will explore how leadership strategies are essential to resiliency. To all of the leaders out there, those who are in those positions now, those who will be in the future, you'll want to hear how you can make a difference now and many years down the line.

00:27:09:8 - 00:27:17:5
Unknown
Join us again next month. We look forward to it. This has been Radio camp.

00:27:17:5 - 00:27:34:1
Unknown
Thank you for listening to Radio Kempe. Stay connected by visiting our website at Kempecenter.org and follow us on social media.