7 Ways to Create an Emotionally Fit Culture
We spend an enormous amount of time at work. Like 90,000 hours worth.
If people are going to work this much in their lifetime, it’s natural to be selective in choosing who they work for. This gave companies an idea: what if we offered people more than just a place to work? What if we covered their meals, took care of their dry cleaning, and even washed their cars for them?
They assumed amazing perks = happy employees = good quality work.
But is this actually true? Can we just give employees beer on tap and trust that’ll motivate them to do their best work?
But is this actually true? Dr. Emily Anhalt had to find the answer. She’s a clinical psychologist, and co-founder of COA, a startup that provides employee mental health benefit services.
Dr. Anhalt did a research study on what makes up an emotionally fit culture. Her findings identified seven key traits.
- Healthy Leadership
- Agency and Trust
- Culture of Play
- Community and Belonging
- Proactive Mindset
- Stability and Integrity
- Communication and Transparency
We’ll break down what each one means and share tactical advice on how you each trait to create an emotionally fit culture in your workplace.
Trait #1: Healthy Leadership
Leaders need to be emotionally healthy themselves to have the abilities to lead an emotionally fit culture.
As the leader, you’re building the ethos of the company. Your emotional baggage and past traumas will seep into the relationships with your team and the business decisions you make without you even realizing it.
Even if you create healthy policies, change won’t happen if the employees don’t see you live out those values.
How do you build better leadership health?
The best thing you can do is find a great therapist or work with an executive coach.
As leaders, we often feel like we’re supposed to do everything on our own. But the truth is, everyone needs support. A therapist can help you understand your patterns, emotions, and relationships. A coach can help you think through difficult leadership decisions.
Dr. Anhalt can’t think of an investment with a higher return than this.
Trait #2: Agency and Trust
Our main job as leaders is to figure out our team needs to do their job well and then set them up for success.
Because guess what? People have different needs.
- Some people need noise and others need time alone.
- Some team members thrive in an office and others do their best work at home.
- Some employees are really good at sharing ideas on the spot. Others may need time to process their ideas before presenting them.
Helping your team know these things about themselves, and fostering a culture where they can get their needs met, is how you get people to perform at their best (and also be the happiest). But this requires a space where people are comfortable to be honest and vulnerable.
How do you build more agency and trust within your team?
When Dr. Anhalt onboards a new team member, she invites them to complete an emotional fitness survey. This short questionnaire uncovers how each person works best so their managers (and teammates) can best support them.
Some questions include:
- Do you like to be praised in public or private?
- Do you prefer feedback that’s direct and blunt? Or more gentle and kind?
- How do you like to be cared for or cheered up during a tough time?
- Do you prefer to be supported closely? Or would you prefer more space and freedom?
- What else do you want us to know about you?
If someone prefers to be supported closely when they work, Dr. Anhalt will match them with a manager who likes to mentor others closely. If someone prefers a little bit of space before checking in during a tough time, Dr. Anhalt would leave them alone for a few days and circle back later with some flowers.
By knowing how our team members like to be supported, we match their love language, making them feel seen and understood. At Dr. Anhalt’s company Coa, everyone on the team has filled this out, including the founders. Anyone can access anyone’s answers, and they’re editable over time because it’s natural for people’s needs to change (which is a great thing).
Trait #3: Culture of Play
Play is the ability to foster a safe space of connection and creativity. Playing in the workplace is hugely undervalued because play isn’t just about games. Dr. Anhalt likes to think of the improv definition of play, which is that when someone approaches you with an idea, you don’t just say “yes.” You respond with “Yes, and…” following your own ideas.
Together, the two of you get somewhere that neither of you could have gotten alone.
But the thing about play is that it can be tough to do. When we play, our guards come down, and that can be scary for people who work really hard to keep their guards up. The good news is that it gets easier over time, especially if leadership shows this is something that’s important in their culture.
How do you build play?
One simple idea is to start your meetings with a quick icebreaker game. This connects people, gets them on the same level, and prepares your team to work more collaboratively.
If you’re interested in a list of icebreaker games, email [email protected]. Dr. Anhalt has curated a bunch of games that are easy and fun to play at work. A lot of them can be done remotely too.
Trait #4: Community and Belonging
People will go to extraordinary lengths to protect a community they feel a part of. That’s the feeling you want for your team.
You want people who feel like they truly belong. A team with high levels of psychological safety has the ideal environment to foster deep and meaningful connections.
How do we build community and belonging?
There are many ways to do this like team offsites or just being kind to each other. But Emily believes one of the most important things we can do is make sure that the community feels safe to people who come from many different perspectives.
This could be through language, making sure your job descriptions aren’t gendered. It could be through imagery, making sure your website represents a diverse group of photos. If you could be through your events, making sure there are vegetarian options at your company outing.
Doing this on our own is tough because you’ll have plenty of blind spots designing changes from one perspective. It’s important to bring in diverse minds to ensure you hear from different points of view.
Trait #5: Proactive Mindset
Preventing issues is simpler than fixing them. Opting for a healthy lifestyle now, with regular gym sessions and nutritious meals, is wiser than dealing with health problems in your 70s.
Similarly, taking a proactive stance at work to prevent issues is crucial. Instead of waiting for problems to arise and then scrambling to resolve them, it’s better to address potential challenges before they become fires you need to put out.
What does a proactive mindset look like in practice?
One thing that Dr. Anhalt recommends is to add policies that prevent burnout. Because burning out is something that’s much easier to prevent than it is to fix.
If you wait until people are already past their limit, it’s too late. They’re exhausted, unable to perform at their best, and might even leave your company in search of an organization that can better support their needs.
Instead, we want to make sure a person never gets to that place of burnout. Here are some simple ways to do this:
- Offer a no questions asked mental health day policy
- Discourage email and Slack on nights and weekends
- Allow work-from-home days
- Encourage people to actually take vacation
- Add “self-care time” into your calendar
Trait #6: Stability and Integrity
When you’re building a company, things are bound to change. The product will change, the team will change, or the entire direction of your startup could change 10 times during your tenure.
That’s expected, but at the same time, stability is important for our mental health. We need consistency in some areas of our life to weather the unexpected storms that are bound to happen.
For example, having a stable core in your team that people can count on can help you endure hard times. Or perhaps your product changes direction but your team’s core values don’t change the type of people you’re bringing on.
How do we create stability in your company?
One powerful way is to create traditions and rituals. Traditions and rituals are actually at the heart of every ongoing culture, and work should be no different.
They strengthen bonds, create reliability, and increase joy. You don’t have to overthink this one. You can try a bunch of traditions and rituals and just see what sticks. People will lean into the ones that they like and they’ll kind of lean away from the ones that don’t go as well.
At Coa, they put a “mission” every Monday like “tell us about a time you overcame a tough challenge in your life and what got you through it.” The team posts their answers on Slack throughout the week and on Friday, everyone votes on which answer impacted them the most.
This practice has helped their team learn so much about each other. Plus this activity lives and breathes their values around transparency and vulnerability.
Another tradition Emily has seen is called Above and Beyond day. Once a month, someone gives a shout out to a colleague who has been extra kind, set a good example, or accomplished an important milestone. That colleague gets a special prize. Then the person who won gets to shout out the next person for the following month. It’s a way to recognize each other and reward hard work.
A simple one anyone can do is celebrate anniversary markers. For every year someone has been at the company, they earn some kind of marker to indicate how long you’ve been around. Maybe it’s a patch on your company jacket or a wooden block that you keep on your desks.
Emily recommends having someone be the “owner” of these rituals to ignite the initial spark and continue the momentum.
Trait #7: Communication and Transparency
Effective communication is everything for team success. Good communication prevents misunderstandings, solves conflict, and ensures we’re all working cohesively toward the same goal.
A common misconception is that people can’t handle honest and transparent communication. But the reality is, people want the truth, even if it’s tough to hear.
How do you communicate better in your company?
It’s important to create a structure of ongoing feedback. It’s common for companies to wait until someone does something wrong before giving them feedback. But having a structure for feedback gives people transparency into how they’re doing at all times.
This could look like a quarterly conversation (recommended) or an annual review (less frequent, but still good).
Another event that Emily does is Feelings Friday, a space where her team talks about things that have gone really well. Wins, times where they’ve felt supported, and shoutouts for one another.
It’s also an opportunity to share moments where they felt unsupported and share things that didn’t go well. Or sometimes they share personal news like, “I had a tough week because I’m going through some personal stuff. Sorry if I’ve been a bit distant lately.”
These meetings are a chance to catch small problems and prevent them from getting bigger. It also serves a way to genuinely hear what’s going on in each other’s lives.
To sum it all up
We invest a significant portion of our lives in the workplace. While enticing perks may contribute to employee happiness, what matters most is fostering a thriving and emotionally fit culture.
Dr. Anhalt’s research further identifies seven key traits that make up an emotionally fit culture.
- Healthy Leadership
- Agency and Trust
- Culture of Play
- Community and Belonging
- Proactive Mindset
- Stability and Integrity
- Communication and Transparency
By embracing these traits, you can proactively cultivate an environment that radiates psychological safety, which promotes better trust, collaboration, and the well-being of your teams.