Love Changes People, People Change the Culture

Recently a client of mine asked me to do some work in the Bahamas – that was a very easy “yes!” We spent about a week on a small Caribbean island with a population of 1,900 people. The island was a few miles long and just a few hundred feet wide.

One night I walked with some colleagues to the other side of the island because we wanted to watch the sunset. We found the perfect place and then watched as the sun disappeared over the horizon. To be blunt, it wasn’t very impressive. The colors of the sky changed a little, but it was anticlimactic for sure.

We were in no rush to get back to the hotel, so we stayed in that spot for a while and slowly everything started to change. With every minute that passed, the sky began to fill with more color. After 30 minutes everywhere we looked was a deep shade of yellow, orange, red, and purple. It was like a rainbow had been stretched to fill the entire sky. We started to make comments like, “well that was worth the wait” and “I’m glad we stuck around.” At one point I found myself thinking, “this is just like life; you think something is over and have all but given up but if you stick around long enough you get to experience the magic.”

A few years ago I was asked to work with a team. The coaching staff was new, and they were aware that there were some cultural issues that needed to be addressed. On my first visit I met one of their players who raised a lot of red flags. To say she was difficult would be a kind way to put it. On one of my notes next her name I wrote, “I would never have recruited her. I would not have been able to coach her.” She was recruited by the previous coaching staff who had been fired and the new coaching staff was told they were not allowed to cut her. She wasn’t going anywhere, and it was clear that if the culture was going to change, we somehow had to get her to buy in to what we were doing. While I was hopeful, I knew this was going to be a challenge.  

I made a very conscious decision about how to approach her. It was simple: I was going to meet her where she was and love her unconditionally. I knew that was going to be difficult for both of us because it was clear that she had mastered the art of pushing people away, putting up walls, and hurting others before they could hurt her.

Each time I was on campus I made it a priority to spend time with her. My guess was she didn’t have much experience with adults who decided to care for her despite her difficult disposition. Sometimes showing up and loving her came in the form of me just listening, other times it was asking questions that no one else had the courage to ask her, and once in a while the door was briefly open for me to share another perspective. In the course of the year I saw just fleeting moments of growth, nothing significant. I felt good about my approach with her and I was excited for the growth of her teammates, but in many ways she felt like a lost cause.

And then at the start of the next season I began to hear about how much she had changed and how she was a key voice in the new culture of the team. The report from everyone was that she was a completely different person and, as a result, the culture of the team was healthier. Was this change a miracle? No. This is what love does, it changes people. If you want to change the culture start by loving your people.

However, let me be clear: the kind of love I am talking about is rarely comfortable. It encompasses a lot of listening, asking hard questions, sharing perspectives, patience, providing accountability, and holding people to a standard that they might resist. This kind of love requires us to authentically show up and be present for others. And while it is rare in our culture, it is incredibly transformational.

There are many leaders who are not equipped to lead a culture change in this way. They lack the relational skill set that is necessary to connect with others and, as a result, they gravitate to the “fire and hire” approach to create a culture shift. While there are circumstances that merit the firing of someone, a healthy culture only exists when there is a direct investment in people. It takes a commitment and a strong sense of resiliency for a leader to show up for someone without any guarantee that they will get a return on their investment. In order to love your people, you as a leader must have done your own personal development work. You need to be healthy enough to carry a lot of weight in this process. This is not a quick fix and it certainly isn’t easy.

If you choose to change the culture by loving your people you will need to be in it for the long haul. Much like a sunset, you can’t rush the process, and the best part - the change, the magic, the transformation - often arrives long after you think it should, but it is always worth the wait. Your people and your culture are worth it.

Love changes people, people change the culture.

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