Fostering a Conscious Culture of Inclusion and Commitment

A conscious culture is one built on shared values, mutual understanding and common purpose. It is a culture where people feel valued as human beings, not just employees. They feel safe to speak their truth, are willing to listen respectfully to others, and can have open and constructive conversations.

As leaders, we have to provide employees with emotional and mental well-being.

• Employees are social beings — we band together in clans, families and tribes and look for signals about how to fit in
• To get their full engagement they need to feel accepted, respected, supported, acknowledged and challenged.

Happy people are more productive and more able to cooperate with others.

What’s the difference between a conscious employee and an unconscious one?

Conscious employees take full responsibility for their own lives rather than blaming their circumstances. They keep their promises and honor their commitments, even when it’s difficult. Unconscious employees do the opposite — they blame external factors for their problems and fail to follow through on commitments.

Conscious Behaviors

Authentic communication — we communicate to understand each other

• Challenge of communication is to the share difficult information with respect that honors your values, deepens your relationship and improves your performance

Impeccable coordination — we are organized and communicate with everyone

• Negligent coordination — making promises without a serious commitment to honor them

Solidarity — At Ditto, there’s this collective commitment and therefor collective actions.

• Which means counting on each other’s words. When people let each other down, performance suffers and trust disappears.

As organizational development expert Edward Schein puts it, “Culture is the result of a complex group learning process that is only partially influenced by leader behavior.” While leaders set the tone, a conscious culture ultimately emerges from the collective values and interactions of the group.

At Ditto PR, our conscious culture is built onshared values like inclusion, respect, community and learning. We foster a sense of belonging where people feel connected to something larger than themselves. We bond together in collaborative relationships where everyone feels valued.

This allows us to make and fulfill impeccable commitments to each other and our clients. Shared values and personal integrity enable the trust and solidarity necessary for a highly cooperative culture. In the words of Simon Sinek, “No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.”