Leadership and culture

What this means

Culture in organisations is led by, or at least heavily influenced by, the leadership in that organisation. A blame culture creates so much defensiveness and waste, whereas a culture of openness and trust generates goodwill, listening, and respect – and can lead to better use of resources, because people’s ideas are listened to, and there’s buy-in for collective improvement.

The point of action has to be much higher than individual social work level.

Why is leadership and culture so important?

In this video, Laura Collins talks about the importance of leadership and culture are key to ensuring that resources are 'better used':

The research

Culture in an organisation can be defined as a set of shared, taken-for-granted implicit assumptions that members of that organisation hold – and which determines how people perceive, think about, and react to things (Schein, 1992). As a group member put it, it can mean:…the way we do things around here.

Culture reflects what an organisation values – quality, safety, productivity, survival, power, secrecy, justice, humanity, and so on (West et al., 2014). The Department of Health and Social Care (2019) acknowledges that ‘organisational culture is defined by how people inside the organisation interact with each other and with people outside the organisation’. While efforts to reflect on and consciously address social care’s workplace culture have arguably increased in recent years – for example, in explicitly moving towards an anti-racist culture in social work – the More Resources, Better Used group still felt there was some way to go in explicitly reflecting on workplace cultures in social care more generally.

While everyone in an organisation contributes to culture, the most important determinant of culture is current and future leadership (Schneider & Barbera, 2014). In adult social care, this leadership may include fostering cultures that promote compassion, collaboration, resilience, anti-racism, and strengths-based working.

Taking strengths-based working culture, for example, one of the barriers identified to this approach in practice is a lack of acknowledgement that it represents a cultural shift rather than simply adopting new practices. That it involves co-production with individual people, families and communities, where flexibility and creativity are valued rather than rigid adherence to systems and procedures (Ford, 2019). That it starts with a different conversation (Romeo, 2017), rather than starting with a different method or process, is significant and relates to a culture of belief in relationship-based practice.

What you can do

If you are a senior leader: The More Resources, Better Used group encourages you to reflect on the culture in your workforce. What words would you use to describe it?

A listening culture, embedded throughout an organisation, was considered as one of the most empowering cultures a senior leadership could develop. Listening to citizens, listening to practitioners, listening to teams; all of this empowers people to bring their ideas to the table which, as discussed elsewhere, is fundamental to identifying issues and working towards solutions. Embedding regular (rather than one-off) listening sessions with you and your senior colleagues – where people can bring any ideas and speak freely about issues and positives people see in the organisation – can begin to support a listening culture.

What work is undertaken on bias and stereotyping. How are these issues reflected on, and addressed in your organisation? How are ‘difficult conversations’ approached, and how is power considered?

A simple but effective exercise highlighted by the More Resources, Better Used group is “Help/Hinder.” This involves thinking about the culture change you want to see, what helps and hinders getting there – and, finally, how you can tackle this.

Further information

Explore

Research in Practice has a comprehensive collection of leadership resources.

Read

The Social Care Institute for Excellence has a briefing on strength-based leadership, including material on leading culture change.

Skills for Care has a guide on creating a positive workplace culture in social care.