The Challenge & Care Framework for Better Leadership & Culture | Leadership Coach Joanna Howes

0:00Joanna Howes:Are you suffering because your company culture is too nice? This is the most common conversation I'm having at the moment with leaders is it's lovely where we work, but it's way too nice. It's really damaging the company and the work and the performance and everything. We've kind of lost the art to be able to have these difficult conversations. So what I want to do is take you through a framework, the care and challenge framework, so you can just get awareness of where's your culture sitting right now so you can think about what you want to do next. So this framework has got four parts. Now, in the first part, we've got the apathy zone.

0:32Joanna Howes:The apathy zone is when you have low care and you have low challenge. So people are just disengaged. The term, you know, quiet quitting. The ambition's kind of gone. It's all just a bit meh because there's not enough care coming through and there's not enough challenge coming through. The second one, which I would say is the one I see the most, is the comfort zone. So there's really high care. Like you couldn't ask or feel to be looked after enough. nurtured enough, your issues are being looked after. It's just lovely, lovely, lovely, lovely people. But the challenge is really, really low. So little niggles and annoyances and stuff aren't being aired and they're just seeping under the surface and everyone's just in their comfort zone.

1:16Joanna Howes:So what this means is that your company standards are slipping and you're doing kindness, but people don't have clarity. The number one thing people ask me for when I go into a company is we just need more clarity. And that is because you're just all sitting in your comfort zone a bit too much. Also in comfort zone, you're just avoiding tension. You're just looking after everybody's feelings versus what's doing right for the individuals, the team and the business. The third one we have though is the fear zone. This is when you've got really, really high challenge but very low care. This is where it's a really tough environment.

1:52Joanna Howes:There's lots of pressure. The relationships are not very strong. Trust is potentially really low as well. Everybody is out for themselves. And this is where you could find an environment where you've got a lot of burnout and it just feels horrendous to be in this environment. I was in it once and even I would walk around this company and just see people crying and it was just kind of normalized. It was, it blew my absolute mind. But that's the fear zone. Now, the one you want to be in is the courage zone. That's where you have high challenge, but it's complemented because you have high care. This is where you can have really compassionate, candid feedback.

2:30Joanna Howes:High performance is clear on what does that actually mean. So many in the other zones, especially the fear zone, you can see people think high performance is just achievement. Do, do, do, get this done. That's not right. High performance is when you can achieve, but you feel well. You're sleeping well. You're looking after yourself. You're making clear decisions. That's what true high performance is. So what we want is to help people and your company to move into a courage zone. Also in the courage zone, that is where there sits a lot of accountability. And again, another common pattern is people just don't know how to hold other people accountable.

3:09Joanna Howes:Again, it comes from this fear of being not liked or accountability being seen as too aggressive or too assertive. People just don't seem to be comfortable doing it, which again moves them back into the comfort zone or they do it completely wrong and they end up in the fear zone. So this courage zone is being able to have the balance of care and challenge. And to help you do this, it's really important that you learn how to do compassionate feedback. You can't have a courage zone without being able to give and receive feedback to each other. And that takes understanding human behavior. I would also start first of all is look at your leadership team.

3:46Joanna Howes:What zone are you in? How are you talking to each other? Where's your care? Where's your challenge? Have you slipped into one or the other? And how do you get it to be more even? So that's where I would start is focusing on investment on giving and receiving feedback and starting to look at first how you operate as a leadership team. But the big thing is just recognizing what zone are you sitting in right now? Because that zone will be the reason why you're getting the results you currently are. I hope that helps. See you soon. If you've been enjoying the Courageous Leaders podcast, we'd love it if you'd subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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