Change How You Wash Your Hands and Save Your Culture

Guest Post by Alex Andrews

Ok, yes, the way you literally wash your hands may not be the deciding factor of whether or not your team performs at its best, well, not unless you are the cause of a global pandemic that puts the entire world on lockdown for months. Then ok, maybe washing your hands would save your culture. But when we struggle with owning and navigating the pain of change, it is often the little things that make the biggest difference in creating momentum.

To illustrate this, let’s go back a few years…

In the early 1800’s a physician and scientist, Ignaz Semmelweis, became discouraged when he discovered that in the obstetrical clinic where he worked, the doctors’ wards had upwards of three times the mortality rate of midwives’ wards due to what was known as Childbed Fever. This deadly illness would often kill the labouring mother and even possibly the newborn child. Semmelweis’ research discovered that if healthcare practitioners did just one little thing, they could reduce the mortality rate to less than one-percent. What was that one thing?

Wash their hands! What? Exactly! Just wash your hands.

Ridiculed and tossed out, Semmelweis’ theories contradicted the scientific and medical opinions of his contemporaries. Why? There was a culture that said doctors couldn’t possibly be the cause of these deaths. They’re doctors after all, right? However, just a few years following Semmelweis’ death, Louis Pasteur would go on to further his work and develop what is now known as the Germ Theory. Semmelweis, once called the “saviour of mothers,” recognized how a simple change, how you wash your hands, could make the biggest difference and taking ownership for that change was the first step to having a significant and meaningful impact.

We live in a results-only world. Our cultures encourage status and prominence through measuring the outcomes we attain—increasing our bank accounts, number of bids we win, size of the team we manage, or the number of cars, homes, and things we have—not the seemingly insignificant little actions we make along the way. These results, however, are the bi-product of thousands, if not millions of these tiny actions taken over a sustained period of time. Your effectiveness as a leader to influence and drive change has much less to do with what you achieve while managing a team, but much more to do with the little things you do daily that influence the culture around you and how others show up. And that is the key to leadership, specifically leading and navigating change.

You see, you can be a toxic tyrant leader, and still see incredible financial results; but at what cost? You can be complacent and still meet deadlines; but at what cost? You can show up, never connect with me and just demand compliance and still meet your targets; but at what cost? The way you show up and lead will cause your team to either show up slow and sloppy, shut off from the world, or as the greatest expression of themselves. Your job is to understand what elements of your environment you can control, and intentionally influence those daily. Ultimately, you are a walking billboard of what success looks like, so you need a framework to help show up as your best self. This Framework is called Epigenetics.

Epigenetics

Epigenetics is the study of traits resulting from external, rather than genetic influences. Or, each one of us is born with a certain blueprint—DNA—and that blueprint can manifest itself very differently depending on external factors. Previously, it was thought that your DNA shaped your destiny, but the study of Epigenetics tells us that our environment is just as important in shaping who or what we become. We can have the best genetic makeup but having a sedentary lifestyle can vastly change how those genes are expressed. Our intentions are one thing, but they show up as something else based on the inputs we introduce into our environment.

We have all seen this play out before, maybe we have even been in this situation; you bring in a rainmaker, someone who has a proven success record, but if you put them in the wrong situation with misinformation, no resources or the proper context, they flounder. Or conversely, you take a gamble and hire someone who doesn’t seem to have the right resume, DNA, but they come in and excel. Your team is the same and it is your job to make sure they show up as a greater expression of themselves, not slow and sloppy. Epigenetics is the critical leadership lens.

So, where do you start? You begin by owning the fact that you influence the way your team shows up through the culture you create. And that culture starts with you. This is the only productive place to stand; in good times or during turbulent change, you need to own the way you show up if you ever hope to influence others the right way.

This skin-coloured petri-dish is the launch point and in our Level 52 programs we delve into your mindset and dissect what inputs impact how you show up. So ask, why, in some situations, do I show up curious, compassionate and empathetic and in others I show up short-tempered and just want to get things done? What was different with each situation and what can I control? And possibly more important is, what is the impact?

Start by looking a what inputs affect your ability to be the best expression of yourself? How does sleep, diet, mindset, health, friendships, lifestyles, etc., affect your behaviour.

Your mindset informs the way you show up. Consider how you may show up if you are exhausted due to lack of sleep from being up with a child all night. Compare that to the exhaustion of no sleep from being up with a loved one all night. Both produce different neurochemicals based on our perception of what is causing the exhaustion. One can produce the stress hormone cortisol, while the other eustress. One will release inflammatory agents and cortisol, and the other oxytocin and dopamine. How you perceive the world impacts how you engage with it and ultimately change it. This is the beginning to owning and navigating change.