How to avoid small dick culture?
Just gonna say it. For those with experience creating a team, when you're hiring people and setting up a team, how do you go about avoiding small dick culture? I've been there before and it just let's jealousy and lack of excellence thrive.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s
Create an environment where you have people that want to help others learn, succeed and reach their potential, rather than a culture where people hold each other back or put others down
Culture and tone are set at the top and enforced by the middle imo. So having the right midlevel people that are collaborative, not political, teach/mentor etc. is key.
This is helpful for a large org. But how about a small team ? You still need to soft enforce/encourage certain behaviors and values without becoming a cult.
I have a small team that I've built over time and having this mid level enforcer has really worked well for us.
Banking specific, but that mid level for us is the staffer, and as the bridge between the senior bankers and the junior pool, she's got a very outsize influence on the culture. She's an absolute beast, crushes the self-serving/backstabbing types and really encourages a collaborative, help each other culture. Part of what keeps the juniors happy is her pushing back hard on unreasonable asks and timelines and fostering that kind of collaboration. Seniors are happy because shit gets done, people get trained, juniors are happy and our turnover is basically negligible.
Wanted to add. With how she operates, she's really earned the respect of the pool. They know her to be stern but fair, positive when work is good but also when they get reamed out for something, they know they deserve it.
Accountability and honesty. Nothing passive aggressive
Lol but could you try to be helpful
Lol OK you make me feel bad. Unfortunately I've never been a successful MD so I have no insights.
I tried to set up a startup last summer but it fell apart quite embarassingly for me. I came up with the idea and put together a team of 4+, with each team member having different specialist (technical) skills to build the product we had in mind. My idea was that I'd be the finance/ business/accounting/ outreach guy for obvious reasons - the rest were all CS/ engineering nerds who coded the product
Unfortunately, my team suffered not from small dick energy, but no dick energy. I did most of the heavy lifting and the team didnt share the same enthusiasm. I had called many vendors, suppliers and professionals etc but my team were responding 'thumbs up' to messages and not doing anything. The startup ended by 'dying out' lollll - idk if anyone's business ever even ended like this. The experience I took from this was that I had terrible management skills lol and made poor judgment calls in picking those people - those people are the stereotypical engineering nerds who hole up all day reading manga and anime.
So yea, cant answer the question but there's my cringe story nonetheless.
My plan now is to soullessly blaze along the 2+2+2 path and build smtg only when I'm skilled enough in my own right and have a strong base in things - hopefully similar to how Howard Marks founded Oaktree. He was already a skilled professional and had his own strong philosophies on how money should be managed, and had a bunch of strong co-workers who shared that vision.
Mandate team jelking sessions
I'm gonna start to summarize this every once in a while.
So far, components of good culture discussed are - 1) Will to help each others learn (Collaborative), 2) Will to reach potentials (strive for excellence), 3) Accountability, 4) Honesty.
But these are really "symptoms" of good value system - what are 1st principles that causes those symptoms?
ie) Why are people collaborative? Because they have a common goal/alignment. -> Why do people have a common goal? Because they are under a belief system or their interest happens to line up (usually it's both) -> Why do people have a belief system and interests aligned? Because you've recruited the right team and you've charmed them under a mission.
-> So you really get a sense of mission guaranteed by a payout (in learning, money, and/or a sense of belonging/fun)
ie 2) Striving for excellence -> ... -> Internal and External motivation -> You screen out internal motivation
How do you do that
In general, asking about their achievement and what drove them to achieve.
If it’s like “yeah man I scored that killer buzzer beater” then maybe you ask why they were proud of it, what made it different from other achievements, etc…
It’s not just important to screen out whether they have internal motivation or not but also the nature of their motivation.
If someone answers “because I wanted to impress the chicks bro”. Clearly he has internal motivation but if you’re hiring for a team that’s trying to cure cancer or whatever then maybe it’s not so helpful. If you’re hiring a quant team and you know your quants just want to be around a bunch of other math nerds then maybe you just screen out for want to solve interesting problems.
If the answer is “because I wanted to do it for my girlfriend who was injured who couldn’t play basketball” then you just screened out that this person has intrinsic motivation and that it comes from a sense of compassion.
Or if the answer is that “because I wanted to beat the other team and I couldn’t have imagined anything else” you just screened out that this person is just driven by the game. And then maybe you ask additional questions like “why did you want to beat the other team” and what not to see what fuels their competitiveness.
Have to work on your staffs self esteem, goals, rewards and punishment.
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