Thrive Global Has First Ever LinkedIn Live AMA With Founder

If you’re not familiar with Thrive Global, the site is dedicated to bring balance into your work, and personal life which in turn helps you thrive. Thrive Global held a live video chat on LinkedIn with founder, Arianna Huffington, who answered questions as they rolled in. We learned a lot from her today, and her advice on how to create a good company culture will definitely pave a smooth road.

“A company’s culture is like a company’s immune system.“ – Arianna Huffington

One piece of advice that she offers is to be direct but compassionate.

As Huffington states, “We breed resentment and it’s much harder to avoid a toxic culture at work” when we don’t talk about our problems with each other. 

She also went into describing how they go about slowly improving the environment of a workplace.

“We believe in micro steps, in small daily steps we can take to do anything.”

She lists 3 microsteps that she takes.

1. How to give feedback.

This goes into the first piece of advice where she explains the importance of compassion when being direct. She mentions later on that, “Whenever you give feedback, offer a solution at the same time. When you offer a solution, it shows that you’re not just attacking someone, you want to help them be better.”

She says that, “if you’re stressed, tired, or upset, postpone giving feedback because inevitably, it’s going to come across as adversary.”

This also goes into her first piece of advice where she explains how not to let a problem build into resentment. She says that,

“if you don’t express, and if you don’t encourage others to express, it’s not just that resentments grow, it’s also that you make it less likely that people will come up with good ideas. They feel less safe, especially if they happen to disagree with their manager or the CEO. Often you’re going to end up with a yes-culture which is the opposite of what you need for a thriving culture that innovates, disrupts, and breaks the norm.”

She says, “We need to acknowledge our mistakes. Take feedback as personal information, not as a personal attack.”

She goes on to explain how as long as there is compassion, it’s actually okay to single out a person for something that was done. She says, “We don’t actually think that it’s problem that what someone did could have been done different or better.” With this, she creates an environment where feedback happens as a conversation.

This form of giving feedback creates a bond with the employees within the company which in turn creates the bond with the company. She says, “It’s a great feeling that we’re all in this together.”

Huffington expresses that no one is born perfect and that’s completely okay. Mistakes are okay because they will happen.

“If you create a culture where people are afraid to make mistakes, you’re going to create a risk-averse culture where no innovation happens.”

Also, be sure to check out Thrive Tried It.