Chapter 1: Developing a Show Me Culture

Mark Brown

May 11, 2023

Culture is about getting everyone to care about getting to the goal for the same reason. When belief in the methodology isn’t shared it can create an environment for differences to sprout and tear the team apart. This isn’t always a bad thing, as differences in opinion are necessary to make sure parts of the plan in direction aren’t being actively overlooked. However, it doesn’t take much to turn differences of opinion into actions that hurt the team through hindering progress towards the goal. We see it all the time on NBA courts all the time. The same thing happens in workplaces across the globe. Cameras just aren’t around to catch the effect the breakdown of culture can have. Today’s essay will focus on the differences between a “tell me” and a “show me” culture. The latter is clearly superior to the other, but the former is far easier to implement. This is especially true when business ramps up in scale. I will go over why a “show me” culture is superior to the other and some of the challenges that exist in bringing it to fruition.

This subject is of particular interest to me for a couple different reasons. Decision making has intrigued me going back to my college days. I find it to be one of the most crucial things we do on a daily basis. It’s the final part of the what I call the “consequence chain.” I will get back that a bit later in the essay. Another reason why is because I work at a place with a very clear “tell me” culture while maintaining the focus of the rest of my life doing something that ideally has a “show me” culture. I can’t emphasize enough how crazy the first one makes me. Sometimes crazy angry. Other times utter disbelief. The gym has always been a place where there’s no room for bullshitting anyone with boasts of lifting prowess because they can just say “Okay, show me.” The Internet has made it more possible for the gym to develop the “tell me” culture that doesn’t help anyone. The distance and lack of in-person connection helps people using the gym to make themselves wealthier without giving much in the way back. As upset as that could make me, the idea of me caring about stranger’s lifts rings really stupid in my head.

The major reason why a “show me” culture is better than a tell me culture is that it actually demonstrates what someone’s, whether that’s a person, a company or a non-work group, values are. Values are what a culture is based on and being true to them is what helps the group believe both the goal and the methodology. However, they are ultimately just words with meanings found in dictionaries. Not exactly the right place to find definitions. What really informs people of what those words mean is actions taken in association with those words. It’s the proof of concept that is necessary for buy in. That is what creates a team atmosphere from a group of individuals and helps develop team discipline. Everyday progress is made when individual discipline becomes the external and internal structure of the team. That’s when the team is most productive. Individuals on the team have a positive mindset without needing to resort to an overly negative state of mind. That is the recipe for creating a motivation level that doesn’t drain the individual’s mental, physical and emotional energy.

None of this occurs if a coach, boss, or company ever shows what their values actually mean in a tangible way. That takes decision making up another level in importance. The vast majority of the time decision making points towards some kind of action. The decisions that get made have consequences that have to be dealt with regardless whether they were intended to have happened or not. “Unintended consequences” is one of the phrases I laugh at the most because it’s what people say when a decision they made screwed someone over in a way that wasn’t foreseen and threatens the relationship. When a decision gets made consequences follow that create new circumstances for everyone impacted by it. Those circumstances create situations that need to be resolved by another decision. The process repeats itself in an endless loop as a result. I call this the “consequence cycle.” It is also how we can link multiple seemingly unrelated events together to better understand the commonalities of them and move towards progress.

The polar opposite nature of cultures in the two dominant things in my life makes me hyperaware of elements within them. The culture of the gym dominates my value system so I use it to overcome shortcomings I see from the culture at work. Both have value in my life, but only one has it every level. It explains why there is so much visible, visceral reaction at work to events that are linked to the “tell me” culture that I despise so much. The main reason is because the culture of the gym is truth and the culture of work is lies. What’s puzzling is that both culture’s are trying to attain the same thing: Work done and at an increased level over time. Perseverance is necessary to overcome the the inevitable wavering motivation to get done what needs done, regardless of circumstances. The lies of a tell me culture are told in a way to smooth the edges of truths that are uncomfortable to those whose literal job is to maintain team morale. It’s that false positivity that drives me up a wall. That kind of positivity doesn’t get anyone progress in a gym so it cannot be allowed to exist. Some may disagree with that sentiment and that’s fine, but it’s still building a house of lies.

The mental struggle with “tell me” culture comes from the feeling that comes from one side failing to either live up to their word or overpromising and still requiring the same level of effort. Both of these result in trust being broken between the 2 sides. Only through intense discipline can the broken trust be overcome within an individual. The price paid by the person who can get over feeling used will be paid by both the used and the users. In the setting of a workplace, this is likely to end very poorly. Property damage, lawsuits, underperformance, quitting and general ill will towards each other are just a few consequences of those companies that choose to employ a “tell me” culture. People can dip into a “pissed off rattlesnake” state mind to create a high level of motivation but it is expensive, so to speak, and has a short half-life. They can only dip into the pool of emotional energy to create positivity for so long before the water in it becomes toxic to themselves, co-workers and the company itself.

The bar has always been an analogy for a standard of excellence. That is part of why the 2 cultures that I deal with are so clear to me. I stated before that in the gym the bar doesn’t give a damn about how bad my day was, only that I can lift it and whatever is connected to it. It’s not an imaginary line in the sky, sand or whatever. It’s something I can touch, push, pull, curl, squat, jerk, press, and snatch. It’s REAL. It takes REAL effort to move it. This is what holds my attention and creates my need to continue get better in the prep, planning and lifting phases of strength training. It’s why no matter how long work is or hard it is, I will never let it win over my desire to train. The “tell me” culture tells me what needs to be done to meet the standard of excellence but there’s nothing to touch, see or feel. It’s an imaginary standard created by people whose perception of what the bar represents is in a constant state of change. That’s why those purveyors of “tell me” cultures can only tell people what their values are. I understand budgets. I apply that term to everything I do. When words are the only thing to sell people, their value doesn’t hold up unless adequate actions are taken to back them up.

I just used a word that makes developing a “show me” culture extremely challenging to create: Budget. It’s a word that is mostly associated with financial expenses but is applicable to everything because limitless isn’t actually possible. A budget is why one will never get more than what they put into anything. Everything has a price. Sometimes those prices have dollar signs and others they don’t. Businesses rely on their workers to put in more effort than they are monetarily paid for to really hit a period of financial success. I know this because the New England Patriots of the NFL showed that players outproducing the monetary value of their contract is ultimately the biggest reason for success in professional football over the last 23 years. Companies use non-monetary methods to show how much they value their employees to help make this happen. The challenge for any perspective company that does this is that any non-monetary method of compensation has to at least come close to matching the dollar value they would otherwise have to use. Showing people how much they are valued in money becomes harder when there are more of them to show. The result is the development of a “tell me” culture. They are much easier to maintain because they only require words with minimal action. The budget for that is pretty forgiving.

The cut throat nature of business is only really matched by the nature of survival. Most large scale businesses or corporations operate in world where survival is always a high leverage situation. Survival hangs on the edge of a knife. As a result, they need the people who work for them to go hard as they can for as long as they can. Sometimes that means pushing them harder than the employees would like. There are a few ways to alleviate the stress. First, compensate better monetarily. Second, offer alternative forms of compensation. Typically, this is done by offering insurance, 401K, etc. A third option exists that doesn’t really alleviate stress but does push leverage in the businesses direction. It’s letting worker’s common circumstances of every day life be the thing keeps everybody coming back. “Everybody’s got bills” is how it was relayed to me. The phrasing isn’t wrong, but one never comes off as anything less than a dick saying it that way. Survival is a truly unique motivation because it’s so stark. Doing “whatever it takes” to accomplish a stated goal is a phrase that is often misused because a person’s moral code gets in the way of their actually doing whatever it takes to get it done. People in positions of power and authority within the large scale companies and corporations are able to not let something like a moral code get in the way of progress because they may be far enough removed from the situation to avoid having to deal with employees in person. a survival situation is much easier to handle when one doesn’t have to look their opponent in the eye when they dispatch them.

The stress created by survival trickles down from the top levels of authority all the way down to the level of the people who actually construct the thing being sold and/or service rendered. Everybody feels it but not in the same way. People have to maintain their value to the company by at least matching the company’s monetary compensation to them. Thus, those with higher salaries tend to experience a different kind of stress than those who make less. In some ways it makes them more expendable because the ground under their feet isn’t exactly stable all the time. In my experience, this has led many of those in positions of authority to create higher levels of stress than existed before on those under them to ensure the success of their vision. A “show me” culture would help the group shoulder the weight of the increased stress instead of getting buried by it. The best and easiest way a company shows how much they value their employees is by increasing monetary compensation. It’s when a company actively tries to avoid this methodology that the weight of increased stress begins to bury people. A fairly compensated worker is one that likely stays the extra 10 minutes to ensure the job gets done instead of one that stops 20 minutes early, bullshits on the clock, and lets someone else handle the rest. Showing people their value is an activity that the people in higher levels of authority need to take seriously. When people start to feel used, they become users themselves and take some of the compensation they feel they deserve to make up for it not being given to them. No amount of telling someone how valuable they are is useful once this occurs. Trust has been broken.