I Left For Better Vibes

A few months ago, one of my clients showed me a Glassdoor review of their company.

It was five stars, and the reviewer wrote, “The people here actually seemed to care about each other.”

That was the whole review. Ten words.

The leader who showed it to me was proud of those ten words. Probably more proud than anything else they’d accomplished that quarter.

And they should be.
Honestly.

You see, most leaders are wrong about how they define a good workplace. They think it means good pay, strong benefits, maybe a nice office with some natural light. Maybe there’s a plant or two.

Maybe they think a culture deck, a mission statement, and a Christmas party make everybody happy.

And those things matter. Don’t get me wrong.
They matter at least a little bit.

They help get people hired, and they keep people from leaving.

But there’s a difference between keeping people from leaving and making people wanna stay. They’re not the same thing.

I Left For Better Vibes

I had a client. Let’s call her Grace, because I liked that show Will & Grace, and I’m not gonna apologize for that.

Grace oversaw a 30-person team, give or take a person, and she couldn’t figure out why people kept quitting. She lost, I dunno, four people, I think, over a period of five months, which was a lot for her and her team.

People didn’t leave for more money. At least the exit surveys were vague enough that we could rule that out.

But one idea kept showing up, and it was best summarized by one person’s response, which was,

“I left for better vibes.”

Grace kind of chuckled when she told me that.
I didn’t.

Because better vibes is a real thing, and most leaders don’t take it seriously.

The Things That Create Better Vibes

In fact, the things that actually create better vibes are almost never what leaders spend time or money on.

Because it’s not in the benefits package, and it’s not in the office redesign. And it’s definitely not in that annual engagement survey where people answer what they like and what they don’t like, and then wonder why nothing ever changes.

The things that create better vibes at a company are smaller than that, and oftentimes weirder than that. And almost any leader can do them.

It doesn’t matter if you’re at a Fortune 100 or a one-person company. It doesn’t matter whether your team sits together in an office, works fully remote, or anything in between.

There are specific things you can do to build better vibes and reasons why they work.

The Way To Create The Best Vibes

I’ve spent a lot of time in a lot of different companies, and there’s something I’ve noticed about the best workplaces, the best vibes that I’ve ever seen.

It is this: