Organizational Silos: Breaking Down Barriers to Cultural Unity

Barriers to Cultural Unity

Silos in organizations can represent significant barriers to cultural unity. Culture enables an organization to communicate and maintain the values it fosters. When barriers to cultural unity occur, departments fail to share the same values; the same ideals and principles are not communicated from one sphere of the organization to the next. Tribalism can result, with each department or unit developing its own in-groups, its own values, and its own culture — creating fear within divisions and an "us vs. them" mentality among workers (McGee-Cooper, 2005, p. 12). Anxiety and doubt about the future of the organization can especially take hold when organizations merge; one side might be more fearful and skeptical with respect to job security or the success of the merger, and some groups brought into the new entity from the old company might be hesitant to abandon their old ways of doing business. The result can be the development of gaps between workers and their leaders.

When gaps open up between leaders and followers, the cultural messages that should be spread cannot get through. Followers are not hearing the message because they have essentially closed themselves off from the rest of the organization and have persisted in their own views. They prevent the formation of worker solidarity and convey hostility in all directions, which can damage morale. If new employees are brought into the organization, they may not be received warmly by older employees who fail to accept or embrace the organizational culture and its values. New employees, on the other hand, find themselves trying to fit into a system based on what they have been told by the HR department or by mentors assisting them through the onboarding process. Older workers might resist the new blood brought into the company, fearing that new hires are a threat who have come to push them out. This feeling can reinforce tribalism and further contribute to the reinforcement of silo walls (McGee-Cooper, 2005).

At the same time, new hires might find that the old ways of thinking they are expected to embrace are outdated and not at all what they expected or were taught in school. Young workers can be just as likely to have a sense of how a culture should operate as older workers. The important point an organization must consider is that it is the organization itself that sets the culture, and it cannot do that so long as silos persist. Therefore, the organization must be careful to include older workers alongside younger workers, get them working together, and engage them in exercises that teach them to appreciate one another. The more that units and departments realize they are part of a whole, the more likely they will be to naturally break down their own silos and contribute to a culture of communication and sharing. To establish cultural unity, management must adopt an integrative approach to leadership.

Leadership and Silo Deconstruction

The leaders of an organization have to be mindful of the risk that silos pose and must be ready to prevent their formation — and to remove them if they do appear. The important point here is that silos are not always visible within units or divisions. Sometimes they exist within the mind, and leaders must be cognizant of this fact so that they can address these kinds of silos as well (Gilmore, 2010).

Silos in the mind can form especially when a change is required in the organization and employees must adapt to new environments, new rules, new methods, or new ideas. To protect themselves and to continue to justify the old ways of doing their work, employees will create a wall in their own minds. That wall blocks out the new and retains the old. It allows the worker to exist within his own frame of mind instead of interacting with the workplace around him. He refuses to make the necessary changes — even though he might at first appear to go along with them. The changes are not taking root, and he is only biding his time until management stops paying attention so that he can return to the old way of doing things.

Leaders have to be cognizant of the way silos can be mentally constructed. If they are going to implement changes and initiate new strategies or processes, they have to watch for mental blocks that act as barriers. They must be able to identify the signs and conduct a risk assessment to determine where potential mental silos might form. These invisible silos can be contagious — like super-spreaders, those who harbor them can infect others, and what starts as a mental silo can quickly become a very real silo in a unit or division that gums up the entire organization.

When it comes to dealing with silos, leadership is crucial because leaders are the source of information, understanding, and example. They have the power to see the whole picture and to know what the end goal is, and they also have the power to communicate that goal and to use logic and reason in presenting information. They have the power to shape a culture and are in a position to make changes.

Silo deconstruction is an important part of what leadership must address because organizations cannot thrive when silos build up — they are the equivalent of congestive heart failure in an organization. The workers are the heart of the organization, but when the arteries become blocked and the heart is forced to pump harder, it becomes overworked and burnout ensues; the entire body begins to break down and eventually reaches a point of no return. Leaders who neglect this issue are ultimately responsible for this outcome. They are the ones who should have been more engaged on the ground, getting to know the mentality of the workers and making sure everyone is on the same page. Even when they are not present, leaders must ensure that they leave behind envoys and diplomats who are aligned with the leader's vision so that they can keep that vision alive among workers who might be harboring mental silos. This is why leaders need allies in the workplace — supporters among workers and followers whom they can enlist to help spread the message, shape the culture, and prevent the formation of silos of all kinds.

Transformational and Empathetic Leadership

When dealing with change, transformational leaders are most often the type of leaders needed. Transformational leaders bring with them the ability to maintain a vision, communicate that vision, use logic and reason to support the need for that vision, and employ empathetic means of getting followers to buy into it. If they do this correctly, they can greatly reduce the risk of silos forming in the organization. The main skill of the transformational leader is communication: the transformational leader has to embody the vision and the change that is wanted in the organization. The leader should personally represent the desired change and demonstrate the cultural values that are to be promoted.

However, empathetic leaders are also needed for transformation to successfully take place. Empathy refers to the act of understanding, and one of the underlying skills required for empathy is emotional intelligence (Fiori & Vesely-Maillefer, 2018). Emotional intelligence is the ability to generate deep feeling and communicate that feeling to others; it is also the ability to read the emotions of others by understanding their body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and other signals. Understanding these emotions allows one with emotional intelligence to empathize more deeply with others and to provide the support and assistance needed to help them overcome challenging situations.

Leaders who seek to transform an organization often need to moderate their insistence upon change with a demonstration of empathy. This means leaders have to recognize that change is often met with resistance and that many workers may hesitate to buy in. If the leader lacks the emotional maturity to realize that hesitancy and resistance are natural, he may take it personally and feel that workers are attacking his integrity by refusing or being slow to adapt. If workers then pick up on his negativity, they can sink further into silos and present serious challenges not only to the changes being implemented but to his leadership and the culture he is trying to establish.

Silos form when there is no attempt to integrate individuals or groups into the whole. During times of transformation, it is especially important that leaders be mindful of this risk. Organizations should in fact routinely be in periods of transformation because unless an organization is growing and developing, it is likely to become static and fall behind. Transformational leaders should thus always be active, using their emotional intelligence skills to connect with workers and develop their followership. Bonding with employees in the workplace is important because it lets workers know that they matter to management. Managers who can show genuine feeling while on the job are more likely to be successful at establishing unity of purpose and vision among workers (Fiori & Vesely-Maillefer, 2018).

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