It’s your people who are the heart of your business.

They make the difference between success and failure. Low commitment, mistakes, rivalry, conflicts, resource draining projects, unhappy customers, turnover, sick leave, new hiring and training are a continuous challenge. Poor people management is a serious danger to continuity and profitability. It’s like driving with the handbrake on. What do you do to keep the heart of your company or team strong and vibrant?

A health check for businesses

Let’s check out a Fast Track to a culture of high performance, engagement and ownership mentality. A culture where igniting leaders and with them enthousiastic employees unleash the full potential of the entire organization. Resulting in ample time, a great team and abundant money success.

The combination of our extensive business and human capital background lead us to develop the Triple S Method, an effective tool to both diagnose the quality of relationships and performance in your organization and to improve them substantially and continuously. Triple S is the proven approach of working with over 2000 companies all around the world and thereby learning how human beings function at their best.

Triple S focuses on our deepest human needs when living and working together, behind our noticeable behavior. When we fulfill these basic needs it brings out the very best in us. Triple S is about feeling SAFE, SEEN and SUPPORTED, the pillars of every winning culture and high performance.

We invite you to define what Triple S means for you and your organization. Here are some important benefits and features to look for:

• SAFE: a feeling of truly belonging, being an important part of the organization.

First of all physical and basic financial security is essential for all of us to feel protected. Trust is a key feature in safe teams and is built on experiences of fairness, reliability and credibility. People feel invited to contribute, share their ideas and creativity, dare to think out of the box and ask pertinent questions. They are willing to signal when things go wrong and feel comfortable to admit mistakes and learn from them collectively. SAFE in a team stimulates commitment and loyalty with the company. In a safe organization people are actively engaged with the mission and get energized by the collective purpose.

• SEEN: about mutual respect, recognition and validation.

Team members give each other well-balanced feedback on a regular basis. They make it a habit to recognize successes publicly, show appreciation and express gratitude. A Triple S team excels in supporting talents and constructively deals with shortcomings. A culture of SEEN promotes clear and open communication and is able to repair conflicts smoothly and effectively for the sake of the whole organization and its desired results.

• SUPPORTED: feeling supported when receiving practical assistance in challenging times. Support also means getting inspired and trained to grow to the next level of professionalism and personal development. A supportive team creates a culture where helping each other is natural and asking for help is encouraged. The benefits of SUPPORT come from the fact that excellent cooperation makes optimal use of the collective knowledge, experience and expertise of everybody.

Creating constructive behavior in organizations

These needs are there – in every interaction between people in organizations, with customers and other stakeholders. Very often they are hidden and in disguise: They show themselves in irritations, complaints, bothers and accusations. Not very constructive, this behavior may cause a lot of negativity in the organization and is possibly a major cost factor. To move from negative behavior to constructive behavior in organizations (and also in our private lives) we created a three stage rocket in order to transform our mutter into a ‘Dismay of Today’, a form of complaint that points towards what is usually left unspoken: the actual need. From there we can move toward the ‘Request of Today’ in which we directly ask for what we need. Even if this request is not answered in the preferred way, you have voiced and honored your needs and your irritation will diminish a bit as a result of that. Just think of an organization that acts with Triple S-wisdom: Your ‘Dismay of Today’ and ‘Request of Today’ will be adhered to and the level of service for clients and the level of job satisfaction for the staff will raise as a direct result. You will feel Seen, Supported and Safe when connected to that organization. With Triple S all our organizations can become future-proof, taking care of the needs of all stakeholders and performing over and beyond expectations.

 Taking care

It’s us, people who make or break an organization. ‘Taking care’ of employees in order to let them become the best they can be is a necessity for the continuation of an organization in disruptive times. Triple S principles show clearly how to do this. The best performance will be coming from people feeling safe, free, trustful, seen, appreciated and supported. Positive emotions such as a sense of connection, gratefulness, trust, understanding etc. create an atmosphere that attracts more ‘can do’ idea’s. These ideas give us wings and open us up to flexibility, innovative thinking, being engaged and identified with the whole organization. The organization always receives what it invests: If you care for your people they will care for the customers and for you. They will care for the success and the development of the organization now and in the years to come. Just like Richard Branson stated:

“Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Four steps to start making your organization Triple S-proof

• Define what Safe, Seen and Supported very concretely means to you and ask your people to do the same in their working environment. This will give you and them a clear insight in the current state of your organization’s cultural health.
• Make the identified Triple S topics measurable and give them scores on a scale of one (really bad) to ten (excellent).
• Set very clear new score goals for these topics to achieve in the near future.
• Make an action plan for what needs to Stop, Continue and Start to accomplish these Triple S goals.

DO try this at home 

We encourage you to also take a closer look what giving and receiving ‘Safe, Seen and Supported’ means to you and your dear ones in your precious private life. Please put your Triple S glasses on and make Triple S Health Checks and Action Plans together with them for the very best results at home.

Invest time and energy in your Triple S way of working and living. You and all the people around you will surely be rewarded with the happiness, success and significance you desire and deserve!