Thursday, December 20, 2018

Positive Office Culture – One Baby Step at a Time


By Carol Montavon Bealor, J.D., Director, Cass County Friend of the Court

In 2013, I left behind my law practice to serve as the attorney referee for the Cass County Friend of the Court (FOC). As you can imagine, I was a little nervous to be joining a new team, taking on a quasi-judicial position making important decisions for families and children. I didn’t know that the director of the Cass County FOC would be going on administrative leave on the first day I was on the job as the attorney referee and that I would be appointed as the new director two short months later.

To say I was unprepared for the sheer volume and complexity of information an effective FOC director needs to know would be an understatement. I could never have tackled the many tasks I now face without the support of my boss, who I am proud to call my mentor and my friend, 43rd Circuit Court Chief Judge Susan L. Dobrich.

But the most important support I’ve had has been from my team. I have a team that is dedicated, hardworking, and a joy to work with. We have a diverse set of individuals who come together every day to do our best for the community we serve.

One of the things that became apparent shortly after I became FOC director in 2013 was the need to build our FOC team and to change the office culture that existed at the time I joined the office. My arrival was met with mixed feelings—understandably so. As an outsider, the staff didn’t know if they could trust me and count on me to be the leader the office needed.

It takes time to build trust and to develop common purpose among staff in order to facilitate positive change. You can’t expect it to happen overnight. Instead, you have to build a proper foundation for the big changes.

When I arrived, our office was very divided between financial, enforcement, and legal team members, each headed up by a different supervisor. This created an “us” and “them” mentality in our office. So my supervisors and I brainstormed and came up with the idea of creating what we call our “management team.” Instead of working as a supervisor or director, we would work together as a team to make decisions impacting the office. We realized that we had to present a united front to our team in order to establish credibility with them and convince them that we wanted to create a great place to work where all team members are held accountable in a uniform way.

Our employees initially didn’t know what to think about this new management team. They watched closely to see how we were going to work together as the supervisors and director. Did we mean the things we said about uniform treatment and a positive work atmosphere? Only time would tell.

With the advent of our OnBase imaging system project, we were able to hire a deputy FOC director who also became part of our management team. We held some strategic planning sessions about the things we wanted to accomplish in our office. Eventually our management team grew again to include our attorney referee as a management team member, ex officio (since she does not oversee personnel issues such as discipline, performance reviews, etc.).

During our 2017 management team strategic planning session, we started talking about actively creating a more positive office culture. Our enforcement supervisor sits on the Municipal Employees’ Retirement System (MERS) board and told us how MERS officers had intentionally spent time creating “rules of engagement” to foster a positive office culture within the MERS organization. We liked this idea very much and were excited to think about what we could do to make our office a more positive place to work.

After various brainstorming sessions about how we would roll out a “Positive Office Culture” project, we came up with four words that were important and significant to us relative to creating a positive office culture. We then brainstormed what those words actually meant to us as a management team. We took the four words to our staff and asked them to work in groups and come up with four additional words. 

The work done by our staff was phenomenal! More importantly, individual team members felt invested in moving the office towards a more positive culture after working on this project. Our team bought into the idea that all of us working collectively together could change our office in significant ways. And our team took what started out as a staff meeting “homework assignment” and made the project their own.

Once we identified our eight words and drafted definitions of their significance, we held another strategic planning session for our whole office during a summer picnic at my home to fine-tune the words and definitions.

We then agreed we could live with those words and working definitions, and created laminated posters to hang in the back hallway of our office space. The finished project took my breath away. Seeing the words that our whole team spent time choosing and defining, now memorialized on brightly colored posters, simply makes me feel good. And I think it makes our staff feel good, too. 

The next step in our Positive Office Culture project is a “Praise Project” through which employees can nominate colleagues whose attitudes and actions embody our Positive Office Culture. We will recognize staff members who are nominated at our monthly staff meetings. 

I am so incredibly proud of the work we have done so far, but we are not done yet. In fact, we are just getting started. I wanted to share what our office has accomplished so far because I think it is a good reminder of the change that is possible from teams working together on a common cause. With the time and permission to think about how to make things better, your team might surprise you with their creative ideas.

I can honestly say that when you walk into our office in 2018, you get a different vibe than you did in 2013. You can feel the positivity and joy that we genuinely have working with one another. Some days, you can also feel the frustrations, which is natural when you serve both parties in a case. However, in our office, those frustrations are handled collectively now, and that makes all the difference.

Check out our words and our office culture signs below.


Carol Montavon Bealor, J.D., received her bachelor’s degree in Government and International Studies from the University of Notre Dame and her Juris Doctor degree from Valparaiso University School of Law. She currently serves as 43rd Circuit Court Administrator and Friend of the Court Director.