Culture cannot flourish if individuals do not sustain it. Whether
it’s a beautiful or horrific culture, it does not exist without one individual
after another choosing to support it.
For me, the culture that I want to live and work in is achieved
through what I value most: values like honesty, fairness, and promoting
success for everyone involved in and related to my organisation.
These are among the values that guide me to my purpose, which is
helping people realize their best selves. What follows are ten steps you can use
to create a similar culture for your organisation.
Step 1. Create Stakeholders: It
Begins and Ends with You
If you are recruiting people into an organisation that reflects a
carefully articulated purpose and set of values, you’ve got to begin and end
your day thinking about and acting on those values.
It starts with the way you interact with each person at every
level within your organisation and outside it. Make sure your values and
purpose are known to everyone and that they provide a core framework for daily
operations.
Step 2. Create Stakeholders: It’s
Not Enough to Bring People on Board
It’s not enough for you to bring people on board who share your
values and your purpose. You need to keep these people on board. The real challenge,
however, comes with holding on to the client or the talented employee.
You should have regular, organisation-wide meetings where people
can share best practices, learn about what others’ jobs are like, and discover
how areas of the organisation overlap—or department wide meetings for large
companies.
Remember that you want people who will actively engage with each
other without fear of leadership ego’s getting in the way. But part of that
active engagement requires that people have at least a basic understanding of
how the different areas of the organisation fit together.
Step 3. Promote Accountability:
Freedom, Transparency, and Responsibility
Eleanor Roosevelt said, “With great freedom comes great
responsibility.” When you create the sort of culture that encourages people to
share and challenge ideas, you create a culture in which people feel free to
innovate and be creative. This also means that people are responsible for what
they say and what they do. We all are agents of our actions.
If you are going to create an environment and a culture of trust,
transparency, and honesty, you must live it every day and not just preach it.
You must say the things you believe are true, and you must do the things you
say you will do.
Step 4. Create Dialogue: Listen
Related to the idea that a vibrant culture is one that encourages
people to speak their mind and expects the experience to be beneficial for
everyone involved is the idea that people should take dialogue seriously.
Believe it or not, many people don’t know how to have a conversation that
actually produces good ideas. Lots of times, we don’t listen to each other but
rather simply wait for our chance to get our point across. The point of really
listening is to understand and, more often than not, to take action on what you
hear.
Step 5. Create Dialogue: Confirm
or Correct
Ask the person you’re speaking with to confirm that your
recapitulation of their meaning is accurate, or to correct you. After all, the
ideas you’re trying to get right are theirs, not yours. Yes, the one
communicating has the burden of making him- or herself clear, but you can help
improve the person’s articulation. In addition, since you want people to take
responsibility for what they say and do, you need to know you’ve got it right,
and you need them to know that you care about that.
Step 6. Create Dialogue: Situate
the Conversation
See if you can situate what someone is saying within the
organisation’s established framework of values, and try to find a connection or
some alignment with the organisation’s purpose. Doing so will help keep the
focus on why everyone showed up for work!
Step 7. Create Dialogue: Consider
Assumptions
Every story has to begin somewhere; we have to assume something to
get things going. Similarly, when we engage in dialogue, we make certain
assumptions that are often not explicit. They’re simply the givens we take to
be true for the purpose of starting. Just as you do when you reformulate in
your own words, check with the speaker to see if what you believe they have
assumed is, in fact, what they assume!
As with verbal disputes, it’s often the case that our
disagreements occur because of what is not said. In other words, we don’t state
our assumptions, and we believe we know what others’ assumptions are, but we’re
wrong!
Step 8. Disagreement Does Not
Mean Stalemate: Give Others’ Ideas a Try
If you and someone in your organisation disagree over an idea or a
process but a decision is made to implement it, make sure everyone gives it the
same support they would show if they thought it was the best thing since sliced
bread.
It’s your job to get people on board and excited about the
direction of a program, process, or policy, whether it was your idea or not.
It’s easy to help things fail; it’s a lot harder to see them succeed. Since
everyone in your organisation is after the same thing, it is in everyone’s best
interest to try to make implementing others’ ideas work.
Step 9. Change: Manage It
Change is a scary, scary thing for most people. They don’t know
where they fit in with this change, or if they’ll be left out. It’s important,
therefore, that whenever change is on the horizon, those who are responsible
for deciding to implement it communicate their reasons clearly and thoroughly.
People need to understand the context for change as well as how
change will impact their workload, workflow, planning, and so forth. Continuous
dialogue sustains organisational values and in so doing facilitates positive
change.
Step 10. Values: You’re in the
Relationship Business
Never forget that human interactions are always meaningful at some
level. You’ve probably had interactions that, for some reason, were really
meaningful to others, though you thought them to be rather pedestrian. And the
shoe has likely been on the other foot, too. You can never anticipate what is
going to impact someone else’s life in a really meaningful way, but be aware
that it’s always possible.
If your interactions reflect your values, then you can always be
confident that you have contributed to creating a meaningful culture wherever
you go.
You need more tips? Shearin Group Training Services will help
you. Our leadership programs have been assisting companies in France. With
leaders at different levels have availed of our leadership training programs..
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