Chapter 2

2. Overarching Principles for Creating Culture

In one organization I worked for, the leadership was fractured. Most employees worried about their own individual goals, but they didn’t give much thought to the greater good. Interpersonal relationships weren’t terrible, but they weren’t solid either. Instead of talking through conflicts, employees went directly to managers, missing opportunities to better understand one another and resolve issues. As a result, these conflicts escalated because people felt hurt and hung out to dry. This company operated like many organizations operate: the company was performing well on the outside while inside cohesion and engagement were low. For the most part, team members did what they had to do because they had to do it—nothing more. You might be thinking: if the company is performing well on the outside, does it really matter what’s happening inside? According to Gallup, companies with highly engaged workforces outperformed their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share. It matters. And it matters to the people who come to work every day and their families.3

Armed with this knowledge, I set out to help this particular organization thrive. The following process happened over a long period of time, but it did get us to the finish line. First, because people who manage others set the tone when it comes to culture, I decided to start by creating unity within the senior leadership team. I had the leaders take the CliftonStrengths Assessment to increase their self-awareness and to help them better understand one another. Most of the time, no one comes to work to screw up or make their colleagues’ lives miserable. Most reasonable people try to do their best and get along with others every day. So I reminded these leaders to give the benefit of the doubt among themselves and with everyone in the company.

With ongoing intentional collaboration with the senior team, leaders learned to reframe the discontent in the office as stemming from misunderstandings instead of rushing to blame. They presumed innocence and focused on building relationships based on talents and strengths, following the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who said, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” These leaders emulated and reinforced the dynamic they wanted to create within the organization, and it worked. As barriers began to melt between them, employees began to communicate more. As they formed better relationships internally, their team members were able to provide more effective and fluid service to one another and their customers. This cascading effect is the natural benefit when leaders understand their influence in creating the company’s culture.

Leveraging Influence to Create Unity

I started with the senior leadership team because they are the tone-setters for the organization. Their styles and attitudes permeate through the company, affecting not only how people at all levels perform but how committed they are to the company and their coworkers. A key question each senior leader should ask herself is, “What kind of organization are we trying to create, and how can we create it in a way that drives unity?”

Unity is critical in organizations, because when everyone comes together and pulls in the same direction, incredible progress can be made. If people are tugging in different directions, it’s difficult to move forward. Unity starts with those at the top, because, as research from Gallup shows, leaders (at any level) have an average of 76 percent of the influence in defining their team’s engagement. That means the rest of the team has a combined 24 percent—which shouldn’t be discounted, as everyone has a hand in creating culture.4 Leaders, though, have the lion’s share of influence in the creation and maintenance of a single culture. This statistic is telling because most organizations have as many subcultures as they do managers. Diligently paying attention to how leaders lead at every level helps to minimize these differences establishing one overarching culture.

It’s about the Team

As leaders, we are the glue that holds company culture together by creating a positive workplace, fostering development, nurturing engagement, and building bridges across the company. Building bridges is especially important because it is the most underused element of leadership.

Teams and managers can become so focused on their own to-do lists that they neglect to consider how their work interfaces with that of their colleagues or affects the big-picture mission of the company. The reality is that no team works in a vacuum. Each person, and each department, is interdependent in some way or another. Sales cannot succeed without marketing. Marketing cannot succeed without IT. IT cannot succeed without finance. The sooner you can inspire your team to understand that everyone needs to work together, not in silos, the more efficient the organization can be.

Another way to think of this dynamic is to consider a sports jersey; there’s the team logo on the front and the athlete’s name on the back. If all of the athletes on the team play for the logo, the team will usually perform at a higher level than if they play with only concern for their own stats. The success of the logo on the front is the priority. This doesn’t mean everyone agrees on everything or is quick to acquiesce, but it does mean decisions are made based on what is best for the collective. Counterintuitively, this mentality will ultimately result in individual success because people begin to rely on one another and support one another to reach greater heights.

Here is an example of how all of this comes together like a well-planned Thanksgiving dinner. Eric5 was the manager of a credit union and a believer in the process I advocate. He had full-time tellers stationed inside the branch to assist customers (referred to as members in the credit union industry). This particular branch had only about one hundred members per day come in to transact business, leaving quite a bit of downtime for the tellers. Many of the tellers filled the time by reading books, surfing the internet, or chatting with one another, but Eric wanted to see if he could leverage their natural gifts to improve the credit union’s performance and help bring more meaning to their workdays. He asked each teller what else she enjoyed doing and looked for ways to incorporate her answers into her daily responsibilities.

Eric never thought, “You’re just a teller, so this is all you’re required to do or are capable of.” Instead, he chose a different path. One that leveraged strengths, enhanced contributions to create meaning and supported the entire credit union, not just one team. He thought, “You have so many amazing gifts. How can I help you use those better during your time here in a way that benefits us all and makes you feel great about your contribution to the organization?” Eric discovered one of his tellers was interested in marketing, so he put her in touch with the marketing team to see if she could be the merchandising champion for the branch. Another teller enjoyed researching, and she was thrilled when Eric asked her to help use her talents to compile information for another manager’s weekly presentations. All of this added support across the credit union and contributed to greater year-end profitability. Ultimately, Eric looked beyond job descriptions because he understood something incredibly important: people are bigger than their jobs.

Leaders Are Human, Too

It’s Eric’s job to spearhead a culture that builds bridges, fosters unity, and promotes strength-based high performance—and he did that. But he did that by playing to his strengths and being aware of his weaknesses. As the leader, you don’t need to be the person who has to do everything. Somewhere along the way leaders were epitomized as the people who had to be all knowing and all doing. The leader needing to have super-human powers is a pervasive fallacy. That’s an impossible mountain to climb. It’s also unfair and completely unrealistic.

In an environment where everyone’s strengths and weaknesses are known, you can leverage the right people who have the talents you don’t. Obviously, there are tasks that only you as the leader can perform, but when you honestly assess those, they’re few in number. Formally disciplining and rating performance are the obvious ones. Depending on your style and the composition of the team, there may be a few other ones (arbitrating disagreements that the team can’t solve or making the final decision on a project or assignment). But, believe me, most of the must-dos of a leader are self-imposed. That said, there are legitimate ways to fill skills gaps for the benefit of the team and the organization. It’s a conscious form of...