How To Build An Aligned Leadership Culture

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We’ve been asked to facilitate a lot of leadership culture alignment initiatives with organizations lately. Here’s a three step process that senior leaders have found to be helpful:

  1. Identify the critical leadership practices required to support and achieve your organization’s strategic goals and objectives. In doing so, your high potential development process will be grounded in helping future leaders be authentic by aligning their career development goals and capability requirements with your organization’s business goals and objectives.
  2. Define what “high potential leaders” means using objective, behavioral terms. This allows the organization to clearly define “high potential” in an objective and observable way that provides a benchmark from which individuals can be assessed and create a meaningful and relevant development plan.
  3. Create and provide a framework your organization can use to communicate this information throughout the organization. This provides a common language and opportunity for your organization to create a “community” in which high potentials, their managers and mentors can support the development, engagement, commitment and retention of key employees in the organization.

Granting Grace – A Key To Building A Good Culture

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What if we could sit down and ask for what we need and want from each other? What if we could talk openly with each other, in the spirit of goodwill and respect, about what would make us happy and loyal in our workplace? What if we could then negotiate what we can do and what we can’t do to meet these needs? What would happen to our workplaces, our communities, and our families if we all practiced being a little more honest and direct with each other in a respectful way?

We can all learn to be more direct with each other, and it takes continual practice, but there’s something more. Farm Credit Canada, one of my clients and an organization that practices good culture, has taught me a very important concept around building strong culture. One of the key principles in their cultural practices and one which they work at relentlessly, is the concept of granting grace in their interactions with each other. They hold each other accountable for creating a safe environment where people can speak up without fear of repercussion.

I spent three days with one of their teams this week, and “grace” was a central part of our conversations. They work hard at talking straight in a responsible manner. They are committed to the success of others and hold each other accountable to not engage in “conspiracies” against people. They strive for patience with themselves and others but also respectfully acknowledge when they operate outside the expectations of grace. They don’t get it perfect, but they get it right.

This kind of commitment lends itself to learning to be open and direct with each other. I love the idea of “granting grace.” What does “granting grace” mean to you? How do you operate with “grace” in your workplace? What effect does “grace” have on engagement, commitment, and productivity?

Ten Steps For Building An Aligned Culture

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A lot of people ask about our process for building an aligned culture. Here, in abridged form, is our process. We welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback.

Step 1. Define your culture.

Decide on the scope of the culture that you are committed to build – that lays within your sphere of influence. Is it your company, department, division, community association, team, family?

Step 2. Define your leadership team.

Identify your 5-6 key leaders – allies that you will depend on to build your culture. These will be people who have the positional power, capacity, and commitment to make it happen. Be sure you have a Chief Emotional Officer on your team: a person with the positional power as well as the passion (a monomaniac with a mission) to take accountability for the culture.

Step 3. Get alignment at the top.

Identify your core values that you, as a leadership team, are committed to living. Have an “offsite” leadership meeting to ensure that you are all committed to living the values, first with each other and then with your entire culture. If you are a “subculture” – a culture within a larger system, you will want to take the larger organizational cultural value statements and make them real for your culture.

Step 4. Develop a team “code of conduct” with your leadership team.

Once you have decided upon your core values, you will need to develop a process that outlines your promises to each other: how you will hold yourself and each other accountable for living these values. This is about turning values into specific expected behaviors.

Step 5. Assess Alignment – And Connect to Reality.

Decide on a process for assessing your current alignment between your “vision,” your “claim,” and your “reality” as an entire culture. In order to do this you will need to pay attention to the “visible” culture and the “real” culture – your current reality. You may need to take the time to get into the hallways, the coffee conversations, etc. to get to the grapevine and current reality.

Step 6. “Roll out” your values with your entire culture.

Once you are clear about the current alignment, meet with your entire culture. Have your leadership team at the front of the room and outline:

  • Your vision as a leadership team for this culture
  • Your core values
  • Your assessment of the current reality in your culture and the degree of alignment you see between your vision, your claim, and your reality
  • Your leadership code of conduct
  • How you expect to be held accountable for living these values as positional leaders – your promised actions as a leadership team
  • An outline of the remaining process for getting these values lived at every level of the culture

Step 7. Have each of your leadership team members define – and build – their own leadership teams.

Meet with each of the leaders on your leadership team and help them define their own leadership teams, and go through the same process with their respective teams. This will continue throughout the culture until, ideally, every person is eventually assigned to a “leadership team” or at least closely affiliated with a leadership team.

Step 8. Engage your employees – at every level.

  • Begin and sustain the process – and build trust – through the power of courageous conversations:
  • Start – and continue – to create conversations around your core values, at every level.
  • Turn every conversation about value statements into mutually agreed upon actions and promises.
  • Tell the story. Schedule time in meetings, planning sessions, etc. to tell a story about where someone in the group recently lived one or more of your values.
  • Shine the light. Acknowledge when and where individuals lived one or more of your values.
  • Repeat the message. Find a way to get the message out there. Consider a cultural “kudos committee,” a group of committed people who find creative ways to capture the stories and get the message out there in organizational newsletters, bulletins, etc.
  • Embrace the negative. Don’t be afraid of conversations that address misalignment between the claim and the reality.
  • See mistakes as learning opportunities. Keep learning and growing together. Have high standards of yourself and others, and be patient with yourself. It’s about progress, not perfection. Keep reminding people that direction is more important than velocity.
  • Stick with the winners. Put the majority of your time, energy, and resources into the people who are committed to living the values.

Step 9. Define how you will convey to stakeholders outside the culture how you will live your values.

  • How will you convey your values to your customers?
  • What needs to be written in your marketing materials/web site, etc.?

Step 10. Get your values into every system.

  • Bring values into your hiring processes, your performance management system and HR practices.
  • Only promote leaders who are living the values.
  • Make it tough to not live the values.

The Five Key Ways To Unleash Greatness On Your Team

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I meet some amazing leaders in my work. People hire me to work with their organization and I end up growing by spending time with them. One such leader who has turned into a good friend is John Liston. John was formerly a regional director at Great West Life, and now is the principal of Liston Advisory Group. John lives what he leads. He’s a person of strong character. He’s passionate. He cares. He cares about his people. He cares about the work. He cares about his organization. And his approach to leadership produces results. When he was at Great West Life, his region was the top region in Canada in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Unleash Greatness Within A Team

In a recent conversation with John about his coaching experience with his daughter’s Under 19 Ringette team, he explained how he coaches the same as he leads. Same philosophy. Same approach. Same leadership. Here are John Liston’s five keys to unleash greatness within a team:

  1. Hire Great People.
    You need to know the skills you need from your people but, more importantly, you need to know the kind of attitude you want from the people around you. You can always teach skills, but you can’t teach attitude. Building a great team means knowing precisely the kind of person you want on your team. It means hiring s-l-o-w-l-y. Take your time. Ask questions and assess the right fit. If you study what we do in business you find that we spend our time hiring for competence (resume, experience, etc.) and we almost always fire for character. What John, and other great leaders do, is hire for character, and train and develop for competence.
  2. Create an environment for people to be their best.
    When are you at your best? Typically it is when you are focused, but not worried about mistakes or failing. In John’s words, “When we win, we party; when we lose, we ponder.” This means it’s okay to make mistakes, as long as you learn from them. See the best in people. Fit people don’t fix people. Find their strengths and build on those strengths. Find a place where people can take their gifts, their passion, and their talents, and make a contribution. It takes coaching, mentoring, and, most importantly, time. When you create these environments, people “chose to” come to them; they don’t feel they “have to”.
  3. Understand the why before the what or the how.
    At the 1963 Washington D.C. Civil Rights March, Martin Luther King did not stand up with a “strategic plan.” Martin Luther King had a dream. He had a “why.” He gave people a reason. John Liston understands this. He understands that people aren’t accountable if they aren’t motivated. If they aren’t accountable, it’s because they don’t have enough reason to be accountable. A vision, a “why,” is what gives people a reason to get on board. John uses the vehicle of sport to teach character – that is the why. Some people get confused and think sport is about winning. Professional sport may be, but all others are about character. Winning is a by-product. It works the same in business.
  4. Execute with precision.
    John is a master of accountability cultures. He understands that you have to inspire people, and then you have to link that inspiration to clearly defined outcomes and a precise way to get there. This is where John is tough. He models the values. While he cares about people, he has a precise, results driven process for creating an environment for people to hold themselves accountable – to themselves and each other.
  5. Celebrate Success.
    In John’s words, “you have to know what success is, know how to get there, and know how to celebrate it when you’ve achieved it.” You have to know what “right” is, and then catch people doing it right. You have to care and you have to connect. Celebration can be big or it can be small, but most importantly it has to be meaningful.

John’s passionate, inspiring energy is contagious. It’s always been important to him to create an environment in which people have a chance to be their best, to realize their potential, and to be recognized for their achievements. John is the kind of leader people want to work for. He’s also the kind of friend people seek.

What kind of environment are you creating on your team?

Engaging Employees in Economic Uncertainty

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The recent economic slowdown has created great uncertainty for businesses and, adding to the pressure, are the debates regarding how much oil and gas companies will be affected and in what way. What we can be certain about is that employers that consciously manage their work culture and employees during times of uncertainty will position themselves to take advantages of opportunities in the face of obstacles.

Why is it business critical for organizations to invest in a great work culture, especially now?

Demographics alone point to a continued trend of labour shortages due to an aging workforce, especially in in-demand occupations.

Many oil companies have long service employees whose experience is deep technically and broad in terms of institutional knowledge and intelligence. Many of these long-term employees will be eligible to retire soon, and statistics show us that as a population ages we see increases in short term vs. long term employment. It is more important than ever for oil companies to have a strong workplace culture to both attract, retain and engage employees to transition their knowledge and experience to the next generation of workers.

Additionally, Statistics Canada stated that in 2011, the percentage of working-age Canadians in the labour force is expected to peak. In other words, beginning in 2012, the number of workers leaving the labour force is already exceeding the number of new entrants and labour shortages continues to be an on-going concern. This trend is expected to continue. Employees, especially those in in-demand occupations, will continue to have choice. Employers need to evaluate the long-term risks associated with an aging workforce, recognizing that the skills and experience they need in the future may not be readily available.

In times of slowing economies, the mantra of leading employers becomes how to stabilize and engage employees in a highly proactive, productive way. The practices of attraction, retention, engagement and how employers manage their culture and employees still apply.

In our experience, there are several shifts in emphasis that will ensure success:

  • Engaged employees see themselves as “owners” not “tenants or renters” of an organization. Employers who are dedicated to employee engagement provide them with a framework of accountability, so they know not only ‘what’ they are expected to do but ‘how’ (what behaviours will get them there). Employers who foster a culture of personal responsibility where employees feel a part of the whole (“we” vs “they”) during times of stress can leverage collective intelligence to work through real work challenges.
  • Engage employees to make the best use of their skills and abilities. Many employers make the mistake of assuming employees will be happy with just having a job vs. utilizing their strengths in the right job. Keeping people busy is not synonymous with real engagement and productivity.
    Engage employees to realize future success – use the wisdom of the many over the ideas of a few.
  • Involve employees in problem solving to address current business challenges. This approach goes hand in hand with the theme of open communication as employers need to be open about current business challenges in order to be successful in this engagement strategy. It ultimately provides employees a sense of control over their own future and the future of the company. The leading edge employer who adopts this approach will not only attract and retain the best employees but will become highly productive and well positioned for future opportunities when others are struggling to survive.
  • Communicate, Communicate, Communicate. Timely, consistent communication of what employers know and especially what they don’t know, removes the ‘cloak of secrecy’ and creates an environment of trust, so that employees are confident that leaders will provide the truth. In the absence of open transparent information employees will draw their own conclusions, often fearing the worst. Effective communication in times of uncertainty is not just about making timely announcements or the distribution of information. Genuine two-way communication that leads to productive employee engagement and mutual trust has a grassroots “water cooler” conversational quality to it. It is about listening, not surveying, paying attention, not getting attention. In many ways, employee engagement is less about the information you provide and more about what you draw out of your employees.
  • Employee engagement is also about managing the work culture and environment. Uncertainty is stressful. When people are stressed, they can feel threatened, which often results in behaviors that counter a productive workforce.  Therefore, it is important for organizations to be vigilant in reinforcing a mutually respectful workplace during times of uncertainty.

Most companies have spent the last few years trying to find ways to become the “Culture of Choice” and retain and leverage the best in their talent pool. Economic downturns always test employers in this quest.  Now more than ever is the time to implement an employee engagement and productivity strategy.

By Janice Clark and Pat Hufnagel-Smith, ©2015 Irvine & Associates, Inc.

Irvine & Associates Inc. provides training and consulting solutions to assist employers with employee engagement by creating a vibrant accountable culture resulting in delivery of real time business results.

The Key To Building A Strong Organizational Culture

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In my leadership development work I meet some amazing leaders all across the country. One of the executives in a recent program on Leadership Excellence validated my principles by expressing that there is more to excellence than setting high standards and achieving operational results. “Along with operational excellence, you have to have people excellence,” she explained. She makes it a practice to stay in touch with her team. It’s about caring about your people, but not just caring that they are healthy and are getting enough rest. It’s also caring that they are developing, growing, and finding fulfillment in their work.

Once a month she meets with each member of her team for half an hour. Here is what is on the agenda:

  1. She asks how their life is at work and away from work.
  2. She asks how their career is progressing.
  3. She asks for feedback about how supported they are feeling by her.
  4. Then she asks what kind of development or learning project they are involved in that is rewarding and gratifying to them. This last piece often requires some coaching on her part to assist them in finding a fulfilling project.

She spoke of one of her IT managers who is involved in a software project that she is deeply passionate about. Apparently it takes up about ten percent of her time. It is not directly impacting or contributing to her job requirements short term, but it is extremely rewarding to her and will help her be a better IT manager long term. It’s an area where she can become an internal expert and coach and mentor others in the future.

It’s risky to offer this to the people that you serve. In order to build a strong organizational culture, you have to be willing to sometimes let your best people leave for work in other areas in order to help them grow. They may even develop themselves and leave the organization. But this kind investment in people will always have a good long-term return. The best people will want to work for you, and you’ll get the best out of those who do.

What are you doing to develop and grow the people you serve?