Tag Archive for: leadership development

Organizational Culture: How To Turn Value Statements In Values

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We’ve all seen the nice laminated value statements that hang on office walls. Many of these beautiful calligraphed statements are developed by a well-meaning executive team at an offsite retreat – usually somewhere in the mountains where they can be close to divine inspiration. They bring back the inspired document as if it were the “Ten Commandments,” and “roll them out,” with a well formulated communication strategy. Once they have been communicated and posted on the walls, then everyone goes back to work and the statements are forgotten.

Does this process sound familiar in your organization? No wonder cynicism is abundant about this process. We write the statements. We put them on the wall. Raise expectations. And nothing else happens. What we have is a nice set of value statements. What we don’t have yet is a set of real values.

There is an alternative. In my next few blogs, I will give you a process for turning value statements into real values.

  1. Build a cohesive executive team. A high trust, aligned, cohesive organizational culture starts with a high trust, aligned, cohesive executive team. In his book, The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business, Patrick Lencioni observes, “It’s like a family. If the parents’ relationship is dysfunctional, the family will be too.” We start working with culture by taking the executives away for two days to build trust, clarify their vision and strategy, and define the culture required to realize the vision and strategy.
  2. Develop an executive team code of conduct. Once the executive has pristine clarity about the kind of culture required they develop a code of conduct for what they expect of each other and how they will, as an executive group, hold each other accountable for living the values. They then develop a plan for how they will stand united as an executive team and make a promise to the organization how it can count on them to live the values and be held accountable for living the values.
  3. Turn values into behaviors. As the executive team models the way, the expectation is that every positional leader will have the same conversation with every one of their direct reports. To move the organizational value statements off the wall and into the hearts and actions of every employee, every employee must be engaged in a conversation with their manager:
    • What exactly do these values mean to me and to you in your specific role?
    • What behaviors will demonstrate our values?
    • What do we expect from each other?
  4. Turn conversations into accountability agreements. To ensure trust in your organizational culture, an accountability agreement must lay within each conversation. It provides clarity about what is expected, what is promised, and what support requirements are necessary. The key here is clarity. Ambiguity breeds mediocrity.
    • What is the expectation – and the promise – of every leader to live the espoused values?
    • What can you count on from me?
    • What can I count on from you?
    • What are our support requirements of each other?
  5. Get people engaged. Research tells us that it isn’t clarity of organizational values that engages people. It’s clarity of personal values. You have to get to people’s hearts before you can ask them for a hand. Accountability without passion is drudgery. Accountability without connection is compliance.
    • Find out what matters to people: what do people value at work and away from work?
    • Get people living their values in their jobs. Maybe it means shuffling some roles around, discovering and developing their talents or working with people’s strengths. Fit people; don’t fix people.
  6. Continuous Reinforcement. To keep your values alive and keep people engaged in your culture, you have to have continuous reinforcement.
  7. Tell the story. Before every staff or leadership meeting, take a five minute “culture moment,” where someone on the team tells a story of how someone else lived the values.
    • Focus on success. Shine a light on success. Link success to the values. Give public acknowledgment to people when they live the values.
    • Embrace the negative. Welcome people to tell you when you aren’t living the values. No one is going to get this perfect. The issue isn’t perfection or even the illusion of perfection. The issue is – can we have the conversation when there is a perceived lack of alignment with the values? Don’t be afraid of the bad news. One of the indicators of trust is that people feel safe to bring the bad news to you. Then you can work toward the solution together!
    • Reinforce the message. If you aren’t sick of talking about the culture and the expectations of each other in the culture, then you haven’t talked about it enough. You have to keep giving the message.
    • Again and again and again.
    • Keep the values visible. Visibility drives accountability.
    • Work these conversations into every one of your systems.
      • Hiring will now be based not only on operational competence but also on how they will live the values.
      • Assessing leadership competence. You’ll know what kind of leaders you need to build the kind of culture you have defined.
      • Promotions will now not happen unless the potential leader demonstrates the values.
      • Performance reviews will now have an element of values and expected attitudinal behaviors embedded in them.

A few points to consider:

  1. Don’t be afraid of this process being perceived as superficial, especially in the beginning. Like learning any new skill or developing a new muscle, expect it to feel unfamiliar and even phony at the beginning. Be honest about this, and keep at it.
  2. Exercise patience with yourself and with others. Remember: there’s a difference between being willing to live the values vs. not doing it perfectly. If a positional leader is not willing to live the espoused values, they should not be in that position and possibly should not even be employed in the organization. But assuming good will, then be both patient and forthright about approaching those who are perceived as not living the values.
  3. You don’t have to start this process at the very top with your senior executives. If you run a division, get the executives of that division together and start the process. If you manage a team, start with your team. If you run a not-for-profit board, treat your board as the executive and start building an aligned culture. You can even begin with your family, where the parents are the executive. The principles of this process can work with any group of people who are working together toward a shared vision.

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?

Good Leadership: How To Motivate People

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I recently returned home after leading a three-day leadership development program with a long-term client and her team of managers who run a successful grocery business. The morning of the first day I arrived an hour early to set up and was eagerly met by the VP of IT who was already had the AV equipment all set up for me. In the process of getting organized, we discovered that I didn’t have the right adapter for his television screen. Enthused and accountable, he sped off across town to get what I needed. He was obviously motivated. Passionate, service minded, and wholehearted are just some of the words to describe this amazing leader.

During the workshop, and referring to the VP who helped me that morning, I asked one of the participants what he felt led to this colleague’s passion for his job. And later that evening I sat with one of the long-term executive team members and got the whole story.

“This manager, who now is on the senior executive team, worked for fifteen years on the floor stocking shelves. While his work was okay, he was unmotivated, unhappy, and pretty miserable to be around. He used up every sick day he had; came in not a minute early and went home not a minute late after his shift; didn’t really talk or interact with anyone; classic disengaged employee. In fact, we were on the verge of firing him because of his attitude when the new General Manager arrived three years ago.”

“So, how did this unhappy employee get from the shop floor to the executive suite in three years?”

“Good leadership,” was the reply. The new GM took the first several months of her tenure to wander around, listen to people, and make a personal connection with everyone on the floor. And she saw potential in this man. She saw something that perhaps he couldn’t even see in himself. She found out he was a leader in the community and started to wonder why we couldn’t bring that capacity out in his work. She thought he had good ideas and asked him if he would be interested in taking on the role of shop steward. She then worked with the union to make this happen.

As it turned out, he thrived in this role. Through some more conversations, it was soon discovered that he played in a band and had unique computer and technical abilities. Informally, he took on the role of the organizational “techie” and, before long, was promoted to VP of IT. The more responsibilities he was given, the more he excelled. And now, he is one of the foremost leaders in a 125 million dollar operation. In the last three years he has never been off work sick. He comes early and stays late, and is one of the most positive people in the company.

Here’s my short take on how motivate people:

  1. Care. Care enough to listen. Care enough to find out what matters to people. Care enough to find out people’s unique abilities, talents, and gifts. If you spend enough time, you will eventually discover that everyone is talented, original, and has something to offer. And everyone wants to make a contribution – if you can find the right niche. If won’t reach everyone, but you reach a lot more if you care.
  2. When you care enough about people you will soon realize that you can’t really “motivate” anyone. What you can do is create a climate where people shine. Motivation is essentially about aligning talent and passion with what the organizational needs.
  3. Never stop believing in people. You never know what people are capable of when you stop controlling them and start unleashing their potential. Good leadership is about seeing in others what they cannot see within themselves.

Employee Engagement: What’s Making Us So Unhappy?

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When getting to the nature of human performance and well being it is important to understand the relationship between three vital words: 1) Achievement; 2) Expectation; and 3) Happiness.

Happiness results when our achievements meet our expectations. If you come to work, for example, with the expectation of your boss is “100,” and your boss achieves an “80,” then we say you will be “20% unhappy” with your boss.

If, on the other, you have an expectation of your boss of “80,” and you she hits “100,” then you will be “125% happy” with her.

Now what happens when this same boss, who meets the expectations of one employee, yet doesn’t meet the expectations of another employee? One employee will be happy. The other will be unhappy. Maybe the problem isn’t the boss. Maybe the problem is the nature of our expectations.

People these days bring enormously high expectations to work, but also to all their relationships. We are, frankly, all pretty spoiled. The more we get in this society, the more we expect. Look at the result:

  • In Canada, 47.1 million prescriptions for antidepressants were filled by retail drugstores in 2014, representing sales totally $1.91 billion. 11% of all men, women, and children in our society are on antidepressants.

According to a recent Gallop poll:

  • 70% of Canadians are “unhappy,” “not engaged” at work;
  • 6/10 employees intend to pursue new job opportunities somewhere else in the next year, and 2/10 say “maybe” and are working toward it.

It appears to be human nature that the more we get, the more we expect. In academic language this means that we are spoiled. Research will bear it out that the societies with the lowest GNP are often the societies with the happiest people. If you have travelled much you know that the people around the world who are the poorest are often happier than people in this country that have so much? Why are they happy? They are likely happy because their expectations are lower. They aren’t always striving for something better. There’s something to be said about simply being satisfied with what we have.

While I’m all in favor of boss’s continuing to learn and develop ways to create environments that engage people, I know some people who could walk on water for their employees and they still won’t be happy. This is because most people who are unhappy at work aren’t just unhappy at work. They are unhappy with all aspects of their lives. They achievement is low and their expectations are high. That’s a good formula for unhappiness. And no amount of “employee engagement programs” are going to turn that around.

Let’s all look at ourselves when it comes to employee engagement. It’s a shared responsibility. Yes, positional leaders have a responsibility. But so do employees. It starts by looking in the mirror.

How is your own personal relationship between 1) Achievement (e.g. How committed are you? What are your own goals? How much responsibility are you taking for your own level of achievement; 2) Expectations (e.g. How realistic are your expectations of your boss? How much responsibility are you taking to meet your own expectations? And 3) Happiness (e.g. How does the answers to these questions affect your level of satisfaction and enjoyment – at work and away from work?

How much responsibility are you taking for your own happiness? How much is your unhappiness affected by your unrealistic expectations of others – independent of what your boss does? How much are you willing to give rather than expect?). It was my father who taught me that you get what you give, not what you expect.

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?