Be the Cultural DNA

You can’t effectively lead culture by agreeing on a list of values at a leadership offsite, sticking them on a branded mug, and hoping things will magically change.

“Every CEO is in fact a Chief Cultural Officer. The terrifying thing is it’s the CEO’s actual behavior, not their speeches or the list of values they have put up on posters, that defines what the culture is.” Scott Berkun

YOU are the DNA from which your company’s culture is born. Teams and individuals follow your lead. What you accept, they accept. What you expect, they expect. What you role model, they will emulate.

Your company culture has never been more important than it is right now, considering the uncertainty and fear your team are facing with the challenges of COVID, remote work, and an uncertain future. Unless you role-model the culture you need and want for your people (staff and customers), it’s all going to go to hell in a hand-cart pretty fast.

Your Culture: YOU, but on a really bad day?

Here’s another way to think of it: Describe yourself on a bad day. Are you aloof, dismissive, and quiet when the s**t hits the fan? Or do you go full Alpha—control, shout and berate? Perhaps you get brusque and resentful when things aren’t going well, or, maybe, you turn into a low energy Eeyore.

Whatever you’re like on a bad day, imagine that as the culture of your entire organisation through this period of uncertainty. What would the impact be on your organisation’s customer service, creativity, well-being, engagement, turnover, or stakeholders? Less than ideal I imagine, to say the very least.

You, but on a really good day

What if your company’s culture reflected you, but on your best day? Think about your organisation’s values: What is you were an exemplar of those values in every leadership meeting, communication, and plan you’re part of. What’s the impact of that kind of leadership?

Your Leadership Experiment

1)   Make a list of your organisations core values and rate yourself against them on a scale of 1-10. 1 being ‘I honestly struggle with that’ to 10 ‘Nail it every day’.

If you don’t have codified organisational values, ask yourself and/or your leadership team the following simple question to give yourself a temporary values guide, “What 4 adjectives describe how we’ll need to show up with each other, with our teams and with the world to be most effective through the current adversity?”. Then score yourself against those.

2) Pick the value you’ve scored lowest.

3) Identify someone in your team/network whom you think exemplifies this value. For the remainder of this week, before every meeting or call, pause and ask yourself, “What would X say about this?”, or, “How would X handle this situation?”

4) Mirror that behaviour.

Let me know what you discover and if you find this leadership experiment helpful—please share.