How to Develop a Motivating Company Culture
David Shindler
Writer. Mainly. Coach. Often. Volunteer. Sometimes. Learning to Leap. Always.
Company culture is a slippery concept with tangible manifestations and serious impact. Join the dots up and a picture often emerges but getting everyone to see the same thing is a major challenge. Company culture is the summation of a continuous narrative where people across the company are the narrators. Why is culture important? How can you influence and shape it? This post is for SMEs looking to coalesce people around shared values and expectations for driving business success.
Broken team? Involve everyone
England football manager, Gareth Southgate, gets the importance of culture. He picked up a demoralised team after the humiliation of the European Championships and stepped in unexpectedly after the short-lived reign of his predecessor. He went back to basics to evolve the culture through the steps I outlined in a recent blog post. The dangers are in throwing the baby out with the bath water and a knee-jerk reaction. Yes, you leave behind what doesn’t help or is past its sell-by date. At the same time, you adapt and build, refine and revisit, create and innovate, and you involve everyone.
Growing business? Adjust the thermostat
Currently, I'm working with a successful small business with a rapidly growing headcount. However, what worked for them as a startup now needs a different approach. They wanted to agree and articulate the dominant character or DNA of the company (in their case, professionalism) for themselves, newcomers, and potential recruits.
As a candidate, seeing yourself in the organisation is the first step. Knowing the culture can raise your emotional connection to the company, and its strategy then becomes the focus: developing loyalty, happiness and purpose.
Gregory Allen, Global Head of Resourcing at Lloyd's Register
I took an appreciative inquiry approach by asking the Directors, the Senior Managers, and the rest of the employees (in separate groups) to share their views on what professionalism looks, sounds, and feels like. They explored these questions from a strengths perspective:
- Appreciating the best of what is - where are we now?
- Imagining what might be - where do we want to be?
- Determining what should be - where is the gap?
- Creating what will be - how will we get there?
- Celebrating success - what happens when things go well?
- Anticipating or responding to setbacks - what happens when things don't go well?
Then they shared their perspectives, identifying commonalities and differences, before reaching a consensus. Through collective ownership and responsibility, they are now using their common understanding and shared expectations of the professionalism required to drive the business forward.
This is all at a pace that the company can manage as it grows. There is never an endpoint because the environment constantly changes. So, the cultural adjustment is like using a thermostat to consistently achieve the optimum temperature about the way they do things. And always in tune with their heritage and core identity.
Impact of company culture? Assess and act
Can you articulate your company culture? Do you know how it impacts positively and negatively on your business today? First, establish a baseline. There are plenty of tools out there to help you assess your culture and the changes over time. They prompt the questions that need answering. For example, Barrett Values Centre assesses organisational or company culture from a values-driven or ethical leadership perspective. Another is We-Q, for ensuring your cultural conversations focus on the right things. It focuses questions in four areas:
- Being fully myself in the group
- How we behave
- Getting things done
- Doing the right things
You cannot copy a culture, you can only grow and develop it. Barrett Values Centre
Then, check the cultural temperature regularly. Are we moving in the right direction? Are expectations clear? Do we live up to our ideals? What needs attention? How will we address it? To stay on track, ensure the aspired company culture is front of mind in everything you do (during change, recruitment, induction, performance conversations etc.). Aim for setting the example, ownership, alignment, and consistency. Avoid being too prescriptive. See it as a compass rather than a detailed map. And remember, you're not measuring the compass but how well you are getting to your destination!
Cynical people? Plant seeds
Sometimes you don’t notice change creeping up on you until it’s happened. Then you look back to where you were and think ‘wow, the difference is amazing!’ Without being deceitful or manipulative, seed subtle adjustments to mindsets and behaviours into the everyday workflow. It's an incremental, non-threatening approach and highly effective in the face of cynicism.
How? Focus on a few behaviours that would make a huge difference to the place if they were consistently and routinely shown by people on a daily basis. Involve people from across the business to identify them. Tap into what really matters to people as the fuel for culture change. Also, it makes the effort inclusive and manageable.
Then, share the leadership by giving people a license to roam. Encourage them to role model these behaviours within their sphere of influence. Get them to support others with praise and recognition when they see it happening. When they see the opposite, challenge the behaviour appropriately or put it on the table for discussion. Small, sustained steps over time can lead to big leaps as a company.
Task-focused? Set the tone
Employees will take their cue from how their leaders act rather than what they say. Therefore, symbolic acts can be helpful. For example, startup owners often struggle to let go of leading and managing the business as it gets bigger. People get used to going to them for decisions and direction. By delegating responsibility for something significant within the company it sends a message of faith in others. How leaders then behave sets the tone. So, avoid rocking back to old ways or you will lose the trust you've gained.
Encourage cultural conversations, not just conversations about the work plan and the next deadline. Create the spaces or build them into existing ones (like performance one-to-ones, team meetings, knowledge-sharing sessions, away days). Build trusting relationships by making it psychologically safe to talk, to be open about fears and concerns, and to put forward ideas about how things could be done.
Want help? Contact me
Culture eats strategy for breakfast is the zeitgeist. If you don't pay attention to your company's culture, it will derail or hold back your business. If you want help, get in touch today to see how I can support your business to grow and develop its culture.
(Photos via Pixabay.com)
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David (@David_Shindler) is an independent career and performance coach, apprentice mentoring trainer, author, blogger, speaker, and associate with several consultancies. He is the author of Learning to Leap: a guide to being more employable, and co-author with Mark Babbitt of 21st Century Internships (250,000 downloads worldwide). His commitment and energy are in promoting lifelong personal and professional development and in tackling youth unemployment. He works with young people and professionals in education and business. www.learningtoleap.co.uk
Visit the Learning to Leap blog to read more of his work and check out his other published articles on LinkedIn:
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