PEOPLE

Feb

2022

Culture – What Makes It?

“Culture is how we think, act, and interact inside our organization.”

Chris Goede (Executive Vice President of Corporate Solutions, John Maxwell Enterprise)

Years ago when I was a strength and conditioning coach, I was talking with my boss and he said: “You have the hardest job on staff. You have to be the master psychologist.”

I had to inspire hundreds of athletes to see the value in participating in the off-season work that did not involve touching a ball or swinging a bat, racket, club, etc. That was one challenge, but over time I saw a different and at times greater challenge.

I could create a culture of hard work, focus, and dedication when I was with them, but if the culture their coach created was different, I was fighting uphill. Maybe the team you lead is collaborative, but you feel you are fighting upstream against an organizational culture that is completely siloed. In this post let me break down culture into three areas you can evaluate, design, and possibly even influence within the larger organization.

People

I jokingly say often “where two or more people are gathered, there will be problems.” That is part of life. Whether two people, twenty, or two-thousand people create a culture. This is one area we need to evaluate. In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins discusses how great companies first get the right people on the bus and then figure out where to drive the bus.

Imagine you lead a professional soccer club. You get on the bus clear about where you are going and who you are playing and then you look. The managers, athletic trainers, and coaches are all on the bus, but only a couple players are there! You will get destroyed in your game. We must take time to evaluate the people on our team determining if they have the right character, skills, teachability, and capacity. The people will create and sustain the culture.

Process

The people are one part, but culture is also created by process. Process in this sense is “how we do things around here.” Every team has both an unspoken and spoken way of doing things. For example, maybe a written expectation is that people take notes on client calls in a certain system. The reality is no one checks or references those notes, so people rarely take them. This lack of inspecting the process that is expected has created a culture that is less effective than originally intended.

The way we act and think can be influenced by the processes in place within our team. Maybe your office door is open, but when people come in to talk with you they get treated as if they are an interruption. The intention is open communication, but the action says the opposite. Evaluate your processes and systems and check if they align with how you intend your culture to function.

Results

I was watching the end of the Cincinnati Bengals first playoff football game recently and the announcer said the stadium had over 66,000 people in attendance which broke the record attendance from 2007. What caused this newfound culture of excitement?

Results.

The last time the Bengals had a playoff victory was in 1991. When our team is getting results people want to be a part of it. As leaders what are the results we want people to get excited about? Is it simply numbers? If so, what do those numbers represent and how can you create a scoreboard around that? Create ways to genuinely recognize and celebrate the results you get. When those results support people and processes that are important to your culture, make everyone aware.

I hope this has helped stir your thinking on how to intentionally form your culture. Maybe you need some help evaluating your team in a fun, interactive, and organic way. If so, let’s discuss how I could serve your team by facilitating The Leadership Game to open up communication around topics like this. Which of these areas do you need to intentionally develop starting today? Let me know. Lead Well.

Aug

2020

Learning Leadership From A Naval Officer

I was on ZOOM reconnecting with a high school friend of mine who went to the United States Naval Academy. He is in his final years of service to our country and after catching up a little I wanted to learn his top leadership principles.

Commander Brett Holdiman has been in the cockpit of a plane for most of his naval career. Although there is a standard ranking approach to leadership within the military structure, leadership looks different when airborne: the superior/subordinate structure submits to the person who has the flight lead position regardless of rank. This concept is at the foundation of the first of his three leadership principles.

Creating Value in Others

As a member of the John Maxwell Team, I get this. Putting people first is the approach John lives out in his leadership style. I had to ask Brett what he meant by this idea of “creating value.” When leaders create value in others, they recognize they do not know everything. Since this is reality, Brett found two keys to make his teams feel valued.

During the early years of his flying career, Brett realized he had much less experience than those he led. He had a lot of education, but by the time he finished flight school, some of those he led had up to six years of experience in their area of expertise. He recognized the need to trust his people and make sure they knew their job matters. As leaders, these two habits create a culture of feeling valued by those we lead.

Create an Environment to Safely Speak Up

As we discussed leadership, Brett explained the difference in flight management compared to standard leadership. Any good aviator knows that 100% of the missions they flew would not go as briefed. A part of the flight management process is situational awareness and assertiveness. Whenever Brett was airborne, he knew he did not see the entire picture in front of him…there simply too much information to digest. But the same held true for his wingmen. This fact highlights the importance of trust within his flight. It created an environment where everyone was comfortable enough to speak up in the event he was missing something, even when they were a lower rank or newer pilot.

During the heat of a mission, the importance of rank decreases drastically and leadership is flattened. The flight leader’s job is to be certain everyone feels safe to make their voice known. This happens well before take-off. As they go through their flight plan process (which I described here), an environment where others can speak up and share a dissenting view will potentially prevent deadly mission errors. This appropriately assertive culture starts before the mission, carries through the mission, and ultimately develops a healthy team during the mission.

Failure is a Path to Proficiency

None of us likes to fail and failure on a critical mission is not an option for Brett. There is a place, though, where Brett and his fellow aviators can safely fail…mission rehearsal. During this time, lives are not on the line and identifying key learning points during every flight debrief is critical. As leaders, we must have ways for our team members to test new ideas, fail, learn, grow, and try again.

Brett said they expect problems during every flight. Instead of running from them, however, challenges and obstacles are embraced, debriefed, and learned from. Their safe place to fail is during training. Similar to an athlete whose practice impacts performance, these Naval aviators must practice as if the mission is real so they are ready for anything during the real mission. As an organizational or team leader, evaluate your structure to determine where people have room to safely fail and learn.

The common theme through all three of these principles is an idea that has been ingrained in him from his training:

“The biggest resource in any organization is the people that make it run.”

What about you? On your team, in your organization, in your family . . . are people first? If you are a task-oriented perfectionist do you allow room for healthy dissent, mistakes and have a culture of care for your people? If you do not in one of these areas, what do you need to do today to move toward healthier leadership in one of these areas? Need help thinking into it? Contact me for a no cost thinking partner session to think into your leadership. In the meantime, Lead Well.