Here it is, five ways that you can establish culture in your organization and why it is so important for you to know how to do this.
- Identify your Values.
- Live out your Values.
- Teach your values.
- Enforce your Values.
- Watch out for Drift in Culture
Prefer to watch the video, Click below https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcbeQDS3Yg4
Let’s start with the “why’. Why is it important to know how to establish culture in your organizational team? I want to direct you to a more in-depth analysis of this. I did an interview last week with my brother Sunjay Stevenson, who’s somewhat of an expert on establishing culture in a leadership context. So I’m going to put the link in the description below, make sure you click on that and check out the full conversation I have with Sunjay.
One of the reasons why you need to know how to establish culture in your organization is because culture drives the way you do things. As a whole, the way that you do it will be what others are going to experience. Whether they’re your customers, clients, volunteers or whoever is participating in what you do, they are going to feel your culture long before they buy into your vision. So the way in which you do stuff is going to portray the heart of your organization. It’s going to portray what’s important to you and your organization.
Most people will evaluate your organization and your leadership based on what they first initially feel. It’s important how they interact with you and how you execute whatever job or function that you do within your team and organization. so it’s really important that you know how to establish culture. Every organization has a culture. Every team has a culture whether you’re proactive about it or not culture can just creep in if you’re not intentional about it. You can establish a really negative, toxic, counter-intuitive and counterproductive culture to what you’re trying to achieve if you’re not intentional.
So if it’s going to be the thing that people feel and experience about your leadership first you want to be on top of it. You want to be ahead of it, not just let it happen by accident. If you’re not intentional, it’s going to happen without your knowledge and it could be detrimental to your leadership in the long run. So that’s a little bit of an overview of why you need to establish cultures.
1. Identify your Values
The first thing you need to do to establish culture is, identify your values. Your values are your non-negotiables. They are the things that are most important to you as a leader and for your organization. The values are your compass heading, a certain way you do things. Now there might be different ways of doing it but because of our value system, we do it in a certain way based on what we think is most important to get the job done.
So you need to identify your values. Your values are really found in two ways. They are the things that you are most passionate about. When you think about your leadership or your organization and you say things like, “I really want to be leading a team or organization that looks this way or feels this way”. The things you are really passionate about will indicate to you what you prize highly over everything else. That can be one way of identifying your values.
The other way you can identify your values is by seeing what frustrates you when you look at your team. It could be the way things function when you look at your leadership. Are there things that bother you? Maybe you say “oh I hate the way we do that or I hate the way that looks”. If you’re really passionately opposed to a particular way of doing things that also helps you identify what your values are. You need to flip that and say “if I hate it that way what would it look like if it was done the right way”.
That’s how you start to shift your idea of what’s important and what’s not. If there are things that you let slide then maybe you haven’t placed high importance on values. If it doesn’t come out in the way that you lead and the way that you operate then you might find that it’s not a value. It has to be a real internal passion for you to be a value. So that’s the first thing you need to do, identify your values.
2. Live out your Values
The second thing is you as a leader need to live out your values. If you can’t operate with integrity and adherence to your value system then nobody else will follow it. Culture will not stick if the leader doesn’t place high importance on culture. If you are a leader that values punctuality with your team but you always turn up to meetings late then your culture will not stick.
First and foremost you have to be able to model values. When you live it, it shows the importance of it. Then your team and organization are more likely to follow it. That’s really important, learn how to live out your values. If you’re not living your values then you can’t expect your team to do.
3. Teach your values
So the third thing is this, you need to teach your values. You need to explicitly explain to your team and your organization what your values are. Why are your values important? What does it look like when everybody is hitting those benchmarks of value? When people are operating the way that you want them to operate, they will know what it looks like because you very clearly taught them. You taught them that this is what it will look like. You told them what it will feel like when we are executing our values in this way.
So you have to explicitly teach, don’t leave it to chance. Don’t leave it to accident and hope that people will just catch on. Not everybody shares your values and if you want them to share it you’ve got to first model it and then teach it.
4. Enforce your Values
The fourth thing is this, you need to enforce your values. How do you enforce your values? It’s simply this, if you’ve taken the time to model your values and teach your values then the third aspect of that is you’ve got to be willing to correct team members. Correct members of your organization if they do not adhere to your values. You’ve got to be prepared to have difficult conversations. You’ve got to be able to say “hey we don’t do it like that, it doesn’t fit with our value system”.
You need to have those conversations where you talk through the lack of adherence to your values. That will set people against your culture or it will start to weaken the culture in your organization, so make sure you’re willing to enforce values.
If you want to set culture you have to enforce it. You have to follow through and be prepared to have difficult conversations. If you’ve had a couple of friendly chats with your team and they’re still adamant they don’t want to adhere or that they’re not abiding by the culture that’s important to you then you need to be able to have those difficult conversations. Conversations about whether the position is a good fit for them. Don’t shy away from difficult conversations or confronting people on whether their values are consistent with what your organization and leadership values are.
If you avoid them those people will poison the rest of your team. I think it’s Gary Vaynerchuk that says this “If you’ve got a top performing team member who doesn’t adhere to your culture or your values, get rid of them immediately. It doesn’t matter how much money they make for you. It doesn’t matter how well they perform. If they’re not willing to play ball they will end up poisoning your whole team, you won’t just lose one high performing team member. You’ll lose six, seven, eight, nine or ten because you never address the lack of adherence to values and cultures. So it’s really important that you enforce your values.
5. Watch out for Drift in Culture
The last one is this, always watch out for drift in your culture. Be willing to recalibrate your team and recalibrate your organization. Reflect on how those values are working for you. Sometimes your values need to be tweaked. Sometimes your culture needs to tweak.
As human beings, we start to drift away from our in our initial compass headings. It’s a little bit like when you’re piloting a plane or even a boat. You take a compass heading but then you always have to keep correcting back to that compass heading. Other forces will push the vessel away from its compass heading; It’s the same with culture, there will be forces within your organization that are always looking to push culture to the side, maybe not intentionally but it will drift.
If you’re growing as an organization sometimes your values don’t scale with you or grow with you. Keep on readjusting or re-evaluating your culture and values to ensure that you are staying in the direction that you want. If you’re starting to drift you need to pull the organization and your team back to their focus. It’s really important that you remember people are going to feel your culture before they buy into you as a leader or your vision.
So if you can create an environment where people feel what you’re passionate about and understand the things that you’re not passionate about, you will find that they’re more inclined to buy into what you want them to. They’re going to execute it in a way that’s going to help you achieve all the goals that you have for your leadership. I hope that was really helpful.
Make sure you check out the interview with Sunjay Stevenson. I’ll post the link below. He goes right in-depth on establishing culture and building teams. It’s a really insightful interview.
Interview with Sunjay Stevenson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKpaRltY-WQ
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