12 Behaviors for Cultural Success

12 Behaviors for Cultural Success:

1. Ensure that your people know and understand the mission, vision, strategy and performance objectives of the organization. Employees will want to see how their leader is connected to and internalizes these foundations of the organization.
2. Leaders convey and make real the values of the company as set at the top; meaning, how each value resonates with the reality of how individuals and teams are expected to work with and treat each other.
3. Leaders work with their staff to convey what the company leaders believe regarding how the business is to be operated to succeed, and they align this "belief system" to the functions and functionality of "the unit" (i.e., this is what we need to believe in our unit to shape and focus our efforts to pursue shared goals.)
4. Connect each individual's job and job performance to the whole of the organization's goals, objectives and performance requirements. Employees want to know how their role matters. Leaders actively pursue individuals' understandings of their role and listen for what they need to succeed and feel competent and fulfilled in their role (i.e., how each individual "belongs" and makes meaningful contributions.)
5. Employees want to be heard and be respected for what they know and can contribute to problem solving, innovations and pursuit of new opportunities. They don't want to feel invisible.  Employees with tenure, especially, want to know their ideas and input are invited, welcomed and valued.
6. Employees want to believe and trust that leaders will hold all members of the team to the same levels of performance accountability and they need not fear "favoritism."
7. Employees want and need to "know where we are" as an organization, and "where our team is" relative to expected contributions to the whole.
8. Each employee wants to know "how I belong and what can I do to advance my worth within out team and the organization?"
9. Each employee needs to trust that leaders create a fair, just and safe environment so individuals don't need to protect and defend themselves against an unfair and unpredictable work environment. Leaders need to be seen as the guardians of the culture and behave accordingly.
10. For employees to trust leaders, they need to believe there exists tolerance for honest mistakes and understanding that development to expected levels of competency requires periods of learning and development (i.e., periods of trial and error.) Employees need to know they work within a culture of continuous learning and grace.
11. Employees who live the mission and values of the organization will be observant of how leaders attend to employees who do not.
12. Leaders create cultures of accountability and performance. People who see themselves as high performers seek environments of high performance for affiliation. High performers take pride in their affiliation with organizations that strive to achieve excellence and the recognition that accrues.