Who is in charge of your culture?

Early morning coffee meeting (or perhaps tea?)

A recent post by Gallup about the executive’s role in teamwork says "Bet your leadership job on this: When team inspiration grows, client buildouts, revenue and quality earnings grow."

Pretty intriguing, right? It goes on to say that focusing on the wrong thing - like providing lunch every day for employees - while nice, does very little to communicate and build on the mission and vision. The leader should be investing time and resources into ensuring their managers understand what their team needs to thrive (hint - work in their strengths) and how decisions are made.

According to the article - The bottom line is that if executives don't create the culture, the culture will create itself. This leaves you and your organization susceptible to losing your best employees.

I remember a speech made by the superintendent of St. Louis Park schools when I was on the management team. He was addressing the burnout some team members were experiencing after a tough year. He began by saying that he could spend every Saturday in the office finishing up what he didn’t complete the week prior, and then spend every Sunday getting ready for the week ahead.

As we all held our breath for the next sentence, he then said, “but I’m not going to do that, and neither should you.” With that one sentence he told us all much more about the culture he was building than any mission statement could.

As he talked about culture, he shared his belief that everyone knows what a building culture is, as soon as you walk in the door. You can feel it, whether or not it’s written on a wall or in an annual report.  We all know quite a bit about the culture at Trader Joe’s because we can feel it, if not when we walk in, then for sure when we check out. Employees are joking, laughing, helping each other out and asking us about our weekend plans.

What is the culture in your business? You have one, whether you’ve planned for it intentionally or not. Are you promoting teamwork, or are you encouraging employees to compete against each other? Do your mission and vision truly ring true, or are they on a list that needed to be checked off? It’s a good idea to do a check-in on this, your bottom line and employee wellbeing is dependent on it.