It is important to understand how leaders influence the organisations culture and thus impact on organisational performance. Your organisational leaders are the ones swinging the pendulum, and your success as an organisation is in their hands. It’s a cycle beginning with leadership style and ending with employees emulating your behaviour and beliefs. The pull to follow along with a leader’s designated path is stronger than one might think.
Here are five ways your leaders may be impacting your organisational culture:
1 Spread motivations: When you look to someone as a leader, they can instantly become a guiding force in your life. But can these people be trusted to lead the way? As a leader, your motivations and wants trickle down to your staff as they are the delivery team employed to carry out your requests. What you are motivated by personally has a significant influence on organisational culture and can make an organisation respond in kind to your leadership.
The line between innovative and toxic culture is a thin one, and a leader can push you over the edge. Leaders motived by things like money and influence attract employees who are motivated by the same.
Leaving an organisational culture where your employees only show up for a salary.
On the opposite end, we have leaders motivated by purpose. These inspire staff members that share a common belief to commit their best efforts to their organisation’s goal.
To make the best out of your leadership, get to know your staff. Open up two-way communication, find out their motivations as by listening to and integrating the beliefs and motivations of your team will make them feel valued. A positive organisational culture begins with these satisfied employees.
2 Strong vision: The foundation of any organisation is established on the vision of its leaders. These individuals craft it, share it and watch it come to life.
An effective leader shares their values and views on work with staff members to act as a compass to follow. Providing this awareness allows staff to work as a team to act out organisational strategies. It also reassures them that their actions are for the good of the organisation.
To ensure the most effective leadership, incorporate a sense of integrity into your habits. Put a clear purpose in place that has both the good of the organisation and your staff in mind. This will enable staff members to follow you with no qualms, emotionally connecting them to your journey.
3 Coaching: Leaders are your coaches. And like with any team, your employees expect leaders to give them the winning solutions. This means more than just having vision. It involves developing a framework that outlines goals, strategy and the details necessary to push your organisation forward. These details may include your organisation’s view on quality work, what makes a healthy work environment, company policies and rules. But it’s not enough to just state these things. Leaders should lead by example.
To be the best example, leaders must first make their choices and actions visible to their staff and maintain communication links to staff so your team will get a greater sense of your habits and follow suit in modelling the behaviour expected.
4 Responsibility: Employees always need to know what is expected of them in order to properly communicate their organisation’s purpose. They must know expected levels of productivity, the channels to conduct business as well as the proper image to maintain. Enforcing these rules is the responsibility of your leaders. Forming rules and holding staff to them is a key way for leaders to influence organisational culture.
It all begins with communication. Detailed descriptions, readily available manuals and policies play a huge role. Here, providing documents via an intranet can assist leaders by both compiling necessary forms into one location and also with tracking. Mandatory reads ensure staff acknowledges receipt of required information.
When discrepancies or issues arise, it is up to the leader to return order to the organisation. Not only should leaders hold their staff accountable, but they must also hold themselves accountable.
A large part of that is the ability to admit mistakes and failures. Transparency will earn the respect of the staff cultivate two-way trust in the organisational culture.
5 Morale: As the ones standing in front, leaders can only expect that staff follow their lead. Behaviours are repeated, habits are imitated, but most of all, attitude is contagious.
Develop a culture of encouragement. Let your employees know they are doing a good job. Acknowledge mistakes but also give guidance on how they may improve. Do not forget that leaders are the foundation. If they are not held responsible for the morale of their staff, then the culture of their organisation can fall apart around them.
It’s easy to believe that forming a healthy organisational culture is the responsibility of the employees. However, culture is not about other people’s behaviour. It really begins with a leader model: one that employees will want to emulate.
When people are left without appropriate or any guidance at all, the standard of work lowers, and
organisational culture suffers. Be the change that leads to an innovative and fulfilling company culture by revaluating your leadership style.