How to Improve Corporate Culture
By Vistage
member Stephen M. Paskoff, Esq. President Employment Learning Innovations,
with Paul Diamond, Web Editor, Vistage International
In a
challenging economy, companies seek to increase productivity and reduce
risks. Often overlooked is the opportunity to improve company culture.
Company
culture—an organization’s attitudes, beliefs, actions and values—develops
out of the actions and inactions of the company leaders. Culture can’t be
changed by creating new policies, sending out memos or asking ground-level
employees to change their actions or attitudes. When leaders adopt a clear
behavioral leadership strategy, they can overcome workplace culture issues
that don’t serve the goals of the organization.
Outcomes of
Poor Company Culture
The personality, values and rules of behavior of an organization have a
profound influence on its productivity and execution. Poor corporate culture
may include: secretive, non-responsive or unethical management, rewarding of
poor behavior, habitually ineffective communication, failure to address
employees concerns and intimidation.
Poor
corporate culture sets up a company for the following outcomes:
-
Risk
exposure either from employee lawsuits or employee sabotage
-
Loss of
productivity
-
Poor
execution
-
High
turnover
-
Low morale
-
Negative
impact on reputation
-
Loss of
profits
The
challenge of overcoming cultural issues lies in informing and changing the
behaviors and actions and workday responsibilities of leaders at all
organizational levels.
Implementing
a day-to-day behavioral leadership strategy shouldn’t be left to chance.
Leadership is the first step to resolving workplace challenges.
Examples of
Damaging Company Culture
Without direction, unchecked management behavior can become prevalent in the
workplace. In compiling the results of a recent workplace survey, employees
expressed frustration over managers and leaders who could not communicate
accurately and professionally and who would not listen to them or address
their basic concerns.
Survey
participants noted the following as their basic workplace concerns:
-
Bullying
is an ongoing problem.
-
Managers
routinely make sexist comments and lie, and these same people get
promoted.
-
Unaddressed complaints cause employees to resign without promise of
gainful employment. They have to leave their job for “sanity” and to
preserve their reputation.
-
Unethical
behavior jeopardizes employee ability to execute and deliver service
appropriately.
-
The
manager is not approachable. Employees don’t have a comfort level with
their manager to discuss an issue. Many times employees feel intimidated
by their managers and will not say anything.
-
Managers
fail to respond to employee issues, telling employees to “get over it” or
asking them to not be a troublemaker.
-
In some
fields (such as healthcare) a double standard exists for leaders (or
physicians) versus the rank-and-file employees. Employees are held to
higher standards, and poor behaviors are tolerated less from them than the
leaders.
The
responses in the survey are typical of many companies. If these behaviors go
unchecked, serious and damaging workplace issues will result.
To address
these workplace concerns, employers must establish a core leadership
strategy that trains managers to adopt behaviors that encourage two-way
communication on all issues and provides a foundation of consistently civil
treatment. Organizations must clearly define what constitutes acceptable
leadership behavior; then leaders must understand that such behavior is a
non-negotiable requirement. In addition, organizations must take
responsibility for holding leaders accountable for implementing these
behavioral standards and managing in accordance with them.
When issues
do arise, a consistent leadership strategy will assure they will be detected
and corrected. Consistent behavioral standards must become the foundation
for every policy, communication, management initiative and training session.
The hallmarks of solid leadership of employees are prevention, detection and
correction.
5 Positive
Leadership Behaviors Defined
While many leaders intuitively adopt positive behaviors in the workplace,
others need detailed instruction and practice to incorporate them into their
daily leadership strategies. Here are key behaviors and how leaders should
apply them:
-
Communicate honestly.
Tough economic times require leaders to share the truth. This means not
only telling the truth when questioned, but also sharing news, whenever
possible, before it leaks through the viral grapevine in your
organization. Leaders may not be in a position to reveal all plans and
confidential business information, but they must never mislead or lie;
whatever they say and write must be factual. Dishonest communications
create a sense among employees that what employers say and do aren’t
trustworthy; additionally, they can lead to perceptions of discrimination
or other unlawful conduct. Credibility is crucial and can’t be
manufactured. Leaders must build credibility over time in routine
interactions crossing every issue.
-
Listen to
concerns.
Employees with questions need to know that their leaders are willing to
take time to hear their concerns. Whatever those issues are, the manner in
which one concern is handled–just one–will determine whether employees
raise the next concern internally or through external sources. Hearing
employees’ concerns allows leaders to find out about potentially
problematic issues. They can then address the issues within the
organization (rather than through expensive external avenues) before they
become damaging or spiral out of control. What managers say and how they
say it–body language and tone–are all vital indicators of their sincerity.
-
Address
problems promptly.
With all the uncertainty prevalent in today’s workplace, employees will
likely have many concerns. They must know that their concerns will not
only get attention, but also responses. It may not be what they want to
hear, and it doesn’t mean that leaders will give out information the
employer is unable to release. However, responses should fulfill these
criteria: 1) Answer questions accurately. If you can’t divulge
information, honestly say that to employees. 2) Explanations must be
timely. A tardy response is the same as no response. If you need time to
investigate a situation, let employees know when you can provide the
response and follow up accordingly.
-
Act
professionally.
These behaviors have no place in professional conduct:
-
Yelling
-
Offensive comments
-
Condescension in tone of voice, body language or written communications
-
Apologize
readily.
Like anyone else, leaders make mistakes and sometimes fail to act in
alignment with leadership strategy. When they make mistakes, they should
apologize and then change their behavior.
Organizations that implement these behaviors as comprehensive cultural
standards will prevent problems which otherwise might lead to significant
damage. Conversely, organizations that launch a barrage of policies and
systems without addressing the vital role that leadership behavior plays
simply ignore what is essential to building a legal workplace.
Stephen M.
Paskoff, Esq., is the founder and President of
ELI®, an Atlanta-based firm
specializing in providing workplace learning solutions that focus on
behaviors and outcomes to help organizations minimize risk and maximize
productivity and business results. He’s the author of “Teaching Big Shots to
Behave and Other Human Resource Challenges.” |
