Thursday Tactic 8.13.20
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” - Peter Drucker, Management Guru.
This week, we look at the impact leadership and management can have on your strategy and culture.
So, as a leader or manager, ask yourself, "how does my leadership impact our culture and team morale?" Here are a few scenarios to consider.
Do your teams lift each other up when a deadline is approaching, or do they finger point and complain causing further delays?
Do people show up to work excited and ready to contribute, or do they walk around like zombies all day, eagerly waiting for 5pm and Friday?
Are you slotting people into roles that match their skills and will help them reach their professional goals, or are you simply issuing directives without regard for your direct reports?
Are team members pulling their own weight, or are a few high performers stuck doing extra work and dragging the rest of the team along?
If you said, "YES" to any of the above, there might be culture issues lurking among your team.
If you're not sure, ask yourself these questions, and see what comes to the surface.
How have team squabbles led to project delays, overruns, or poor quality?
Is your team innovating and testing new ideas, or are they just waiting for you to issue orders because they have been conditioned to believe their input doesn't matter or won't be considered?
As your high performers keep doing extra work and risk burn out, how long do you think you'll be able to retain them?
People want to work for great companies and be around great leaders. Culture is a byproduct of leadership, whether good or bad.
As you learned last week, there are far more management styles out there than you are probably employing with your own teams.
So, what are you missing?? Are YOU holding your team back because you aren’t deploying the right tools and management styles to create a strong, goal-focused culture?
Is this creating some awareness around how culture can impact even the most carefully crafted strategy?
Working to build awareness about how your managerial approach impacts your team's or organization's culture is a critical step to extraordinary leadership.
As you build that awareness, what learning occurs about how you can improve as a leader? How will that improve your culture? How will that impact outcomes?