How communication is critical to leadership and culture.
When staff members approached me privately to share concerns about their leadership team, the phrase I heard repeatedly was, ‘I’m in my dream job. I hate it!’ Something was obviously wrong.
I worked with this particular leadership team in 2011. They needed some help with their communication and decision-making. To their credit, they were very motivated and passionate people and also very honest and open about their situation. They described rivalries between them, guarded communication and arguments that spilled out into the open plan office.
As a consequence their culture was toxic. Teams had developed rivalries, talented and passionate people were leaving and no one I met had faith in the CEO’s ability to bring them together.
This is a prime example of how important good communication is to leadership and how it shapes culture.
My job as a Coach was to help them turn their dire situation around. The first step was to take stock of their situation and get to a place of honesty – for this team, they recognised relationships were broken and they’re own their behaviours were having a disastrous effect on the organisation.
From there – taking a best for organisation approach – some people worked and improved their relationships, those who decided they couldn’t put difference aside left and a new CEO came in with a mandate to reset the culture.
It wasn’t an overnight journey, but this organisation that is very public facing, now has a cohesive and effective culture. People are in their dream job and loving it.
Drilling down, the key change to make this transition, was the effectiveness of communication
Key Insights.
- The culture of a leadership team sets the tone for the rest of the organisation and that culture is shaped by the quality of communication
- People will often have conflicting ideas, that’s fine and is even useful, unless the communication is combative – then it’s a risk
- People might love the work they do, but that’s not enough for job satisfaction – they need a positive culture too
- If a leadership team hasn’t got it’s act together, good people won’t stick around.
Key Actions.
- Check your leadership team’s culture. Does it match your organisations values and behaviour? If not, don’t ignore it – it’s likely to have a significant and negative effect on your people.
- Be deliberate – take sometime to look specifically at HOW the team is working together. Talk values, collaboration and communication.
I hope you’ve found this article useful. As always, stay in touch and let me know if you have a question.
Photo by Andre Hunter on Unsplash