An organization of other people will be as strong and healthy as the culture they live in. Similarly, your team will be as strong and healthy as the culture they work in.
Culture is a set of shared mindsets, values, goals, practices, and regulations that members of a society use to navigate their world. In the end, culture defines your team’s performance, informing how they interact with each other and with their suppliers, prospects, customers, or customers.
Culture is also the proverbial “elephant in the room” for many leaders who succeed differently. This is something that is talked about a lot but is rarely implemented in the agendas of assemblies and in educational initiatives. Because for many leaders, a healthy culture and a high acting culture seem to be the two ends of a spectrum without bringing them together.
If you think of functionality as a “yield,” you can use the analogy that the crop is the soil in which you plant the seeds and the irrigation, fertilization, protection, and harvesting protocols you have in position to maximize yield. The possible options you would make to create the optimal “crop” for a high-yield crop are aimed at assembling the desires of the type of seeds you have planted and the type of crop you are growing. plans to produce. If those wishes are not fulfilled, you cannot “feed” those seeds to survive, let a harvest produce.
Where leaders get it wrong and end up frustrated with creating culture is that they think about the suitability of the culture and the suitability of the team from an attitude of progression rather than a natural attitude.
Those who build a healthy culture are about offering what makes other people feel smart in the moment: team events, ping-pong tables, kombucha at will or avoiding conflict around the convention table.
This type of “health” can affect functionality if the fundamental wishes of humans in their groups are not met. You can’t use a smart game of table tennis to compensate for the lack of clarity about what is expected of you in the next assignment for example. And no amount of kombucha will attend an assembly where there is no clash or opportunity to contribute anything significant either.
But in fact, it is conceivable to create a healthy culture that organically leads to greater team functionality and human fulfillment.
In fact, creating this kind of culture is the first step to maximizing the greatest asset that you, as a leader, owe: the power and perspective of the humans on your team.
In How to Maximize Your Company’s Greatest Asset: The Secret to Exponential Business Growth, I said, “Everything you measure, from sales to net profit, and one and both, is an herbal byproduct of human functionality. Just as crop yield the farmer’s measurements are a byproduct of the functionality of the seed they plant, the KPIs by which he is measured as a leader are a byproduct of the functionality of one and both humans on his team.
To maximize this yield, you want to create your crop as a team on principles similar to those a farmer would use about soil composition, irrigation, and windbreaks in their infrastructure, or the timing of fertilization and harvesting. And those principles are based on the fundamental desires of seeds, or humans, to actualize their potential for expansion, not on what makes them feel smart right now.
It’s tempting, especially when we’re all bruised by two years of isolation, loss, and fear, and we face ever-changing demanding situations in hiring and retention, to focus on education. But it will backfire if we don’t reimagine and redesign our culture to meet what I call the 6 aspects of human needs™.
These desires—clarity, connection, consideration, contribution, challenge, and trust—shape the framework for a healthy, successful culture that produces the highest “return” imaginable. around those six “C’s”, they not only feel good, but also feel safe, heard, valued and empowered. Moment.
Humans love to try and succeed, it’s in our DNA. When we feel strong and healthy, physically, mentally, and emotionally, we are driven to “go,” whatever it is that provides us with that sense of effort and prosperity.
It is inevitable that when leaders base their culture on first gathering those desires for the humans in their groups and then on training them, they will form strong, healthy groups that naturally try to reach their full potential, which translates into greater returns of benefit and fulfillment. for everyone.