Leaders and team members set the tone in your work culture - for better or worse - SmartBrief

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Leaders and team members set the tone in your work culture — for better or worse

Desired culture doesn't just appear -- you need to put in the work to define, communicate and model values and expectations.

2 min read

Management

Purposeful culture

Jamie Street/Unsplash

To what degree is your work culture purposeful, positive and productive?

Your work culture meets or even exceeds these alliterative criteria when:

  1. Everyone in your organization understands and models your company’s servant purpose, which describes how your products, services and efforts improve the quality of life of customers.
  2. Everyone understands and models your company’s values and defined valued behaviors, demonstrating respect and validation of others’ ideas, efforts and accomplishments daily.
  3. Everyone understands the company’s performance expectations — for team members, teams, divisions, the whole company — and delivers traction on those expected results daily.

If you have not invested time and energy to define these key outcomes — servant purpose, values expectations, and performance expectations — it is unlikely that those unspoken expectations will be delivered upon.

And, even if you have defined and communicated these key outcomes, if you do not invest time and energy daily to align everyone’s plans, decisions and actions to these “three P’s” criteria, you won’t enjoy a healthy, vibrant work culture.

The reality is that no matter what expectations have been communicated, leaders and team members set the tone — every day.

In today’s threeminute video episode just for SmartBrief readers, I describe two extremes, one of which is all too common in today’s workplaces. The tone of your workplace may not be entirely negative, but if it is not entirely purposeful, positive, and productive, your work culture falls short.

 

Subscribe to my free twice-a-month newsletter. Subscribers enjoy free resources including a preview of my Amazon best-seller, “The Culture Engine,” which helps team and company leaders create a powerful, purposeful, positive, productive work environment.

And, subscribe to my YouTube channel, where you’ll find more short, crisp, and clear episodes of my “Culture Leadership Charge” video series.

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