It doesn’t take long does it when you enter a business to determine what the culture is like?
Many aspects of it are readily apparent, e.g. how happy the staff are, how they interact with you and each other, the pride they take in their work/how they serve you, etc.
And these all play a key role in the long-term performance and profitability of the business..
And what about your business? If your team doesn’t really love where they work and what they’re doing for you, they’re just spinning their wheels on your money.
Many recent studies have found this is a growing worldwide trend, aka, Quiet Quitting.
Here’s a diagram below that you may or may not be familiar with.
It holds the starting key to growing a high-performance culture that will fuel your long-term business performance.
I call it the Upside-Down Pyramid of Building a High-Performance Culture.
Today, I want to explain why this pyramid is so powerful and how to take the first step to implement its principles into your business.
This is what I call the Holy Grail of Company Culture:
To grow a business where top-performing people love to work, where they’re thriving, highly engaged, unified, and loyal. They are accountable and respectful to one another and can be counted on, to drive and achieve the Vision.
The Upside-Down Pyramid of Building a High-Performance Culture will help you do this.
It’s that effective.
I’ve witnessed it for over 20 years and counting in my businesses and those of my clients.
My brilliant mentor, Jim, always told me that:
“90% of your organic growth comes from the internal enlargement of your people, and you need to lead this Coxey.”
But your people can only grow internally and perform at the top of their game when you have the right culture in place.
Could your culture improve?
In a nutshell, the Upside-Down Pyramid explains that to build a high-performance culture, you need to first build the heart and spirit of your people.
Once you’ve done this, this starts to build trust.
When you have trust it leads to Mental Toughness or positive thoughts under pressure because they trust you as the leader and they trust their teammates.
And then this leads to positive actions and your people giving you their best and continually improving.
These are all essential to building a high-performance culture and business.
Here are some stats I mentioned last week that I wanted to highlight again because they illustrate this point beautifully:
The ADP Global Workplace Study, September 2020 found that trust
Is the #1 driver of engagement.
Enables collaboration.
Fosters creativity and innovation.
Increases productivity by up to 50%
Those who completely trust their colleagues, team leader, and senior leadership are 42 times more likely to be resilient and that,
High-trust companies are 2.5x more likely to be high-performing revenue companies.
I thought you’d like those numbers.
But to grow trust, you need to first build the heart and spirit of your people.
The most effective way to do this is one on one. Through one-on-one mentoring.
It makes sense doesn’t it that when you take the time to spend one on one time with your people (start with your top 20%) to show them that you care about them, what’s going on for them, and how you can help them do their role better and that you have their back, that you start to build their heart and spirit.
Many times, in a one-on-one session, I’ll uncover things going on at home or work that I wouldn’t have known otherwise – for example a sick child or parent, or marriage problems, or gossip or conflict that’s going on in the office that’s pulling the person down, impacting their heart and spirit, and effecting their performance.
Knowing this information gives you insight into how best to lead them to build up their heart and spirit – for example – if your team member is late coming into the office a few times a month but you know it’s because they had to take their daughter to the specialist, then you don’t bring it up. You offer to help them with their workload instead.
Or if you know there’s conflict in the office, this gives you the opportunity to help resolve the situation and restore unity and peace and stop the damage to people’s hearts and spirits that conflict brings.
Meeting one on one also allows you to tell that person in front of you how much you value them and recognise some of the great things they’re doing for you, again building their heart and spirit.
Face-to-face recognition, one on one, has a much greater impact than an email or text.
A recent study found that 69% of employees would work harder if they received more recognition, though only one-third of employees receive recognition each week.
Could you improve how you praise your people for the work they do for you?
How much deliberate one-on-one time do you spend with your top 20%?
This brings my blog to a close today. It’s only really scratched the tip of the iceberg of this topic but I trust it’s given you a sound starting point for improving and growing the right culture in your business to fuel your Vision.
Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
But your business is built one on one.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me, and stay tuned for my upcoming blogs on the power of one on one mentoring.
Take care and keep climbing,
Coxey.
Peter Cox
CEO and Founder
Leadership Dynamics
