If you look at the Fortune 500 from the year 2000, you’ll find that more than half of the companies on that year’s list are gone.
Why is this?
After all their success and market leadership, what eventually undermined their performance?
Two things – loss of leadership and loss of culture.
Whatever team you lead, large or small, it’s critical to focus on developing the leadership potential of individuals, strengthening the Leadership Group and driving the right behaviours. You do this by bringing about a change in thinking when it comes to their leadership, which builds a high performance team culture.
Culture is key.
And culture is Leadership.
Good leadership = good culture.
Bad leadership = bad culture.
What’s the culture like in your business right now?
Therefore, developing a high performance team culture should be a priority for all leaders as it drives the actions of all your people. It dictates what behaviours are the “norm” and what’s expected from each person and it’s their behaviours that create the culture of your people and team.
It’s great to have your Vision embossed on a sign in the foyer or highlighted in a strategy document, but unless the thinking of you and your people is on point to deliver the behaviours required to support your Vision statement, you’ll not change your culture and you’ll not achieve your Vision.
A change won’t happen unless you have key people in your business, team or organisation and your Leadership Group, driving the change, living the desired behaviours.
End of story.
Culture, driven by you and your Leadership Group, is key for your success and longevity.
You must lead by example.
Who do you have in your Leadership Group?
Do you have a clear vision of the culture you need to create?
Does your Leadership Group know it? Do they effectively drive it?
What behaviours do they (and you) need to change?
When it comes to leadership, individuals need to have a hunger to want to grow themselves and this is largely assisted by having a high performance culture that drives people to want to be the best version of themselves.
Where do you need to grow?
Do you hunger to see yourself grow?
Who do you need to grow in leadership?
Does your culture encourage people to grow and provide opportunities?
Personal growth is an inside decision.
You can’t give what you don’t have and what you don’t learn.
A friend of mine is a personal trainer and we were talking about his business the other day. He said one of the constant challenges was living what he promoted to his clients. He was instructing them on what to eat, how to exercise and how often and encouraging them to develop the mental toughness needed to take their training to the next level.
He said,
“If I don’t do it, what motivation do they have to change their behaviours? I need to lead them by example because they’re always watching me and ask what I do. I could lie but it’d soon be pretty obvious to them that I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching because my body shape and fitness would be a dead give away. I always need to stay a step ahead, learn new techniques from my trainer and have the discipline to add them into my daily routine”.
What are you learning when it comes to Leadership?
Who’s leading you, challenging you to grow, challenging you to change, challenging you to learn?
Do you have a mentor?
What are you prepared to give up so you can go up?
Do you need to change a daily habit or routine?
Everything duplicates good and bad in life.
When it comes to Leadership, leading by example allows you, the Leader, to model and duplicate the right behaviours in your team to allow you to create a high performance culture.
If you were being observed 24/7, what would people see when it comes to Leadership?
What do you need to duplicate in the team you lead?
Effective leaders also develop their key people to grow their strengths and skills to further enhance and grow the culture of their team. When you grow your people, not only does their performance improve, but they also trust you more as the leader as you’re investing into them personally, and this also builds your culture.
Do you see the development of your key people a priority?
Gaining and building trust is a critical leadership skill in building culture.
Trust is everything.
Just because you have trust today from your team, doesn’t mean you will have trust tomorrow – you’re not perfect and neither are they. Leadership is about earning and re-earning trust daily, backing up your talk with your actions. Building trust requires you as the leader to be transparent and completely open with your team.
What do you need to be transparent about?
Do you back your talk with your actions?
When it comes to developing your key people, aligning their thinking and behaviours to your Vision, it requires you to deliberately focus on them.
Are your key people feeling valued?
Are they being heard?
The number one strategy to do this and to develop your people and culture, to build trust, cast vision, to empower your people and to effectively communicate with them is the one on one process.
To build a successful organisation you always build it one on one. Effective leaders can discern who needs more one on one time with them than others and when (this takes practice).
Who do you need to spend one on one time with to empower and build trust?
What process do you use to do this?
Can I encourage you to try the one on one process? It’s extremely effective for driving cultural change.
The responsibility of leadership is to create a high performance team culture. It drives your peoples’ thinking and behaviours and, it ultimately determines whether you’ll achieve your Vision.
Be challenged as the Leader to continually learn new ways to improve your skills – because after all, how can you expect others to grow and change when you don’t?
You must lead by example in everything. Yes the responsibility is immense, but that’s leadership and it’s necessary.
Use the one on one process to cast vision, build trust and to truly communicate and empower your team, so that you encourage behaviours that will build an outstanding culture upon which you’ll build your long term success.
