Cultural Alignment Leadership 8 Checks on Your Organization’s Culture
Every new year we take the time to reflect and look forward on organizational changes that keep us more productive and make us a premiere employer. It is especially important to start the new year with a “culture refresh,” or an honest look at what your organization represents and whether your employees embody your goals and vision.
Cultural Check-in: 8 Ways to Get in Sync
It is critical to take the cultural pulse of your organization. Take time to review and revamp the way you lead your people. While you may be knocking it out of the park in some of the areas, perhaps others need to be started or refreshed. Use these eight checks to get in alignment with the culture you want:
Conduct an employee survey - Ask how employees feel about various aspects of your organization culture, such as accountability of leadership, trust in leadership, ability to take appropriate risks without fear of punishment if new ideas fail, and how they feel about their total rewards package. Conduct the surveys in writing, in person, and in virtual formats, and seek to hear and understand feedback employees provide.
Direct a 360 Feedback assessment – Start with members of your executive and management teams and consider infusing it into your entire performance assessment program. Leaders need to be open to and seek out feedback from those above and below them on the org chart, as well as from their peers.
Build manager self-awareness – Infuse constructive feedback, which can be enhanced by 360 feedback, as something individual leaders develop and cultivate all year long. Having a desire to grow personally and professionally needs to be an ongoing mindset for all of your leaders all of the time. Support this mindset with coaching, training, and other growth opportunities.
Cultivate Emotional Intelligence – Develop leaders’ awareness and an ability to label their own feelings, which helps them to be aware of the feelings of others.
Develop and resource teams continuously - Provide coaching in team dynamics when necessary if some teams have gotten off-balance with respect to individual participation levels and communication styles.
Improve conflict resolution skills – Encourage all of your leaders to practice managing disagreements and build skills in conflict resolution. They need to face into conflict instead of avoiding it.
Foster honesty and open dialog - Empower and require your leaders to “name the elephant in the room.” Employees need to hear the truth about change and other events that may impact them. If leaders do not tell the truth and quell potential or actual rumors, employees will make up their own reality and spread it throughout the organization.
Nurture employee wellness – Support leaders who care about the physical, social, emotional, and financial well-being of their team members. Ensure your leaders are well-versed in all aspects of wellness and trained in how to recognize employees needing help in any of these areas.
Not Sure Where to Start? Let Conover Consulting help you identify and fine-tune your culture in the new year. Our Cultural Alignment services work with your current and future culture champions to align your team to be more focused and productive. Take our assessment and contact us.