Leadership Training

Identifying and Building the Five Elements of a Healthy Work Culture

by Craig Ross and Steven Vannoy

First in a five-part monthly series from the upcoming book, "Leadership Gold," by Steven Vannoy and Craig Ross.

Building Your People

Few leaders will argue with the notion that the health of a work culture directly influences business results. A mountain of data has been produced to support this, provided most recently in many of the top-selling business books on the market today.

Yet, knowing something is all together different than doing something about it. What happens if one doesn't know how to build a strong culture? This is akin to the popular Nike ad. On the screen in front of the viewer is the perfect athlete, their slender body glistening with sweat as they run through the streets at 3 a.m. in the morning. Up pops the familiar slogan, "Just do it." As the viewer sits on the couch with their pizza and beer, surely the question arises, "How do I do it?"

How many incentives does it take?

How do you build a healthy work culture? Executives who have handed out bonuses, cleared their calendars for company picnics, brought in motivational speakers and declared an official "jeans day" - only to watch trust wane, productivity slide and communication falter - scratch their heads. They ponder, "How many incentives does it take until we trust one another? How many demands do I have to make until the departmental silos fall that inhibit communication? What does it take for us to really know who we are?"

We believe the reader instinctively knows exactly what it takes -- articulating it is the key. This is accomplished through a tool found in Pathways to Leadership -- "The Big 5 of a New Leader's Job."

By identifying the essential elements of a healthy work culture --

• building the individual,
• becoming a solutions-focused culture,
• unlocking full, free, two-way information flow,
• developing clear, achieveable stretch objectives,
• and creating a healthy team identity

-- leaders can begin to see the parts of the whole. They replace nebulous desires regarding their culture with knowing exactly what it is they want to develop. Thus, the Big 5 of the New Leader's Job is a blueprint, the ultimate upstream tool, saving leaders time, the organization precious resources, and enhancing the bottom line. Not surprisingly, as the five elements of the Big 5 are strengthened, the symptoms of an unhealthy culture begin to disappear.

Building Your People: The 1st Element

Take, for example, Heska Corporation, an animal health company that began its work with Pathways to Leadership, Inc. in the middle of 2002. Prior to this time, they were on the edge of a dark chasm that separated them from their objectives; large lay-offs were the order of the day. Lack of faith in leadership was rampant. Communication was often forced and painful. And experiencing a profitable quarter was an unrecognized dream.

CEO Bob Grieve knew there had to be another way. "If we were going to turn this around, it had to start with our people. But we needed something we could get our arms around in order to build the culture we wanted." The Pathways Big 5 of the New Leader's Job, and the tools that support it, provided them with the means. In one year the company has seen

• a greater culture of self-discipline,
• a focus on blame and problems shift to a greater focus on learning and solutions,
• interdepartmental communication reach all-time highs,
• objectives being met with greater efficiency,
• a stronger, healthier team identity.
• and their first profitable quarter in their 15 year history.

Not surprisingly, Heska has exceeded their financial goals the last three quarters. While the causes for this are multivariate, Mark Cicotello, VP of HR, knows the improving health of their culture has a lot to do with their success. "The Pathways process has become the very fabric of how we do business."

Elements of The Big 5 of the New Leader's Job

Building Individuals

Initially, when leaders think of building individuals, they think of self-esteem. Sadly, as they go about building self-esteem, they return to work the next day to find that in many cases they've built destructive egos! Building the individuals of a team is much more than enhancing their self-esteem; it's building the relationship they have with themselves.

• How proficiently does a person process their emotions?
• How effective are they at thinking long-term during crunch time?
• What sort of aptitude do they have when it comes to thinking and acting in the context of a team?
• How capable is a person at accepting what has been done (good or bad) so that the team can move forward?

Upstream Approach

We all know the value of thinking upstream. Yet, we've all seen the 'manage by crisis' approach - where a leader has gotten caught down stream. These leaders only take action when they learn an employee has done something wrong or right, at which point the leader applies the appropriate consequences or rewards. The upstream leader, the leader who is building individuals, considers why the employee created the action in the first place; these leaders address the effect behavior, but place their focus on the cause. Once they identify the cause variable, they go to work building the individual so that new beliefs, perspectives and aptitudes are born.

The old way to accomplish this is to tell someone how great he or she is. Top leaders understand that "telling" someone anything is as valuable as passing out junk bonds. Telling rarely works ("If I've told him onceƒ"). Rather than using empty platitudes, the key is to communicate in a way the people receiving the information know it as truth. This is accomplished many ways, including acknowledging the person for behaviors and accomplishments with specificity and sincerity. In addition, knowledge-building questions also inspire growth and send a clear message: your ideas count. And establishing clear guidelines with mutual buy-in goes a long way toward building your people.

The old route of bonuses, motivational speakers and other outside stimuli usually perpetuates the problem. Continually giving someone something in return for good acts deepens the dependency on external motivation. Using this approach, the leader can never motivate enough!

Internal Motivation

By building individuals, organizations tap into a more consistent and reliable source: internal motivation. When an employee has a healthy relationship with him/herself they have a heightened level of awareness that allows them to self-assess how they are processing their emotions. It affects the way they respond to situations and increases their effectiveness when interacting with others.

The senior leaders at Heska are seeing results from using the Big 5 concept. Bert Honsch, VP of Sales for Heska reports, "Having this awareness allows me to be cognizant of the impact my relationship with myself has on those around me." Honsch is better able to assess the role he plays when he interacts and communicates with others. He says he is more capable of taking remedial action and responsibility in those situations where he knows he has created less than desirable outcomes. Consequently, the sales force significantly exceeded their sales goal last quarter and there was no turnover compared to last year for the same period, when the turnover rate was 70%.

Bert Honsch is a valuable employee. His experience and talent have always been influential; now, with a stronger relationship with himself, his contributions to Heska's future growth is enhanced exponentially because he is better able to leverage his talents.

When employees develop a stronger relationship with themselves, self-defensiveness, playing victim and lack of discipline are less and less a part of the equation. Without being held back by their personal dramas, their performance shines.

Leadership is about creating change.

By developing individuals, successful organizations create a healthier culture from the inside out. This is a new approach, as opposed to the top-down variation, which drains resources and furnishes incremental, short-lived successes. As Cicotello said, "We're growing our culture organically." The Big 5 of the New Leader's Job provides that foundation.

Next Month: Part 2: We'll explore the second element of The Big 5 of the New Leader's Job: Becoming a Solutions-Focused Organization.

(c) 2003 Pathways to Leadership, Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.