5 Leadership Requirements for Making Culture Change Happen
Enabling a positive cultural change is often enigmatic and challenging because, much like our ego reactions, culture lies largely in the area of the unconscious. This blindness makes it hard to put our fingers on precisely what it is, and if we aren’t aware of it, then it’s tricky to do anything about it.
This is why people leave stand-alone training events inspired with capabilities and commitments to new ways of working, yet within days have resorted to previous behaviours. For a day or two, leaders are removed from the work stream and are able to see the culture and way of being for what it is. Then when they return to the stream, the culture is like a current that pulls them back into old ways of being and maintaining the cultural status quo. I describe this as the ‘cultural drift’, because it’s like when we swim in the river or sea. We often cannot see the current, but blindly we get caught up in it, and before we know it, we are drifting in a certain direction that then takes energy to swim against.
It’s not only the blindness to the cultural drift, but also the collection of many people that makes it tricky to change. Just as each individual leader has a blind spot to their behaviour and how it impacts others, so does the organisation to its culture, and it’s even harder to shift it due to the complex nature of it being the collective ego
Here are some key lessons I’ve learned from various culture-change projects, highlighting the different elements that make the difference when it comes to leaders and their behaviour.
1) Start at the top
When we bear in mind the influence that leaders’ behavior has on the culture of an organisation, there is little doubt that those in leadership roles, right from the top, have a need to step up and be responsible for the impact of their behaviour and attitude. I have yet to see any change happen, or even achieve momentum, when senior-level sponsorship is missing. And sponsorship is more than the senior leader nodding their head to the culture change; it requires leaders to actively and relentlessly
champion change, really living the behaviours of the new culture and supporting their colleagues and
teams to do the same. This takes persistence, determination and a dogged belief in the value of the change. Role modelling is the greatest form of influence, so there is a need for leaders to increase their mindfulness around how they act and the message their behaviour is sending out to others.
As a young consultant, I was commissioned to run assertiveness courses for middle managers and team leaders. The challenge that I consistently heard from participants was that it was all well and good them learning these skills, but the attitude within the organisation was when the CEO said ‘Jump’, people responded with ‘How high?’ An aggressive approach was seen as the one that worked around the organisation, based on the top leaders’ behaviour.
Yet often the CEOs I coach confide how isolated they feel, particularly from the truth of what
is going on in their organisations. Here is the opportunity for them to explore their own behaviour and
consider why that might be the case and what cultural forces, role modelled by themselves, are holding the lack of honest feedback in place. To be a leader in an organisation, particularly a senior one, is a conscious choice, born out of specific individual motivation. And coming with that are certain responsibilities.
2) Be responsible for the impact you have
This means developing your self- and social-awareness. A leader striving ultimately to satisfy their unconscious ego, fixed in their thinking to gain power, make money, look after themselves at the cost of others, is driven by their own survival needs. These can be so strong that the leader is too unwilling or fearful to take a look at themselves and the impact they have on those around them. This is not the sort of leader required in today’s complex workplace.
What is required of leaders is to possess a level of consciousness around how they, their beliefs, values, emotions, experiences (self-awareness), and attitude and behaviour (social-awareness) affect others. Being responsible for that means setting aside your ego to do what is required for the greater good of the organization and the people you lead. This is hard to do without understanding yourself and the impact you can have, and is certainly helped by creating clarity around your own purpose and vision and what you stand for as a contributor to your organisation and the world as a whole. It also means being a leader who is willing to open up to learning, feedback, self-understanding and insights, be vulnerable in the face of not knowing, and be willing to flex your attitude and behaviour.
3) Create possibility from love, not fear
Leadership is about inspiring, engaging, getting the most from others, navigating towards a destination. A leader’s job is to manage themselves and their emotions, keeping a balance between head and heart so that they can respond to whatever circumstances they face in a powerful way.
Power comes from not taking things personally, recognizing our own vulnerabilities and triggers, and being able to manage these. When our egos are triggered, we jump into defensive reactions of attacking or retreating, both of which are fear based. What can really help us and those around us is to come from a place of compassion and love.
Coming from love doesn’t mean being soft. Love can be fierce and strong, but coming fromlove means our intentions are positive and seeking the greater good rather than the survival and distrustful mentality that fear evokes.
Coming from love also means seeing the greater good in others. Suspend judgement and right and wrong; work with what is so and build from there. When you’re exploring difference, be curious rather than judgmental to open up the space for difficult conversations to be much easier and support the creation of collaboration. Engaging with a loving possibility helps you as a leader create a future that is emotionally compelling, and this in turn engages others and brings them onboard.
4) Leave people in a better place
There are fundamental questions for leaders to consider.
1) Have you left people more empowered and able than they were before? Consider how you engage as a leader with others, passing on leadership skills and encouraging them to grow and develop, so they too can step up. This occurs in the day-to-day business and interactions of an organisation when you give time, support and coaching, creating an environment of positive social communication and psychological safety.
2) How are you contributing to all of your stakeholders’ success? What is your view of each of your stakeholders? Are they there to help you, or you to help them? When you’re seeking personal success, consider collective success. By contributing to all the people in your network being successful, you will find that you will be too.
3) What do you want to be remembered for? As a leader, what is the difference you want to make overall? Consider the legacy you want to leave behind, both in terms of visible changes and results, and in how people experienced you.
4) How do you engage people in the changes you want to make and give away the action and the glory so that others can shine? Part of your leadership responsibility is to make yourself redundant, which means being able to delegate, let go of the detail and free yourself to be more strategic.
5) Leadership development over a period of time
Changing culture means changing behaviour. Whatever choice of development method you select, one-off, solitary approaches are a bit like popping an ice cube into a drink on a hot day. It will soon melt, so its impact is short term.
For sustainable change, development on a psychological and behavioural basis takes time, so make sure leaders’ development:
• Takes place over a period of months
• Allows for reflection and standing back
• Presents clear benefits for leaders’ own development
• Addresses blind spots
• Encourage people to be responsible for their learning
• Uses everyday working situations for applying learning and practice new skills
• Are reinforced by a selection of activities in the workplace, e.g. recognition and reward when new
behaviours are working
In concluding, how leaders act and behave creates the collective unconscious of the organisation, commonly known as the culture. Leaders have a fundamental role to play in creating any desired cultural shift. Responsibility for our impact and development, connecting with love and compassion, striving for creating a legacy bigger than ourselves and committing to a programme of development over time are all invaluable requirements of leaders in making culture change happen.