How do your employees respond when the decisions that they need to make, either internally or externally, are not guided by their employee manuals and their managers are not around? Identify those behaviors and you will see the direct influence of your corporate culture, and appreciate its importance.
Do you want to proactively drive your corporate culture? Good. Start with with the few markers below:
- Have a company vision and share it. It is a powerful guide.
- State your values and live them. Ethical behavior is nurtured.
- Be guided by what excites your customers. Customer satisfaction is not enough.
- Employees are your front-end, your customer experience. What are you really doing for them besides providing employment?
- Give credit. Don’t ever ever steal it.
- Take responsibility. Don’t make excuses.
- Candor is good. It is efficient. It must be respectful.
- Praise in public and address performance challenges in private.
- Lead by example. What you do resonates louder than what you say.
- The most important communications are often non-verbal. Observe intensely.
- Listen. Really listen to words, pauses, hesitations, silences.
- Avoid limiting words, “no”, “but”, etc. A “yes” habit is powerful.
- Keep away destructive people and negativity. A single destructive employee affects many and no one person is better than all.
- Don’t cling to the past. Past behavior will most likely produce diminished results in a world that has moved.
- Have fun. Fun is fun, fun is contagious, fun is addictive, and fun wins.