Culture Change

Your organization’s culture has an almost invisible set of written and unwritten rules of how to survive and thrive. Some traits are essential to your success; others hamper creativity, collaboration and performance.

We have identified four chronic leadership dysfunctions that are present in every organization: conflict avoidance, Us vs. Them Dynamics, resistance to uncomfortable learning, and tactical fire-fighting. Your people may be very busy, well-meaning, and talented — but they under-perform their potential in proportion to how pervasive these dysfunctions are in your culture. 

Don’t send your employees to get “fixed,” however, because it won’t work. It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters how you act. Your people will proactively own their responsibility in problems, raise uncomfortable issues, and ask probing questions in their performance reviews when you and your senior leadership have modeled it enough for them to feel safe doing so.

Organizational transformation happens from the inside out. As employees at every level of your company become personally aware of their ego-driven behaviors, and discuss them openly with each other, a more potent way of interacting, collaborating, and contributing will emerge.

The paradox of cultural dysfunction is that everyone is both victim and accomplice. Your people probably believe the culture happens to them, even as they unwittingly play it out on others. They all crave something different, but lack the awareness, tools and collective commitment to make a sustained shift.

A culture of authenticity, inspiration and ego-free relationships will inspire your people to take risks, go the extra mile, surpass performance expectations. Time and again, we have seen how grateful people are when leaders create cultures that make that possible.