Leadership Podcast: Creating a Value-Driven Culture, Part 2
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Today, we’re picking up where Craig left off in “Creating a Value-Driven Culture, Part 1.” In Episode 5, Craig shared the first three principles to building a culture centered around values: determine honestly what your actions say you value, identify your values and your key leaders’ values, and narrow your list of values to 10 or fewer. If you missed last month’s episode, you can listen to Part 1 here.
Let’s look at the last two principles to create a value-driven culture:
4. Once you clearly define your values, describe them in short, life-giving statements. If you can’t tweet your values, they are too long. If your values don’t move you emotionally, they are too dry. If your values don’t move you to action, get some new values. We want our values to be memorable, portable and emotional.
5. Shape your culture and build your people around your values. Lead toward your values as if everything depends on it. Why? Because it does! Organizations don’t change. People change. When people change, the organization changes. If you want to change the culture, change the people.
What does this all mean for leading your organization?
Hire and recruit for your values. You can teach skills, but you can't teach values.
Remove people with distinctly different values. If your values don’t align, do everyone a favor and go where they do.
If you don’t like where you are going, change directions.
Four Benefits of a Strong Value Driven Culture
Strong values attract the right people and weed out the wrong people.
Right values result in right actions.
Clear values reduce the need for policies and procedures.
People love to be a part of a place with clear direction and values.
What advice would you give to someone coming out from under a domineering leader, secretive leader, or unpredictable leader? I have found...it's almost like coming out of an abusive relationship.
It’s important to detox first of all. You also need to learn from it. Ask yourself, “What will I do differently as a leader?” Don’t be afraid to trust as you move forward.
When people struggle with change on your volunteer leadership team, what steps would you advise for leading them through that change?
There are only two times people change: When they have to and when they want to. People don’t hate change—usually, they hate the way we try to change them. It's important to help people see “why” change is necessary. Allow them as much as possible to create the change. Remember, people will always complain. Be prepared for short-term downturn. Remind them that change is inevitable, but progress is optional.
An effective leader must be able to delegate. How do you decide what to delegate and who to delegate to?
When it comes to delegation, the goal should be to give away everything that someone else can do, and to eventually do what only you can do. Feedback and coaching is important.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
How can you improve your values to make them memorable, portable and emotional?
Do we have people on our team who don’t embrace our core values?
What are 3 things you can do now to drive your values deeper into your organization?
