Building Consistent Team Behavior, Based on Our Values
Society has countless “influencers” with significant followings. Having a high number of folks watch their foolishness online is wildly different from the responsibility leaders hold when they’ve earned genuine influence with the people on their teams, or for that matter, anyone their behavior impacts. Whether we like it or not, walking the talk to provide a consistent example of what our core company values looks like in application is imperative when we have this kind of influence with the people around us. Even when our behavior sets the proper tone for our teams, each team member will need routine reinforcement as they work to build those values into each of their own tasks. And that will require feedback from us and everyone who’s part of our leadership team. While this is anything but easy, it’s far simpler than what we’ll deal with indefinitely when those values aren’t a consistent part of our entire team’s behavior.
My first direct reference to Chick-fil-A through our look at the significance of values in the foundation of any organization was from an article comparing their performance with customers to that of McDonald’s, with Chick-fil-A being in the number one spot for ten consecutive years. With that ranking in mind, what do we all expect any time we visit one of their stores - anywhere? We expect to be waited on quickly and courteously, we expect to get exactly what we ordered (which isn’t likely to happen at any location with golden arches), we expect our food to be really good, and we can count on hearing “My Pleasure” several times. While I won’t go so far as to suggest any of these will be done perfectly every time, we can absolutely bank on each of them being executed well above average - consistently!
Before tying this to what you and I need to do to achieve this type of consistency with our team members modeling our core values, I’ll remind once more that it took Truett Cathy ten full years to thoroughly embed “My Pleasure” into the Chick-fil-A experience we count on today. I’d love to think we can learn from his success and build the behaviors that consistently model our company values into our team’s routine in less time. To do that, we’ll need to reference those values constantly and we’ll need to live the example we need our teams to follow, but we’ll also need to set abundantly clear expectations for how their behavior should also be based on our values. Even when we’ve provided meticulous explanations, detailing exactly what we expect to see from that point forward and holding a high standard of accountability must be in place.
The Non-Negotiables: We Can’t Vary on Values
In chapter eight of What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!), I detailed how much confusion costs an organization and emphasized how significant the need is for leaders to set crystal-clear expectations. Chapter nine fell right in line by outlining how much profitability is lost when teams aren’t held accountable for at least meeting expectations. While both were geared at overall performance, both are also crucial if we’re going to build consistent team behavior based on our core company values.
Setting abundantly clear expectations for how our values are modeled is such a critical part ensuring our organization’s foundation leads to a lasting legacy that will dig into that specifically soon. Before we get there, though, I’ll challenge you to consider something that could be preventing your team from latching onto your values as quickly or in the way that you had hoped.
In the nearly thirty years since Cindy and I started dating, we’ve realized there are countless things we don’t agree on. She thinks a ribeye needs to be all but burnt to be edible and I prefer mine much like Sonny and Pepper ordered theirs in A Cowboy Way. Her approach to handling a problem is to think through several possible outcomes to identify the best way to achieve precision and accuracy on her first attempt where I tend to go with the “hold my beer and watch this” approach (even though I don’t drink), then make corrections as needed. I could go on like this for days, but hopefully you’re not the slow guy at the magic show and you already get the point. While there are indeed tons of things we don’t agree on, we realized early on that we didn’t vary on our personal values. Loyalty to one another, our shared Faith, and an intense focus on character always taking priority over whatever was fun or more profitable in the moment have been non-negotiables since the beginning of our relationship.
When we, as leaders in our organizations, talk about and model our core values consistently, it’s not about coercing our team members into being mindless clones who do exactly what we say because they have no other choice. The idea of diversity, equity, and inclusion has been in the headlines continuously for several years - and rarely for the right reasons. Since I toe the line by challenging the societal norm for that in the third lesson of our Recruitment, Retention, & Culture course, I’ll only touch on it briefly here: the most powerful thing I’ve seen true diversity provide any organization has been varying thought processes that drive genuine continuous improvement. Make no mistake though, as great as diversity in experience, skill, and thought can be, I’m in no way suggesting there’s room for diversity in values.
The reason I continue to emphasize the need for every leader to talk about their company’s core values in explicit detail and model those values daily is that the only way we can ever hope to see them consistently displayed by our teams is to show that our values are non-negotiable. In Traction, Gino Wickman shares this in detailing how important organizational values are, “Once they’re defined, you must hire, fire, review, and recognize people based on these core values. This is how to build a thriving culture around them.” When we are willing to consistently model our values in our own role, talk about those values routinely with our teams, and take every chance we can get to show just how each value can be acted on in what our team members do, we should eventually see our teams following suit. And then we need to be sure to recognize them for doing it.
Recognized Behavior Gets Repeated
Building consistent team behavior that’s based on our core company values will require removing any possible variance around what each value looks like in practice - in each individual role. But having a clear understanding of the necessary behaviors is just part of the process. It will take at least as much effort for our team members to build those (likely) different behaviors into their routines as it did for us; maybe even more. As leaders, we will need to be very intentional about recognizing even the slightest changes we see them making.Â
I reference the lessons I learned through my experience in behavior-based safety for multiple reasons. Of course it’s rewarding to help reduce workplace injuries, as well as the costs that come with those injuries. The fact that it was my primary responsibility for close to fifteen years resulted in that methodology being a part of who I am today. But maybe more importantly than either of those is how much it taught me about why we all do what we do, even though it was through a lens focused specifically on safety. One core tenant I probably don’t allude to enough applies here: recognized behavior gets repeated!
I had learned this in theory early on in my exposure to the world of behavior-based safety but I learned it in practice while tossing a baseball back and forth with our son when he was seven or eight years old. It was his first time wearing a glove so that alone took some getting used to. Since I had always been extremely good at baseball (everything except the parts that required running, hitting, and catching), I was uniquely qualified to bark commands at a kid with zero perspective for what he should be doing. Each time he attempted to catch the ball, he held the glove like a basket. If the ball was coming from high above his head, that was fine. If it was coming straight at him, it was going to glance off his hand just prior to removing any remaining baby teeth.Â
As parents, what are we naturally inclined to do? For me, it was to address what he was doing wrong - over and over and over. And that recognized behavior was definitely getting repeated. What I failed to do consistently as I bitched about what he shouldn’t be doing was show him exactly what he should be doing. I do remember a few instances where he held the glove correctly and caught the ball, but I failed to comment on that since I was so engaged in addressing the more frequent undesired behavior. After what seemed like an eternity - and probably even longer for him - it hit me like a ton of bricks that I should be recognizing any attempt he made to change how he held the glove instead of only chastising him. Making that simple change didn’t resolve the issue immediately but it sure helped, and it made the entire experience something we both enjoyed (eventually).
To build a culture around values, even after we’ve laid a simple foundation and we walk the talk every day, we’ve got to make sure we’re celebrating even the smallest victories with our team members as they work to model our company values in their daily routines. Those small victories, especially when recognized appropriately and consistently, will build to bigger victories. All that said, we will still need to address the times where they fall short but doing that requires those clear expectations I mentioned earlier. Having clear and sustainable expectations in place and maintaining accountability around how we expect our core values to be exemplified can build the legacy we want to achieve as an organization so that’s what we’ll work through next.