Do We Walk the Talk, Every Day?
Building a culture around values requires the leader to provide a daily example of exactly how each definition outlined in the handbook and on the wall directly applies to what’s required of them. Providing a detailed explanation, connecting those definitions to their behaviors so nothing is left to assumption, is just as important. Based on the MITSloan Management Review article I’ve cited a few times previously, stating that “more than three-quarters of CEOs interviewed in a major business magazine discussed their company’s culture or core values — even when not specifically asked about it,” the talking piece usually happens (even if it’s only to the reporters or investors). Even when we’re intentional about having those conversation with the team members counting on us for that clarity, and even when we’re able to articulate clear ties between our own behaviors and how we’ve defined our core company values, that doesn’t automatically mean any of it will translate to what each of them do in their own daily routine.
Through the Strategic Leadership Coaching that Cindy and I do with dozens of business owners and executives today, we frequently challenge them to identify tasks that they’re doing but may not need to - the tasks that someone on their team could take over, allowing them to have more time for things that only they can do. During these conversations, we always stress that it’s not about dumping something we don’t like onto someone as a form of punishment; this should be very clearly thought out so any responsibility that’s delegated helps the team member develop their own skills in the process. We frequently hear leaders say, “I won’t ask someone to do something that I’m not willing to do myself.” While we admire the spirit behind that, the stark reality of leadership is that we just don’t have enough hours in the day to do everything we have the physical ability to do, or everything we want to do… All that said, ensuring everyone on our teams has a crystal-clear understanding of our core values IS NOT one of the things we can ever delegate (or dump).
In a recent interview about my book, Leading With A Clear Purpose, I was asked why I thought there were so many varying descriptions of “leadership” and to describe what it meant to me. I simply stated that I viewed “leadership” as a verb; the act of providing a service to others that they’re not capable of themselves. I explained that authority had nothing to do with this kind of leadership. I went on to reference what I once heard Dave Ramsey share in detailing the difference between “servant leadership” and “subservient leadership.” Dave said that, “Subservient leadership is doing something for someone that they can and should be doing for themselves, where true servant leadership is doing what they cannot do in order to help them be even more effective in what they can do.”
As we work, as leaders, to help our team members understand exactly how our core values can be modeled in their roles, there will be times where we absolutely should be performing tasks that typically fall in their scope of work. And when we do, it’s critical that we explain the connection between the word we hold us as a value and the behavior we’ve used to put it into practice - just like when we exemplify that value while doing our own work. Do we walk the talk in every way we possibly can, and do we do it everyday? With that question in mind, here’s one of the best examples of this that I’ve ever seen personally.
Nothing Left to Chance…
As we started down this path detailing how strong businesses are built on a foundation of values, I shared something I personally experienced while creating a policy manual for the new owners of company - a textbook example of not just designing that handbook around their core values but building those values into every decision they made while leading the organization. Through the time I spent with Craig as we crafted the manual we’d be rolling out to his new team, I saw him exemplify the five values he and Kim decided to build their company around. Not only did I see him exhibit compassion, integrity, humility, family, and dependability while performing each of his own responsibilities, I can’t think of a time when I was at their place of business and didn’t see Craig take advantage of opportunities to model how those values could be applied in other roles too. Whether it was being compassionate in a situation with a teammate where his predecessors would have been less understanding, showing genuine humility by carrying a purchase to a customer’s car (rather than directing someone else to do it), or by treating everyone he interacted with - included me and Cindy - like they really were part of his family, everyone working there saw and felt those values for months before we detailed them in his new handbook. Each of them had ample opportunities to see how Craig expected the values to be displayed in their own roles. And quite honestly, the longest tenured employees seemed to respect and appreciate his example even more than the newer ones.
Just after their second anniversary of owning the business, Craig, Kim, and I had an initial conversation about adding a sixth value for at least one segment of their team: visibility. As we discussed it, Craig shared that he believed that having each team member being more intentional about their visibility with customers could yield as much as a five percent increase in that department’s revenue. He went on to share something he experienced personally a few days prior. He saw an opportunity to be visible with a customer in their outdoor area, away from the more prevalent seasonal inventory where the rest of the team was focused. In less than fifteen minutes with that customer, he created a sale that represented TEN percent of the entire day’s sales, a transaction that likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
The three of us revisited the idea of adding visibility as their sixth core value a few weeks after that initial conversation. I asked if they had been talking about it routinely with their team. Craig shared that he had been emphasizing it so much that many of them were starting to joke about it; when calling for them on their walkie-talkies, they would respond by saying, “I’m out being visible!” Like Truett Cathy had done in borrowing the “My Pleasure” idea from a high end hotel, Craig and Kim related the idea of visibility to practices they had experienced in a Neiman Marcus store where associates took them directly to what they were looking for rather than telling them where to find it. They suggested that their team do the same AND look for opportunities to answer other questions while they did it.
Craig shared with me that the company’s overall revenue had grown by fifty percent - FIVE ZERO percent - in their first twenty-four months of ownership. More recently, the part of the business where visibility has been incorporated as their sixth value grew during a year with significant market challenges while most of their direct competitors were down ten to fifteen percent from the previous year. The one clear difference I can point to has been how I’ve seen Craig, Kim, and now their entire leadership team living out their core values. They haven’t left anything to chance, they’re walking the talk every day! Even then, though, consistent reinforcement is crucial.
Consistent Examples Still Require Consistent Reinforcement
Even in cases where we leave absolutely nothing to chance, taking every single opportunity we have to provide examples showing how each of our core values can be acted on in roles our team members perform daily, we’ll still need to provide consistent reinforcement backing our consistent example. As I kicked off this look at how important our values are in creating a strong foundation for any organization, I mentioned the time involved in establishing or replacing a habit. Initially that was specific to what we need to do as leaders, just to model our core values and keep them at the top of our team members’ minds. Since then, I’ve mentioned how much more effort it takes to transform a one-time-behavior into a habit that’s part of our daily routine. Creating habits that involve our values in our own role is no small task but helping our team members do this, even after we’ve worked to show them exactly how they can, requires a very focused effort.
I alluded to our Strategic Leadership Coaching model when sharing how we challenge executives to delegate certain tasks to others in their organization. In transparency, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with “coaching”, even though Cindy and I had both completed the certification process to offer that as a service; I had seen far too many clowns claiming to be a coach of this or that but had never accomplished anything themselves. Cindy, being so much smarter and much more intuitive than me, saw a tremendous need we could fill where I was stuck on the bull shit I had seen from other people. Our goal with assigning “homework” after any lesson we deliver has always been to build collaboration between the participant and their direct manager so that the manager could guide them in implementing their action steps and help them sustain them long enough to form habits. When we realized that many of those managers weren’t engaging their folks, even when they received extremely articulate lists of steps the participate hoped to put in place after time with us, I finally conceded that Cindy had been right all along (again) and we started providing “coaching” as a service - but with the specific goal of reinforcing the action steps they implemented and capturing how those steps increased their productivity and profitability.
The important part isn’t who’s providing that reinforcement, it’s that the behaviors modeling our core values are being recognized and routinely reinforced. As leaders, it’s our responsibility to make sure that gets done. We are required to provide a clear understanding of what each value looks like in practice as well as an example every time we have the chance, but there’s no way we can do it all on our own indefinitely - and we don’t have to. Moving forward, we’ll work through specific steps we can take to do this whenever and however we can, and we’ll identify ways we can engage the leaders around us to have an active role in the process.