Why leadership & culture isn’t ‘fluffy’
2 min read
Being a good leader is hard work…but so is being a bad one.
I know because I’ve been a busy senior leader myself, so I don’t want to be preachy. I know it’s way too easy to forgo the odd team meeting, repeatedly move someone's monthly catch up or perhaps forget to give some really helpful praise or feedback because there is always so much to do.
But when you don’t make time for these things it will almost certainly come back and bite you.
When you don't value your leadership role as creating the conditions and culture for your people to thrive; be that providing clarity, constructive feedback, respect, trust and/or freedom to act, they (yes, even the high performers) eventually end up taking up more of your time, not less.
And worse still, some of your highest potential people end up becoming disengaged, poor performers or disgruntled leavers.
And it is costing you dearly:
employees quitting their jobs because of poor leadership and company culture costs the UK economy £23.6 billion per year, research by breatheHR has revealed in their Culture Economy Report.
the report also found that a third (34%) of British employees have quit their jobs as a result of dissatisfaction with their company's culture.
and of those who’ve stayed, only 36% are engaged in the workplace! According to the latest Gallup report, 51% of employees are disengaged in the workplace, while 13% are actively disengaged. Actively disengaged means 13% of your team are miserable and spreading negativity across the business.
and who knows how long they are actually planning on staying, as according to a survey by Hays, 47% of active job seekers want to leave their job because of bad company culture.
On the flip side, investing in your leadership and culture provides the following benefits:
companies with a highly engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability and 17% higher productivity than companies with a disengaged workforce, as found by Gallup.
according to 11 year-long research projects from Hays, companies with a thriving culture achieve over 4x Higher revenue growth!
the same research project found that companies with performance-enhancing cultures grew their revenues by a whopping 682%. Those with a poor company culture managed to increase their revenues by just 166% over 11 years.
So can you imagine my surprise when even after all of the ‘hard’ empirical data about the benefits of having great leaders and a healthy culture, I still hear senior leaders calling it ‘fluffy’?!
is 21% higher profitability, fluffy?
is creating the right culture to keep your best people, fluffy?
is 4x higher revenue growth, fluffy?
is celebrating and recognising moments that really matter to your team, both personal and professional, fluffy?
is allowing someone to bring their true, authentic self to work (yes, including their feelings), fluffy?
is supporting performance by taking time to learn about the whole person (warts and all), fluffy?
is taking the time to define and communicate your organisation's purpose in order to connect your people's hearts and minds to it, fluffy?
is doing proper pay and benefits benchmarking, so you can pay your team what they really deserve, fluffy?
I think you get my point!
The smartest business leaders I know and work with get this one simple truth:
Your people are your (no, I am not going to say greatest asset), competitive advantage and deep down you know it.
But to get the most out of them, and to continue to attract the best, you need to invest in them and your culture. In the same way as you service your car to maintain its peak performance, you have to do the same for your team!
So, my questions to you are:
Do you get the direct correlation between creating the conditions for your team to thrive and how they will in turn drive your business to better growth and performance?
Do you invest enough time and money on your people to enable this output?
Do you see it as your responsibility to build a high performing team?
Because if you are a leader, at any level of an organisation, the answer to these questions should be a very certain yes - in fact, a yes, absolutely.
But of course, this is all easier said than done. Otherwise every business would have a high performing, highly engaging culture and teams of people would bounce out of bed and to work Every. Single. Day.
The good news is that most leaders have the best of intentions and just need a little help to redefine their own ways of working, to get clear on the direction for their team, to recruit and up-skill the best people and to give them the right conditions to succeed.
This is where Start Inspiring can help.
We work in a supportive and pragmatic way with senior leaders to help them create great places to work, to address the moments that really make a difference, and to build healthy, sustainable organisational cultures that improve the performance of both their people and their profits.
Our Leadership Development Programme is just one of our products helping leaders to unlock their true potential. So if you’re interested in knowing how we can help you create a thriving team and business, get in touch.
