What metrics to you scrutinize frequently? If you’re like most leaders, you pay attention to performance metrics – quotas, service ratings, market share, profits, and the like. What you probably don’t have metrics for – but you need metrics for – is the quality of your team or company’s culture.
To create high performing, values-aligned teams, leaders must spend as much time and energy on driving workplace trust, dignity, and respect as they do on driving results.
The reality is that very few leaders around the globe have been asked to do this. And, too few leaders have had role models that did this.
The great news is that leaders can learn how to create safe, inspiring work environments. With the right structure, effective modeling, and coaching to alignment, leaders can shift their team’s culture from dull and frustrating to engaged and inspiring.
My new online Culture Effectiveness Assessment can help. The CEA survey is based on the concepts in my latest book, The Culture Engine.
The CEA compares your team’s (or department or division or company’s) work environment to the best practices of high performing, values-aligned workplaces. The assessment gathers team leader and team member responses quickly and reliably. Results are presented in an electronic profile that explains how well your team culture ranks on five “culture health” levels: dysfunction, tension, civility, acknowledgment, or validation (the highest level).
The CEA includes ten sections with five questions each. Each question is rated on a six-point scale. The sections include practices like workplace attractiveness and safety, the leader’s personal purpose, values, and leadership philosophy, clarity of the team’s purpose, specificity of the team’s values and valued behaviors, accountability for values, values feedback, and hiring for values.
The snapshot at right shows the CEA score summary page for a real leader and her team members. This page presents scores on the overall assessment for the team leader (189 out of 300 possible points – 50 questions worth a maximum of six points each) and an average score for all team members (181). These two scores fall into the “civility” culture health level – below what is desired. There is a line on the graph at the 250 point mark, which is where the “validation” level begins.
This graph also shows the lowest and highest individual team member scores (166 and 196, respectively). This particular team has very consistent team member scores, all in the “civility” level. I’ve seen teams with much wider responses, from dysfunction to acknowledgment levels within one team.
The profile presents summary scores by section plus response detail for each question. The snapshot at right shows this team leader and her five team members’ responses to the question “Team members are role models of the formalized team purpose, values and behaviors, strategies, and goals in every interaction and in all plans, decisions, and actions.” Desired scores are at the 5-6 level. The team leader scores it a 2 and the average team member score is a 3. There is clearly an opportunity for this team on these practices.
The CEA profile enables leaders and teams to prioritize the work to be done to improve the quality of their work environment. Clients that embrace these best practices enjoy consistent increases in employee engagement, customer service, and profits.
Don’t guess about the health of your team or company’s culture. Get the data with my online Culture Effectiveness Assessment.
My latest book, The Culture Engine, guides leaders to create workplace inspiration with an organizational constitution. Get your free sample chapter here.
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