Culture Leadership Charge – Align Your Desired Culture

I am often asked about my three-phase culture refinement process. Today I’ll share how the second phase – the “align” stage – creates commitment for your purposeful, positive, productive work culture.

My approach is founded on this hard fact – senior leaders must drive and champion their organization’s culture. They are ultimately responsible for clarity of the organization’s servant purpose, values and behaviors, strategies, and goals. They can’t delegate this responsibility to anyone or any other function – they must model and coach their desired culture daily.

In the align stage, I help senior leaders ensure that every player’s plans, decisions, and actions align with their defined organizational constitution. Every player means everyone in the organization – senior leaders, next level leaders, and on, including frontline team members.

This is by far the most demanding stage for senior leaders. In the first stage – define – senior leaders formalize their desired culture by crafting and publishing their organizational constitution.

However, announcing new rules doesn’t ensure alignment with those rules. Senior leaders must generate credibility for their desired culture by being proactive champions and role models.

The align stage is also the longest phase. It takes 12-18 months of focused intention and attention from senior leaders.

There are three key elements of senior leaders’ responsibilities in the align stage. They are modeling, mentoring, and measuring.

In today’s three-minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I outline exactly how leaders create alignment by implementing these three “M’s.”

This is episode seventy-three of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a ~three-minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

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How well do leaders and team members in your company model your organization’s defined values? Share your insights or questions below or engage me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.