Think about the business culture you’ve always wanted for your organization—the energy, the purpose, the unwavering alignment toward a common vision. Now, think about how much easier it would be if every team member, from the executive team to the front lines, shared that same drive and commitment. Imagine a workplace where people aren’t just showing up for a job. They fully invest in a shared purpose that pushes your organization forward every day.

This kind of culture doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentional, visible leadership and a clear, consistent message that speaks louder than words. There are three critical steps senior leaders must take to make this vision a reality:

1. Visibly Model
2. Comprehensively Communicate
3. Intentionally Amplify

Lasting Business Culture Change Starts with Senior Leaders

Our favorite definition of culture comes from marketing guru Seth Godin. Culture is simply “People like us, do things like this.”

But one of the major culture challenges organizations face is that senior leaders might know what activities and habits matter most. But those same leaders struggle to communicate that knowledge and transfer behaviors throughout the organization.

True culture change requires your deliberate action, consistent messaging, and intentional reinforcement at every level. As a senior leader, your commitment to modeling, communicating, and reinforcing the culture sets the tone for lasting change.

1. Visibly Model

What you do matters way more than what you say.

Every decision you make, every action you take, tells your people what’s truly important in the organization. To drive culture change, you must align your actions with the business culture you want to create.

And it’s not just how you act when you’re with your peers. Or how you reason through a decision.

How can the entire organization visibly see you act out the culture you want?

What you do matters way more than what you say.

Here’s a quick gut check: If a new employee, with no training or handbook, watched a film of all your activities for a couple of weeks, how would they describe your culture?

Here are three examples of how you might align your visible actions with your business culture:

Decision-Making Transparency: Making a sound decision isn’t enough to change culture. Everyone needs to understand the reasons for the decision. Be clear about why you make the decisions you do. Explain not only the “what” but the “why” behind strategic choices. This transparency shows your team the values that guide decision-making. And it will help them make similar decisions in the future.

Prioritizing People in Meetings and Conversations: If you want a culture where people feel valued and heard, demonstrate this by giving people your full attention. Put away your phone. Show them that every voice matters by actively listening and encouraging contributions.

Living the Company Values: Identify three behaviors tied to your organization’s core values and commit to visibly demonstrate them each week. For example, if “innovation” is a core value, consider how you can visibly invite new ideas, tolerate a reasonable level of risk in pursuit of innovation, and respond with regard—even when you can’t use an idea.

When your team sees you model the change, they’ll begin to believe in its importance. A cultural shift won’t happen until everyone can see it—and that starts with you.

2. Comprehensively Communicate

Once you’re visibly modeling the desired business culture, the next step is to communicate throughout the organization. This is where a 5 x 5 communication plan is essential. How will you and your managers communicate at least five times, through five different channels?

Your communication strategy should build a culture where everyone:

• Understands the ‘why’ behind the change
• Clearly sees how it relates to their role.

The more you communicate—and the more you empower others to communicate—the more natural the change will feel.

Here are questions to consider as you build your communication strategy:

• How will you connect what you are asking to why it matters – in a way that makes sense to every person in every role?
• How will you ensure that your teams communicate the new business culture habits with fidelity? (How will they cascade communication? And how can you ensure they know how?)
• What are one or two strategic stories you can include in your communication to bring the habits to life? (For example: share a time you struggled with the tension between two values and how you made your decision.)
• How else might you get creative and have fun with communicating your culture, values, and relevant habits? (Check out this list of 101 ways to communicate–even with hybrid and remote teams.)
• How can you engage everyone in the organization to make the culture their own? To ask questions and explore or challenge areas that don’t make sense to them?

3. Intentionally Amplify with Celebration and Accountability

Everyone can see you and your team model the culture. You’ve clearly communicated and engaged everyone to understand what the change looks like in every role.

Now it’s time to build momentum with celebration and accountability.

Celebration and accountability are two sides of the same coin. They both close the loop of an intention. You set out to do something.

When you succeed, celebrate!

When you don’t, follow through with accountability: what can you learn for next time? What needs to change? Is there a way to renew the commitment and follow through now?

Celebration and accountability amplify your business culture. They tell everyone what matters. So don’t leave them to chance. Plan your celebration and accountability strategy from the start.

Celebrate Early Wins and Small Steps

As soon as you see behaviors that reflect the new culture, acknowledge them. Whether it’s a team reaching a milestone or an individual embodying the values, celebrate the moment. Tell these stories. Highlighting these achievements reminds everyone that the change isn’t just words on a wall. Change is real and happening.

Set Clear Expectations for Accountability

Hold yourself and other leaders accountable for embodying the culture. Equip everyone to give feedback—even junior employees should feel empowered to respectfully hold senior leaders accountable. This shows that the new culture applies to everyone, regardless of role.

Continual Reflection and Adjustment

Culture change isn’t a one-time project; it’s an ongoing commitment. Regularly evaluate the progress and adjust as needed. Have a quarterly or semi-annual culture review where you discuss what’s working, what needs adjustment, and what new behaviors need reinforcement.

Celebration and accountability go hand in hand. When you make a big deal out of the behaviors you want to see and create space for accountability, you’re building a self-sustaining culture where people take pride in maintaining the values and behaviors you’ve established.

Want a Blueprint for Your Culture Change?

Sustained business culture change requires intentional effort.

One of our favorite things is to work with senior teams to build your leadership blueprint. Together, you’ll identify the specific habits that will help you model, communicate, and amplify your culture and achieve breakthrough results.

Let us know if you’d like more information.

The post How to Lead Sustainable Business Culture Change: A 3-Step Framework for Success appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

This question came in from a senior leader working to ensure their communication has a broad organization-wide impact:

“Hi Karin, We have a lot of moving parts around here. I’m quite sure my senior team is with me. They get it. They understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’m concerned about the cascade, is our leadership communication making it all the way through the organization?  What advice do you have?” #AskingForaFriend

3 Master Techniques for Effective Leadership Communication

1. Speak the Common Language of “Why”

Ensure your senior team can articulate the “why” of your projects and the big-picture vision of your organization. When someone truly understands the “why,” they’ll make better decisions. It’s not just about them nodding along. You want to ensure that every member of your senior team is an expert translator– articulating the vision in terms of specific actions and behaviors. So if employees hear “EBITDA” from you or another leader, they understand “what I need from ya.” That’s the moment the abstract becomes tangible, vision becomes action.

In your leadership communication be sure to translate strategy into relatable actions and practical habits so that the entire team can connect the dots when they’re working. Then, check for understanding to hear back from them so you’re sure they are on board.

2. Turn Monologues into Dialogues

If you have a town hall or end-of-year meeting, don’t just use that time to talk about vision and strategy. Give them an opportunity to really work with your strategic initiatives. Be sure they get a chance to think and talk about how the strategy is going to work for their team. Give them a chance to share their ideas.

Have them to consider how the initiatives inform their own projects. And, don’t forget to make room for real talk. Give people a safe space to ask real questions and answer them with transparency and candor. Our clients will often add an “Asking for a Friend” Q&A to their all hands meetings. This gives employees an anonymous and fun way to ask questions, and the senior team answers.

3. VIP Invites: Bring a Friend Staff Meetings

Another effective leadership communication technique is “bring a friend” to staff meetings. In these meetings, your executive team can bring a high-potential employee to join the discussion. These “friends” bring additional perspective. It also gives people an opportunity to learn more about what’s happening strategically and how decisions are being made. Those managers then return to their teams with newfound insights and a deeper sense of belonging.

So there you have it – a deep dive into leadership communication that goes beyond the surface. Remember, leadership communication is not just about talking, but about creating understanding, alignment, and inspiration that resonates throughout your organization. And since this is an ongoing conversation…what would you add? What are some of your favorite techniques to ensure your strategic communication flows through your entire organization?

Ready to rally YOUR team for breakthrough results with Let’s Grow Leaders?

Establish a Courageous Culture of critical thinkers, problem solvers, and customer advocates in your organization with a Team Innovation Challenge or Executive Leadership Workshop. These strategic innovation events – in person or virtual – will help shape the culture of your organization, skyrocket employee engagement, and clear the path for increased team innovation.

Let’s Grow Leaders programs are highly customized to your organization’s needs, hands-on and interactive. Get ready for leadership development that sticks.

Check out this related article:

All-Hands Meeting: How to Ensure Yours is Amazing and Worth the Investment

The post Leadership Communication: How Do I Get Everyone On the Same Page? appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

When it comes to building a great corporate culture, one of the most common frustrations we hear from senior leaders and executives is that “We involved everyone. We worked together to define our values. And we talk about them regularly. People seem to appreciate the messaging. And we saw changes at the start, but now it feels like we’ve stagnated. It’s like people tried and then stopped.”

Can you feel their pain? You did a fantastic job thinking about your culture and engaged the entire organization to define the values. Now, almost everyone can recite the values and define them. But the culture hasn’t changed.

What’s going on?

The Invisible Barrier to Great Corporate Culture

Our favorite definition of culture comes from marketing guru Seth Godin. He says culture is simply “People like us, do things like this.”

When people know and embrace your values, but you don’t see those values being lived out the problem is likely one of two invisible conflicts:

1) Conflict between the values themselves

This first type of conflict is very common. Let’s say two of your values are “Quality” and “Speed.” The conflict between the two is obvious. In the absence of other solutions, spend more time on quality and you get slower. Go faster and you likely make more mistakes.

Let’s look at one more common example of a values clash: “work-life balance” and “we do what it takes.” We’ve worked with many organizations with some version of this conflict. People genuinely want a human-centered workplace. And they feel the pressure to beat their competition and please their customer through a strong work ethic.

If you have five values, that creates the potential for ten different values clashes.

2) Conflict between the stated values and leaders’ practiced values

This second type of values conflict cripples your corporate culture and undermines employee confidence. It’s a classic case of saying one thing but doing another. But this conflict isn’t just pure hypocrisy. Often, there are underlying reasons that leaders don’t fully embrace the new value. For example, a manager’s bonus depends on the number of units shipped, regardless of units returned. So the manager undermines that “Quality” value by focusing on volume and pressuring team members who try to go slower and focus on quality.

What Happens When Values Clash

When you don’t address these values conflicts, they will undermine your corporate culture. People feel like they can’t win.

If I do this, I get dinged over here, but if I do that, then I’m in trouble on this one.

These no-win scenarios frustrate people and sap their motivation. Soon, people revert to doing the best they can to make it through. And your credibility suffers as the shiny values are now just words on a wall.

How to Overcome the Values Clash and Build Great Corporate Culture

The solution to both invisible cultural barriers is straightforward: talk about them. When you launch any kind of change, whether new values or a new information system, expect challenges. Call them out. Let everyone know you want to know about them.

Drawing attention to the inevitable conflicts prepares people for them. That employee caught between two values can say, “Oh, this is what they were talking about. Let’s see, what should I do next?” instead of throwing up their hands and walking away in frustration.

Let’s look at the specifics for each kind of values conflict.

1) How to address the clash between values

Acknowledge the Conflicts

Don’t let these values conflicts hide in the corner. Shine a light on them and have conversations about what they mean and what to do when they happen. Keep this conversation going as you move through the values rollout. You can use the next two steps to continue the conversation.

Define Success

If culture is “people like us, do things like this,” then “what do people like us do when there is a conflict between quality and speed?”

What does success look like?

Have these discussions together. Rarely will you find a perfect solution to every values conflict. Working together to talk about the interplay will help everyone understand how to incorporate “quality” and “speed” in their daily work. The discussions about what it means to have a work-life balance and a strong work ethic will reveal new ways of doing your work.

Often, these “how can we” conversations that combine two seemingly opposing values lead to innovations and business process improvements. And you’d never get the innovations without having a discussion about the conflicts.

Tell Stories

One of our favorite ways to help clients roll out their culture change and values initiatives is facilitating senior leader stories about times they faced this values clash – and what they did. These stories bring the conflict alive and help employees picture what it looks like to navigate the values.

These stories also help everyone see that there is no perfect implementation of culture or values. Sometimes you have to make hard choices. Don’t shy away from that truth. Senior leader stories help everyone see what it means to make those choices in their work.

Celebrate Optimal Outcomes

As part of your 5 x 5 Communication Plan, you will probably already have scheduled celebrations of people living out the values. In addition, look for ways to celebrate people who faced a values clash and found an inspiring way through it. Tell their stories and reinforce what success looks like.

2) How to address the clash between the stated values and leaders’ practiced values

Acknowledge the Conflict

Once again, don’t shy away from the fact that these conflicts will happen. You will almost always have people make self-interested decisions that make perfect sense for them, but clash with your values.

The answer is not just to tell everyone “Don’t do that.” People will continue do what makes sense to them. Rather, in calling attention to these potential conflicts, you’re inviting everyone to look for them. “We’re not going to be surprised when they happen – instead, we’re going to look for areas where our structure does align with our values – and fix it.”

Make It Safe to Find Solutions

Recently we were working with a client (Sue) who has a significant need to improve processes and eliminate employee errors that will save the business millions of dollars every year and improve their standing in the industry. But as she tried to identify the improvement opportunities, she couldn’t.

The employees would make a mistake and their immediate manager, feeling performance pressure in a fast-paced business, would berate them for the mistake with the goal of preventing it from happening again.

In that environment, where mistakes were punished, rather than looked at as opportunities, Sue couldn’t have meaningful conversations about how to improve the systems that created the potential for mistakes in the first place.

In the same way, when you first roll out new values or a major corporate culture change, you can make it safe to talk about resistance. Ask your managers about the conflicts they see. If you listen carefully and with appreciation, you’ll learn where your systems and infrastructure undermine your values.

Practice Accountability with Celebration

As you listen and make needed structural changes, it’s time for accountability. There might be a manager or leader who just disagrees with the values or doesn’t want to live by them. That’s okay – it’s better to know and help them find an organization that’s better suited to their values.

You get more of what you celebrate and encourage, so at the same time, be sure to celebrate leaders and managers who bring those conflicts to light, help to solve them, and incorporate the values in their work.

Fixing your systems, helping misaligned leaders to go, and celebrating leaders who address values clashes reinforce your commitment to culture. These visible examples send the message that you really mean it. This isn’t just talk.

Your Turn

When you’re willing to do the work and address values conflicts, people will come with you. We’ve worked with organizations to masterfully navigate these conflicts and the results are inspiring. The annual values awards have more meaning and genuinely reinforce the corporate culture.

We’d love to hear from you: what’s one way you help your team navigate clashes between values?

The post When Values Clash: Overcome an Invisible Barrier to Great Corporate Culture appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

That’s a tricky and complicated question… “should I change my style?” In this week’s #askingforafriend on the road, I come to you from Montreux, Switzerland, and the famous Freddie Mercury statue. 

Clearly, Freddie Mercury had a unique style of his own. He was not afraid to be who he was in a way that was unlike no one else. And the real magic happened when he worked WITH his band (team) in deep collaboration. He stood out and fit in at the same time.

So here’s the question.

Hey Karin,

“I take my leadership very seriously. I take my career very seriously. And, I have worked to hone my style to something that feels really good to me. And recently, I got some feedback from someone who matters who told me I need to make adjustments to my style to better fit in with our culture. What should I do?”

Over the years, I’ve been SO GRATEFUL for truly helpful feedback that has influenced my leadership and helped me hone my influence and impact. There is no question that I’m a better leader and I’m better at growing leaders because of all the wonderful people who’ve invested in me with vital feedback and helped me change my style. I’ve worked hard to hone my style to be authentic and effective.

And, in my corporate executive role, I received SOME advice about my style that I COMPLETELY IGNORED that did not prompt me to change my style.

• Nope, I won’t smile less.
• No, my team isn’t having too much fun. (Have you SEEN our amazing results?)
• And no way am I taking your advice to invest $3000 dollars in shoes.

How to fit in while standing out

When you find yourself asking “Do I need to change my style? Do I need to fit in?” Try this…

1. Connect with your personal and professional values, style, and strengths. Identify what makes you a unique leader.
2. Connect with your peers – explore how your leadership style impacts people positively and where you’re not having the impact and influence that you would like.
3. Understand what matters most in your culture, and what it will take for you to be effective.

When you’ve taken all of those opportunities to connect and really understand them, now you have some choices to make. You can choose when and how to adapt for greater influence and impact, and which elements of your style and your superpower that you don’t want to lose– even if some others think you should change.

What would you add? I’m curious. How would you answer this complicated question, “should I change my style?”

See these related articles:

How do I Change My Reputation as a Leader?

How to Improve Your Executive Presence to Have More Influence and Impact

The post Should I Change My Style to Fit My Workplace Culture? appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

As the year draws to a close, I’m curious. What are YOU NOTICING? About yourself? About your leadership? Your culture? And, your team?

I always find the end of the year an important time to stop and consider the themes. I love to reflect on what we’re seeing in our work with clients and within our own company at Let’s Grow Leaders.

Today on Asking for a Friend, David and I share this conversation. And, we talk about two patterns we’ve been noticing. We would love to hear yours.

There is considerable value in deliberate, in-person gatherings.

Teams that have been working remotely are now finding magic and renewed enthusiasm as they meet in person. We’re noticing additional joy and creativity. We’re also noticing a surge of motivation around strategy as they invest in focused time together.  People are truly cherishing collaborative time together.

We’ve been noticing the importance of this deliberate time together.

Like so many of you, many of our clients have been working mostly remotely for the last two years. And now,  they’re adding in-person time. We’re seeing more offsites, leadership training kickoffs, executive leadership workshops, and team innovation events. We see a renewed commitment to strategic planning groups. More companies are spending in-person time together navigating the road to success.

We’re noticing HOPE is powerful in leadership.

We’re noticing hope for a better tomorrow. And, hope that improvement is possible.

We talk a lot about innovation, change, and small day-to-day micro innovations that lead to bigger, better company cultures.

This all starts with hopeful leadership. If leaders don’t think better is possible, their team won’t either. Improvement projects might lack the momentum needed for success.

What’s making you hopeful right not? How are you inspiring hope within your team? What have you learned about hope over the last two years? What are you most hopeful for in the coming year?

If you’re looking for more thoughts on hope, David shares even more about healing and hope for humanity in his latest book, Tomorrow Together. When leaders bring genuine hope to their team, it’s contagious (the good kind of contagious ;-).

Together, we can build a better future.

YOUR TURN. What are you noticing right now?

Other articles related to leadership, teams, and company culture

How to Build a Great Team Culture (Even if You’re Not CEO)

Strategic Planning Tool: How to Engage Your Team in Better Conversation

The post What are You Noticing? Insights and Observations as the Year Comes to an End appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

When a high-performer quits, it can feel like your world is imploding as you scramble to keep the work going AND find the right unicorn to fill that spot.

Of course, there’s never a good time for a high-performer to quit. But, what you do next matters. For you. For them. And for everyone paying attention to your response (see also: How to Build a Great Culture in a High-Turnover World.)

For this conversation, we’re going to assume you’ve worked to re-recruit your high-performing quitter by understanding what’s really happening and doing what you can to respond.

If their mind is made up, here are some thoughts on what to do next and a video of why it matters.

Start Here When Your High-Performer Quits

Sadly, we’ve been fielding a lot of calls and #askingforafriend questions from high-performers who’ve quit and dealt with a terrible response from their manager.

• “I gave my notice and now everyone around here is just so mad at me. It’s like the last ten years didn’t count for anything. It’s going to be a torturous two weeks.”
• “I feel like I’ve wasted my time here. Now I see they didn’t really care about me at all.”
• “I’ve sacrificed so much for this company, I would hope at this point, they would want what’s best for me.”

Those sentiments are contagious. “Gosh, if they treated her that way, they probably don’t care about me either.”

And, your sad high-performing quitter is likely venting to more than their co-workers. They’re sharing on social media, talking about their frustrations to cousin Joe at Thanksgiving, and to anyone who will listen over a pumpkin latte and snickerdoodle.

So here are a few tips to keep in mind when a high-performer quits.

1. Get a grip on your emotions.

Of course, you have a right to your own feelings, and it’s natural to be upset.

And, what you blurt out in anger or distress will be hard to take back once you’ve calmed down.

Keep in mind that unless you’ve been acting like a real jerk with toxic, courage-crushing behaviors,  it’s unlikely that your high-performer quit to tick you off or sabotage your results.

It’s helpful to remember how much you care about them as a person and that you want them to be successful in life, not just on your team.

2. Thank them for their contributions.

One of the biggest complaints we hear from high-performers is that they wish their boss would simply say “thank you” more (see also 7 things your high-performers want to hear you say). You want to leave your high-performer with a good feeling about working with you and your organization. Showing them you understand how they contributed and made a difference can go a long way in this.

There may be an opportunity to work with them again someday. When you do this publically, you also send a clear message to everyone else, that your gratitude is real and lasting. No one wants to work for a fair-weathered thanker.

3. Ask for their ideas.

Of course, it’s important to show up curious about why they chose to move on. Even if HR does a formal exit interview, you can also have a personal conversation as well. This is a great time to ask for feedback about your leadership and their experiences working at your company.

It’s also a good time to ask about their ideas for improvement. Once someone is leaving their FOSU (fear of speaking up) is dramatically reduced, and they may have the courage to share ideas they may have withheld in the past.

4. Encourage them to stay connected.

High-performers often know other high-performers. If you’re not connected on LinkedIn, now’s a great time. You never know when that former high-performer is exactly who you need to talk to, or to network with for an open position.

5. Give them a chance to say goodbye.

We’ve heard too many people venting recently that “after all these years they could have a least bought me a cake.” Or, “my last day was so sad, I just packed up my stuff and left. No one even really said goodbye.”

It could be that some managers are backing away from this common courtesy of creating a GOOD bye because they are afraid it will encourage others to leave. We can assure you, no one leaves a company because they want a party. There are easier reasons to celebrate.

How you treat employees at every point of their employment cycle matters. If you want a great culture, ensure people feel valued from onboarding through their last day on payroll.

Your turn.

What are your best practices for responding when a high-performer quits?

The post What to Do When a High-Performer Quits (With Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Good Comes First

6:30 – Good Comes First isn’t about how or why to build a great business culture, it’s about actually doing it.

8:30 – The reasons, frustrations, and letdowns that let Chris and Mark invest their time in helping businesses build positive cultures.

11:34 – Why feeling good about culture isn’t enough. Action is everything.

13:21 – What the “good” in Good Comes First means for your business.

14:09 – Why culture feels straightforward but is hard work that takes discipline and structure.

15:39 – The goal is that every employee, every person in the organization, in every interaction, feels trusted, respected, and validated for their ideas, efforts, and contributions.

17:32 – The link between improved respect and improved business results.

18:58 – Why we don’t have a labor shortage, but a respect shortage.

20:10 – Get the data. Look at the metrics you’re using to assess success. Do any of them refer to respect or other cultural norms? If not, culture isn’t an imperative in your business (yet).

24:47 – People need a reason to get out of bed and come to work. What’s the purpose in your work?

30:01 – The difference between a general “why” and your organization’s servant purpose.

34:49 – Boomer male syndrome – what it is, how it limits businesses, and how to overcome it.

37:00 – The vital role of diversity and inclusion in positive, purposeful Good Comes First cultures.

41:06 – Why leaders want to avoid looking bad and how that prevents doing some of the important culture work that needs to happen for your company to succeed.

43:25 – A practical first step to take (if you haven’t already) to address diversity and inclusion and equity in your business.

48:33 – A Culture Constitution is at the heart of Chris and Mark’s approach to building powerful business culture. What it is and how to use it.

52:49 – How to start putting good first if you’re a leader who’s not in charge of your business.

1:02:15 – A first step you can take today: start with ground rules and hold one another accountable to living by them.

Connect with Chris and Mark

Chris Edmonds:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram
• YouTube

Mark Babbitt:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Instagram

Get the Book

The post Good Comes First with Chris Edmonds and Mark Babbitt appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

A Culture of Integrity

2:59 – Looking at the challenges of leading in highly emotional settings where people have strong opinions.

4:12 – How important it is to focus on the humanity of every person, and to consciously think about what everyone truly wants.

5:28 – An introduction to Brittany’s company, Simpler Trading.

10:08 – A discussion of GameStop – what happened there and the education work Brittany’s company does to help.

13:03 – The importance of leading the way with integrity. How does that play out with regulations, decisions about marketing, products, and convenience or revenue?

14:47 – As you consider a culture of integrity, Brittany shares her benchmark to know whether or not it’s happening. Do people raise concerns and are they heard? Is every voice getting through when it needs to?

17:47 – Brittany’s “grandma test” for marketing with integrity.

22:17 – What Brittany tells every new hire as they join the company to ensure that they’re speaking up.

22:57 – Because of the culture they’d built, the pandemic pivot went smoothly.

24:55 – Why you’re always building a culture, whether you realize it or not.

26:27 – The importance of organizations serving their community and giving back.

27:10 – Why a great culture led to employee retention when other businesses were losing people.

29:26 – How you practice accountability in a positive culture and why it matters so much.

32:00 – How leaders must role model integrity and responsibility with a look at a specific instance in Brittany’s company.

36:00 -The role of patience for anyone leading change and transformation in building a culture of integrity. The result pays off in a stronger, more loyal, and productive workforce.

Connect with Brittany

On LinkedIn

The post A Culture of Integrity with CEO Brittany Burns appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Today we bring you ideas for getting started building a courageous culture from backstage at the Mountain West Credit Union Association conference. And how to encourage more courage and innovation on your team.

We discuss:

• How to conduct a “fear forage” even if you are leading a virtual or hybrid team.
• Why “responding with regard” is so critical so employees know their idea is being taken seriously.
• Important first steps in encouraging your team to speak up and share their great ideas.
• AND, the most surprising finding in our Courageous Cultures research: 56% of respondents said that they don’t speak up because they’re afraid they won’t get the credit.  Which of course is highly correlated with the challenge of managers moving so fast they forget to circle back with GRATITUDE thanking employees for their ideas.

You can learn more about our Courageous Cultures research, and download the first chapter of our book for FREE here.

The post How Do I Encourage Courage on My Team? (With Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

What are you building?

The post You’re Building Our Future appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.