What Team Culture Should You Foster When Returning to the Office?

Every organization/team/group of people who are together for any length of time has a culture – with valuable and challenging traits. And cultures aren't static – there are ever-changing. In the last two years, most organizations have experienced the biggest, fastest culture changes ever – their pre-pandemic culture and their pandemic culture. (While maybe less drastically, even if your team works in a warehouse, storefront, or factory, your culture has changed.)

Many leaders believe that its best to bring people back to the office "because of the culture." I understand the desire to recapture something we once had. But when talking with leaders who say that, I ask two questions:

• What exactly have you lost that you want to recapture?
• Would you want exactly the culture you had pre-pandemic?

Most have trouble being specific with the first answer. And few, when really thinking about the second, will state a solid and firm yes. After all, at the end of 2019 for example, many organizations were talking about how to "transform their cultures." And yet, some of those same leaders now want to go back to what they once had.

Even if we – personally or collectively – loved that culture, it will not ever be the same again. The experiences we have all lived and worked through in the last year mean that it can never be exactly the same, even if that is what we want.

Trying to restore that pre-pandemic culture is folly. Making sure we retain the best parts of that culture is important and wise.

Three Cultures 

There are three cultures for you to consider now:

• The pre-pandemic culture
• The current culture
• Your future culture

The first is a history lesson and provides context. It tells us much about who we are, and there likely are pieces of it we want to retain. The current culture has given us lessons we can apply in the future if we choose (please do). The story of your future culture has yet to be written. 

You will have a future culture. The question is, will it be one that serves the needs of organizational results and the people who create them?

Your Role in the Future

You may think I am writing to senior leaders – those who are responsible for such things. I am writing to them, but I am writing to you, too. Wherever you sit in the org chart, you have a role in creating culture. With the ideas you have just read, consider these next steps, adapted to your situation.

Share this article (And the posts below) as the basis for reflection and conversation.

Ask yourself: What is the culture (organizational or, perhaps more practically, for your team) you desire?

Ask your team: What have we learned or gained in the last 20 months that we need to apply in the future?

We can choose, craft, and create our future culture. Doing it with a full view of the past and present set us up for creating a future that is better than we ever imagined.

Check out two related posts:

Great Teams Build Great Cultures 

How to Strengthen Your Team's Culture

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

 

You Can't Be A Good Leader If You're Not Coaching Your Team

"Leadership happens one conversation at a time. So be mindful with each one."

If you have room in your head for only one nugget of leadership wisdom, make it this one: the most powerfully motivating condition people experience at work is making progress at something that is personally meaningful. If your job involves leading others, the implications are clear: the most important thing you can do each day is to help your team members experience progress at meaningful work.

To do so, you must understand what drives each person, help build connections between each person’s work and the organization’s mission, values and strategic objectives, provide timely feedback, and help each person learn and grow on an ongoing basis. Regular communication around development — having coaching conversations — is essential. In fact, according to research, the single most important managerial competency that separates highly effective managers from average ones is coaching.

Strangely, at most companies, being coach-like isn’t part of what managers are formally expected to do. Even though research makes it clear that employees and job candidates alike value learning and career development above most other aspects of a job, many managers don’t see it as an important part of their role. Managers think they don’t have the time to have these conversations, and many lack the skill. Yet 70% of employee learning and development happens on the job, not through formal training programs. So if line managers aren’t supportive and actively involved, employee growth is stunted. So is engagement and retention. When this happens business results suffer as well.

Can you teach old-school, results-focused line managers to coach their employees? Absolutely. And the training boosts performance in both directions. It’s a powerful experience to create a resonant connection with another person and help them to achieve something they care about and to become more of who they want to be. If there’s anything an effective, resonant coaching conversation produces, it’s positive energy. Hundreds of leaders have shared with me that helping others learn and grow is among the most rewarding experiences they’ve had as managers.

Starting today, you can be significantly more effective as a manager — and enjoy your job more — by engaging in regular coaching conversations with your team members. By the way, these conversation do not need to be long. As you resolve to support their ongoing learning and development, here are five key tips to get you started.

• Listen mindfully. Consider what it feels like when you’re trying to convey something important to a person who has many things on his mind. Contrast that familiar experience with the more luxurious and deeply validating one of communicating with someone who is completely focused on you and actively listening to what you have to say with an open mind and an open heart. You can open a coaching conversation with a question such as “How would you like to grow this month?” Your choice of words is less important than your intention to clear your mind, listen with your full attention, and create a high-quality connection that invites your team member to open up and to think creatively.

• Ask more, tell less. As a manager, you have a high level of expertise that you’re used to sharing, often in a directive manner. This is fine when you’re clarifying action steps for a project you’re leading or when people come to you asking for advice. But in a coaching conversation, it’s essential to restrain your impulse to provide the answers. Your path is not your employee’s path. Open-ended questions, not answers, are the tools of coaching. You succeed as a coach by helping your team members articulate their goals and challenges and find their own answers. This is how people clarify their priorities and devise strategies that resonate with what they care about most and that they will be committed to putting into action.

• Create and sustain a developmental partnership. While your role as a coach is not to provide answers, supporting your team members’ developmental goals is essential. Let’s say that your employee mentions she’d like to develop a deeper understanding of how your end users experience the services your organization provides. In order to do so, she suggests accompanying an implementation team on a site visit next week, interviewing end users, and using the interviews to write an article on end user experience for publication on your firm’s intranet-based blog.  

You agree that this would be valuable for both the employee and the organization. Now, make sure that you give your employee the authorization, space and resources necessary to carry out her developmental plan. In addition to supporting her, you can also highlight her article as an example of employee-directed learning and development. Follow-up is critical to build trust and to make your coaching more effective. The more you follow through on supporting your employees’ developmental plans, the more productive your coaching becomes, the greater your employees’ trust in you, and the more engaged you all become. It’s a virtuous cycle.

• Focus on moving forward positively. Oftentimes in a coaching conversation, the person you’re coaching will get caught up in detailing their frustrations. “I’d love to spend more time building my network, but I have no bandwidth. I’m at full capacity just trying to stay on task with my deliverables. I’d really love to get out to some industry seminars, but I can’t let myself think about it until I can get ahead of these deadlines.” While it can provide temporary relief to vent, it doesn’t generate solutions. 

Take a moment to acknowledge your employee’s frustrations, but then encourage her to think about how to move past them. You might ask, “Which of the activities you mention offer the greatest potential for building your knowledge and adding value to the company?” “Could you schedule two hours of time for developmental activities each week as a recurring appointment?” “Are there skills or relationships that would increase your ability to meet your primary deliverables?” “How could we work more efficiently within the team to free up and protect time for development?”

• Build accountability. In addition to making sure you follow through on any commitments you make to employees in coaching conversations, it’s also useful to build accountability for the employee’s side of formulating and implementing developmental plans.

Accountability increases the positive impact of coaching conversations and solidifies their rightful place as keys to organizational effectiveness. If your employee plans to research training programs that will fit his developmental goals, give these plans more weight by asking him to identify appropriate programs along with their costs and the amount of time he’ll need away from work, and to deliver this information to you by a certain deadline. (And then, of course, you will need to act on the information in a timely manner.)

 

What will coaching your employees do for you? It will build stronger bonds between you and your team members, support them in taking ownership over their own learning, and help them develop the skills they need to perform and their peak. And it also feels good. At a leadership seminar I led recently a manager said the coaching exercise he’d just participated in “felt like a bungee jump.” As the workshop leader, I was delighted to observe that this man, who had arrived looking reserved and a bit tired, couldn’t stop smiling for the rest of the day. He was far from the only participant who was visibly energized by the coaching experience.

So go ahead and take the interpersonal jump. You will love the thrill of coaching conversations that catalyze your employees’ growth.

Check out these related posts: 

Getting the Most Out of 1:1 Coaching

SMART Coaching Works. Here's Proof

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's culture, employee engagement and leadership capability? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

Integrity: The Supreme Quality of Real Leaders

 

Integrity is the ante into the game of real leadership. Integrity is easy to put on a company poster, coffee mug, tee shirt or PowerPoint slide. It's harder to put into practice.  

Integrity acts as a moral compass. Just as a ships’ crew used the Sextant to navigate the high seas, leaders use integrity to guide their conduct with others. Integrity is vital for forming and sustaining healthy and profitable professional and personal relationships.

Integrity reflects a person’s true character and is their best friend. The esteemed nineteenth-century American playwright Nathaniel Hawthorne offered this insight: “No man can for any considerable time wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.”

Anytime you compromise your integrity, you do yourself an incredible amount of damage. That’s because integrity really is your best friend. It will never betray you or put you in a compromising position. It keeps your priorities right. When you’re tempted to take shortcuts, it helps you stay on the right course. When others criticize you unfairly, it helps you keep going and take the high road of not striking back. And when others’ criticism is valid, integrity helps you accept what they say, learn from it and keep growing.

When people around you know that you’re a leader with integrity, they know that you want to influence them because of the opportunity to add value to their lives. They don’t have to worry about your motives.

One of the reasons people struggle with integrity issues is that they tend to look outside themselves to explain any deficiencies in character. But developing and sustaining integrity is an inside job. Psychologist Sheldon Koop asserts, “All the significant battles are waged within self.” Integrity is not determined by circumstances and it is not based on credentials, it is governed by the choices we make. And the choices we make—make us.  

Wendell Phillips said, “The price of integrity is everlasting vigilance.”  

The following questions can help assess and elevate your level of integrity:

1. Do I consistently treat people that work for me with respect even when I am under pressure?
2. Am I the same person when I’m in the spotlight as I am when I’m alone?
3. Do I tell half-truths because the whole truth is uncomfortable?
4. How well do I treat people from whom I can gain nothing?
5. Do I quickly admit wrongdoing without being pressed to do so?
6. When I have something difficult to say about people, do I talk to them or about them?
7. Do I act consistently in what I say and do?
8. Do I have an unchanging standard for ethical/moral decisions, or do circumstances determine my choices?
9. Do I make difficult decisions, even when they have a personal cost attached to them?
10. Do I seek personal gain above shared gain?

The bottom line when it comes to integrity is that it inspires trust in you. And without trust, you have nothing. Trust is the single most important factor in any relationship. It is the glue that holds people together. And it is the key to being a leader that exerts positive influence on those around them. When you earn people’s trust, you begin to earn their confidence, and that is one of the keys to influence. 

President Dwight D. Eisenhower expressed his opinion on the subject this way: “In order to be a leader, a man must have followers. And to have followers, a man must have their confidence. Hence, the supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible.”  

When people trust you, your level of influence increases. And that’s when you will be able to start impacting their lives. But it’s also the time to be careful because power can be a dangerous thing. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test the man’s character, give him power.”

C.S. Lewis remarked, "Integrity is doing the right thing when no one is watching." Click here to read a short story related to Lewis' quote called "Catch of a Lifetime."

Check out a related post: Why Should Anyone Trust You to Lead?

To your greater success and fulfillment,

Peter Mclees, Leadership Coach, Trainer and Performance Consultant

SMART DEVELOPMENT

Take the Next Step... 

Interested in learning how to develop your organization's leadership capability, culture, and employee engagement ? We begin with a collaborative discovery process identifying your unique needs and business issues. To request an interview with Peter Mclees please contact: 

Email: petercmclees@gmail.com  or  Mobile:323-854-1713

Smart Development has an exceptional track record helping service providers, ports, sales teams, restaurants, stores, distribution centers, food production facilities, wealth management services, real estate services, nonprofits, government agencies and other businesses create a strong culture, leadership bench strength, coaching skills and the teamwork necessary for growth. 

Having worked with several companies throughout their growth cycle, we have valuable insights and strategies that would help any late stage startup, small or medium sized company achieve sustained growth and prosperity.

This is the Secret of Sales

    
 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine if there was a secret to successful selling.

Imagine if there was one concept, one rule you could learn and follow, and if you learned and applied this rule, then you would successfully be able to sell any product or service you chose to.

And not only would you be able to sell these products or services, but—if you learned and applied this secret—you would sell more than anyone in your company or in your industry.

In addition, you would also be able to sell more with less stress, less rejection, and sales would actually become, dare I say it?—easy.

As you know, selling and easy rather occur in the same sentence, but by learning and applying this secret, they will.

And here is the secret:

Sales is nothing more than a set of recurring selling situations that you encounter over and over again.

You get the same brush offs when prospecting, the same objections when closing, the same ghosting when following up.

Let me prove it to you: regardless of your product, service, or industry, do any of these selling situations sound familiar?

When prospecting, has a decision maker or influencer or office manager ever told you:

    “Just email me or drop off some information.”
    “We’re happy with who we’re using.”
    “We aren’t interested.”
    “I’ll have to check with my boss.”

And when closing a sale or presenting your product or service, how many times do you run into:

    “That’s a bit more than we want to spend.”
    “It’s just not the right time for us.”
    “Let me think about it and get back to you.”
    “I’m going to need to talk to the committee/boss/my partner, etc.”
    “Can you email me more information?”

Now, I’ve haven't spoken with you recently, but I’ll bet these cover 80% of the objections you get, right?

And that’s because selling is a set of recurring situations that contain the same objections, stalls, and you get them over and over again.

And therein lies the secret to successful selling:

Learn exactly what to say—in advance—of getting these recurring objections.

Now this may sound like a “duh!” moment but let me share another secret with you: 90% of sales reps don’t do this. Instead, they ad-lib, make things up, and use poor responses over and over again.

Poor responses that don’t work!

The answer?

• Script out—in advance—two or three “best practice” responses to the recurring selling situations you get into all the time.
• Practice, drill, rehearse these responses until they become your automatic way of responding.
• Doing this will change your sales results, your day-to-day experience in selling, and ultimately your career and your life.
•  Your choice really comes down to: Struggle and underperform, or sell easily, confidently, and make more money than 90% of your competition.

Poor responses that don’t work!

All the success,

Peter C. Mclees, Principal

email: petercmclees@gmail.com

Mobile: 323-854-1713

We help sales managers and sales organizations accelerate their sales.