Anton Guinea
Entrepreneur, Speaker, bestselling author, and founder of The Guinea Group of Companies. For over 15 years, Anton has helped leaders move their teams to become psychologically safe, physically safe and overall better versions of themselves.
As I talk to senior leaders in businesses, they inevitably want to change an element of the culture of the business, whether it be around client care, communication protocols or even employee health and safety – or a range of others …
And, it is great when senior leaders recognise, and then commit to a ‘culture change process’ and then go about making it happen. The process is generally for the senior leaders to engage the middle level managers, who engage the front-line mangers, who engage the team members, in the culture change, right …
When you think about it, though, what is culture, and what has to change to ‘upgrade’, to ‘improve’, or to ‘enhance’ an organisational culture? I have heard culture described as “how we do business here”, and I think that is the best definition for it. In short, culture is the shared attitudes and beliefs of those in the business, which shows up in employee behaviour and decision making.
Then, if attitude drives behaviour, the challenge for leaders at all levels of the business is to change both behaviour (in the short term), which is done by both modelling the required behaviour, and being present and visible in the business, to demonstrate what is expected, and what is accepted. It is about visible leadership, that is focused on leading by example
That has not addressed the attitude piece, though … and, as leaders really get – you will never achieve long term behaviour change without a change in attitude. But, how do you change the attitude of a workforce, especially an ageing workforce, or one that is not used to change, or one that is disengaged, or that doesn’t feel heard or recognised. There is no simple answer, though the big thing to do is to keep the culture change at front of mind for people, by talking about it constantly, and by making it a priority. If it is a priority to the leaders, it will soon become a priority for the team members.
And, long term commitment is the key to attitude change. Don’t let this culture change process be one that doesn’t last, and that is another ‘flash in the pan’!
Stay strong, stay the course, have influential leadership conversations, and watch your workplace change!!!
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