The Shearin Group

Leadership Training Tips

Top 10: Tips for Building a
Flourishing Company Culture

Culture cannot flourish if individuals do not sustain it. Whether its a beautiful or horrific
culture, it does not exist without one individual after another choosing to support it.
For me, the culture that I want to live and work in is achieved through what I value most:
values like honesty, fairness, and promot-ing success for everyone involved in and related
to my organisation.

These are among the values that guide me to my purpose, which is helping people realize
their best selves. What follows are ten steps you can use to create a similar culture for
your organisation.
Step 1. Create Stakeholders: It Begins and Ends with You
If you are recruiting people into an organisation that reflects a carefully articulated
purpose and set of values, youve got to begin and end your day thinking about and acting
on those values.
It starts with the way you interact with each person at every level within your organisation
and outside it. Make sure your values and purpose are known to everyone and that they
provide a core framework for daily operations.
Step 2. Create Stakeholders: Its Not Enough to Bring People on Board
Its not enough for you to bring people on board who share your values and your purpose.
You need to keep these people on board. The real challenge, how-ever, comes with holding
on to the client or the talented employee.
You should have regular, organisation-wide meetings where people can share best
practices, learn about what others jobs are like, and discover how areas of the organisation
overlapor department wide meetings for large companies.
Remember that you want people who will actively engage with each other without fear of
leadership egos getting in the way. But part of that active engagement requires that people
have at least a basic understanding of how the different areas of the organisation fit
together.
Step 3. Promote Accountability: Freedom, Transparency, and Responsibility
Eleanor Roosevelt said, With great freedom comes great responsibility. When you create
the sort of culture that encourages people to share and challenge ideas, you create a culture
in which people feel free to innovate and be creative. This also means that people are
responsible for what they say and what they do. We all are agents of our actions.
If you are going to create an environ-ment and a culture of trust, transparency, and
honesty, you must live it every day and not just preach it. You must say the things you
believe are true, and you must do the things you say you will do.
Step 4. Create Dialogue: Listen
Related to the idea that a vibrant culture is one that encourages peo-ple to speak their mind
and expects the experience to be beneficial for everyone involved is the idea that people
should take dialogue seriously. Believe it or not, many people dont know how to have a
conversation that actually produces good ideas. Lots of times, we dont listen to each other

but rather simply wait for our chance to get our point across. The point of really listening is
to understand and, more often than not, to take action on what you hear.
Step 5. Create Dialogue: Confirm or Correct
Ask the person youre speaking with to confirm that your recapitulation of their meaning
is accurate, or to correct you. After all, the ideas youre trying to get right are theirs, not
yours. Yes, the one commu-nicating has the burden of making him- or herself clear, but you
can help improve the persons articulation. In addition, since you want people to take
responsibility for what they say and do, you need to know youve got it right, and you need
them to know that you care about that.
Step 6. Create Dialogue: Situate the Conversation
See if you can situate what someone is saying within the organisations established
framework of values, and try to find a connection or some alignment with the
organisations purpose. Doing so will help keep the focus on why everyone showed up for
work!
Step 7. Create Dialogue: Consider Assumptions
Every story has to begin somewhere; we have to assume something to get things going.
Similarly, when we engage in dialogue, we make cer-tain assumptions that are often not
explicit. Theyre simply the givens we take to be true for the purpose of starting. Just as you
do when you reformulate in your own words, check with the speaker to see if what you
believe they have assumed is, in fact, what they assume!
As with verbal disputes, its often the case that our disagreements occur because of what is
not said. In other words, we dont state our assumptions, and we believe we know what
others assumptions are, but were wrong!
Step 8. Disagreement Does Not Mean Stalemate: Give Others Ideas a Try
If you and someone in your organisation disagree over an idea or a process but a decision is
made to implement it, make sure everyone gives it the same support they would show if
they thought it was the best thing since sliced bread.
Its your job to get people on board and excited about the direction of a program, process,
or policy, whether it was your idea or not. Its easy to help things fail; its a lot harder to see
them succeed. Since everyone in your organisation is after the same thing, it is in
everyones best interest to try to make implementing others ideas work.
Step 9. Change: Manage It
Change is a scary, scary thing for most people. They dont know where they fit in with this
change, or if theyll be left out. Its important, therefore, that whenever change is on the

horizon, those who are respon-sible for deciding to implement it communicate their
reasons clearly and thoroughly.
People need to understand the context for change as well as how change will impact their
workload, workflow, planning, and so forth. Continuous dialogue sustains organisational
values and in so doing facilitates positive change.
Step 10. Values: Youre in the Relationship Business
Never forget that human interactions are always meaningful at some level. Youve probably
had interactions that, for some reason, were really meaningful to others, though you
thought them to be rather pedestrian. And the shoe has likely been on the other foot, too.
You can never anticipate what is going to impact someone elses life in a really meaningful
way, but be aware that its always possible.
If your interactions reflect your values, then you can always be confident that you have
contributed to creating a meaningful culture wherever you go.
You need more tips? Shearin Group Training Services will help you. Our leadership
programs have been assisting companies in France. With leaders at different levels have
availed of our leadership training programs.. For more topic and tips, just visit our page
here.