Model The Organisation’s Culture
Model The Organisation’s Culture
As leaders striving to foster new or improved culture within the organisation it is critical that we model the values and behaviours that we expect from others - do as I do not do as I say. Being human we all mess up from time to time. When we mess up modelling the desired behaviours, we are open and honest about our mistakes. We are open and honest about how we are going to put things right. We listen to and accept valid feedback on our leadership wherever it comes from. We act on the feedback in order to improve our leadership.
In A Nutshell
Part of leadership is about setting an example - being a role model - for those we wish to influence. If we want others to display the positive values and behaviours we aspire to, we must display them first. We must display them with better fidelity too.
As we define and improve the organisation’s culture we will be introducing new values, new behaviours and new principles. Leaders lead by example, being the first to try to demonstrate the new elements of our culture. Given these are new concepts in our culture, it is very likely that we are going to make mistakes and fail from time to time.
Sometimes we will not even recognise our own failure. We need to be open to receive and act on feedback from those that we work with. This helps us to be more objective about our successes and failures in following the organisation’s culture.
If we dissemble after making a mistake we will destroy trust. As leaders we display openness, honesty and humility about the mistakes we make and the impact of those mistakes. With deliberation we demonstrate new adherence to the organisation’s culture. From our position of improved adherence, we gain credibility so we can challenge those working around us. We do this by giving feedback to others, in the same way that we expect to be given feedback.
Related Practices
If we claim to have anAgileMind we should actively seek out feedback from those around us. Feedback helps us to improve our performance by reinforcing our strengths and giving us the opportunity to overcome our weaknesses. Feedback is emotionally and physically costly to those who give it. We should respect the act of receiving feedback from others by taking care to act on it.
We collaborate to define our target culture for the organisation. The culture is defined by the purpose, value, behaviours and principles of the organisation. Culture is further influenced and constrained by the structures, roles and working practices of the organisation. Culture is collaborative and consensual in nature and requires conscious choice by all the organisations members to become real.
Frequent, effective feedback is central to the agile mindset - it is at the heart of how we inspect and adapt in order to get better at what we do. Personal feedback is one of the most valuable ways of improving our agile performance. It is also one of the most challenging aspects of anAgileMind. It is challenging both for those who give the feedback and for those receiving it too.