Truly Great Culture – Leadership

Good morning, Dennis Engelbrecht with The Family Business Institute and the CEO Roundtable Program for Contractors.

We just finished our series of spring roundtable groups, and really was sort of blessed and fortunate to see a couple of amazing cultures, some truly great cultures that we got to witness in some of our groups during this spring. And I would have to say we saw a couple that were not so great as well. So, it really brought a focus on how did these truly great cultures come to be? And how do you achieve one and how do you sustain this kind of great culture? So, over our next four blogs, I want to talk about establishing and sustaining this great culture. Today, I want to focus on leadership and really top leadership. So, I did notice in witnessing these great cultures that we saw this spring, that there really was a characteristic of the leadership that you could point to that was a big definer of the culture and a big establisher of the culture.

So, the first part of this was caring. Very interesting, in our roundtable groups, we're often interviewing multiple people, 8 or 10 people at a time, and that the word caring was prevalent when we did the interviews for these particular great cultures. And it wasn't just caring. The words truly care, really care. You know, what was interesting is it wasn't enough they were caring; it was the level of caring that people felt going down through these businesses that they were getting from their top leaders. And so, if you think about that, that's really a special thing. And if your people are feeling that, and that becomes your culture, wow, that really is a binding thing. And, I could see that characteristic in those folks.

In fact, one of the people, I asked them, they're nearing retirement and I was asking them what they thought they might do in retirement. And they mentioned that it was going to be difficult to be thinking about what they want to do for them, because they're not used to that. They're used to taking care of their people. They're used to taking care of their family, raising their daughters. And they were so outwardly focused. And I think, again, if you go back to that caring, there is an outward focus to that. And I was happy to hear that because it really helped me define why people felt cared for. So that was really cool.

The other characteristics of this great leadership to create these great cultures was some level of intelligence, being smart, but really where it came out was great decisions. People felt like these leaders who created these great cultures made the right decisions. They weren't always quick decisions, or dramatic decisions, but when things happened out there throughout the company, they were well thought out, people felt like the decisions took into account everything and they just made good decisions. So good decision-makings and again, if you think back to feeling cared for, great decisions probably reflect that level of care for the people in the employees again as well.

And then finally, the other thing coming out of that leadership was a calmness. So, from these great leaders, with these great cultures, you could see where construction can get a little crazy, can get emotional and all of these things. Well, these leaders reflected a calmness. And I think that calmness helps employees feel assured, helps them trust the organization, trust leadership, because they're not raving lunatics going crazy, making erratic decisions and things like that. That calm, tried and true approach to things, I think from those great leaders was important. So, if you want to establish a truly great culture, make sure, I'm sure all of you do care, but make sure that caring comes through and it's apparent and it's out front in how you lead. Try to make great decisions and try to be that calm steward captain of the ship for your people.

Again, Dennis Engelbrecht, Digging Deeper. Thanks for tuning in.