How to Become a More Intentional Culture Leader
Great workplace cultures don’t happen by accident! Creating a more inspiring, service-driven, resilient, and innovative workplace culture requires intentional leadership focused on workplace culture. In this video, I offer up some ideas on how you can be more intentional, not just as a leader, but as a workplace culture leader so you can nurture a workplace culture that drives outrageous results. If you dont feel ike watching my lovely self and would rather read, the full transcript is available below.
How to Become a More Intentional Culture Leader
Inspiring culture leaders are intentional about their leadership. They are intentional about their culture leadership, and I’m using that phrase, culture leadership, to suggest the idea that there’s a difference between being a leader in the traditional sense and being a culture leader.
When you’re a culture leader, you are obsessively thinking about your culture. You recognize that everything you do has an impact on your culture. Everything you do as a leader, either positively contributes to your culture, or it takes away from your culture in a negative way. Everything you do affects the culture and your culture is EVERYTHING when you are thinking like a culture leader. But just like how we can’t create truly inspiring workplaces by accident, we cannot have inspiring leadership by accident either. Great leadership is about being intentional about being a leader.
So how do you be intentional about your leadership? I’ve got a few ideas for you.
Start by just being more aware. Being more aware of what it takes to be a leader is incredibly important. Just learning more, taking this course hopefully will remind you forever more of the importance of taking a step back and thinking to yourself, am I being a leader? Am I being a leader right now? What opportunities am I missing to be a leader? Being aware is one thing, however, we talked about the knowing, doing gap. It’s one thing to know you have to be a leader. It’s an entirely other thing to make sure you are doing leadership, that you are being a true leader for the people around you. One of the things you can do is to practice being more mindful, more and more CEOs and top leaders are taking mindfulness courses and meditation courses in order to help center themselves and be more present and focused at work.
It’s really hard to be a leader, to be an intentional leader if you’ve got … Squirrel. Sorry, I thought I saw a squirrel. If you’ve got squirrel brain. Really hard to be a leader. So it’s about being focused and being present. If you want to be an intentional leader and this may sound a little corny, but when I’ve interviewed leaders around the world, one of the things, some of them say they do is before they start work, they will sit in their car for a few minutes, or they will sit at their desk for a few minutes, close the door, or find a quiet space where they can be alone for just five minutes to center themselves and think about the day ahead. And think about what is it going to take for them to be intentional about being a leader.
And then at the end of the work day, another thing you can do is take a few minutes, if you are serious about this, take a few minutes to reflect on the day. Take five minutes and create a habit around this. Take five minutes at the end of each day, to reflect on the day and to reflect on those times where maybe you would’ve done something a little differently, to reflect on those times when you could have stepped up and been more of a leader in this situation. It’s so important to do that, but take those moments to think about being intentional about being a leader.
One thing you can also do is start a leadership journal. Lot of great leaders that I’ve interviewed have leadership journals, where they write down thoughts, where they capture their ideas, where they capture moments, where they write down things, even like, I’ve got to remember to the next time I see Jennifer, thank her for doing what she did last week because that was brilliant. And they keep a leadership journal, a leadership diary to just capture all of those things that will help them be more intentional about being a leader.
Another attribute of inspiring, intentional leaders is they ask for feedback all the time, which can be a really difficult thing to do. If you are serious about being an inspiring leader, you have to develop the skill of asking for feedback on your leadership. It’s the only way to get better. It’s the only way to learn. It’s one of the only ways to know that you are making progress as a leader.
You also must invest in your own personal development. Leaders invest in their own training and in their own career development. If you’re going to be intentional about being a leader, then it’s important to get as much training, to read as much as you can about the topic, to learn from other people, and to find a good coach or good mentor to help you develop those intentional leadership skills.
You need to also turn intention into habits. So schedule one-on-one conversations with your team members, we’ve talked about the importance of having one-on-one conversations at work. So make sure they happen by turning it into a habit. Turn it into a habit of having regular coffee meetups with your team to talk about culture, turn it into a habit to ask for feedback on your leadership. Turn giving recognition to employees into a habit. Turn things into a habit that will help you be more intentional as a leader.
I love how some leaders I’ve interviewed have talked about the importance of doing small things at work like being seen out in the parking lot, picking up garbage. And they do that intentionally to send a message that nothing is beneath them as the leader, that they can roll up their sleeves and help out in any number of different situations. And that by doing those simple things, they hopefully send the message to everyone else. If it’s not beneath the president or CEO to pick up garbage in the parking lot, then maybe it’s not beneath me either. So look for those opportunities to behave intentionally as a leader. Turn it into a habit though and you’re far more likely to build your influence as an intentional leader.
And finally keep challenging yourself as a leader. Keep asking yourself, am I being a true leader? Am I being a leader that my team needs me to be? Am I being the leader that my organization needs me to be? Am I truly focused on people and what’s best for the people around me, and putting people front and center? Am I thinking in the long term when I make decisions? When I practice my behaviors at work, am I always thinking about what’s best in the long term? Am I thinking about the entire picture, the entire forest, the entire pie, what’s best for the entire organization? And am I being intentional as a leader? And so my last challenge to you is this: What are you going to do going forward to be more intentional as a leader in your workplace?
Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame speaker who is known as one of North America’s leading and most entertaining thought leaders on the topic of workplace culture. Michael is also the author of 8 books, including The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses Are Laughing all the Way to the Bank; Hire, Inspire and Fuel Their Fire: How to Recruit, Onboard, and Train New Employees to Live Your culture Out Loud; and The Jerk-Free Workplace: How You Can Take the Lead to Create a Happier, More Inspiring Workplace. To book a time to see how Michael could work with your organization to help you be more intentional about your workplace culture, please hop over to Michael’s virtual booking calendar.
