Shaping the Leadership Climate

The soul of an organization, its personality, attitudes habits and behaviors, is its culture.  The way that the organization “feels” to the people who work there and to guests is its climate.  Organizational climate is shaped by many forces, but it begins with leadership.  A healthy leadership climate – reflected in the tone and timbre of the organization – begins when every member of the organization shares three things: respect, reason and risk.

The first characteristic of a healthy leadership climate is shared respect.  The most pervasive chill that can fall over an organization or workplace results when members of the team treat others with scorn or disrespect. It is especially poisonous when the leader is the perpetrator.  The leader who knows his or her job will also know the strengths and weaknesses of all employees.  While strengths should be a matter of public discussion and recognition, weaknesses should not.  An otherwise effective workplace is undermined when the leader speaks ill or criticizes a team member or customer in public.  Praise should be given in public, while “proctoring” – especially if it is to correct a mistake or identify a persistent fault – should be done in private.  The leader should always deliver bad news or criticism in person.  Electronic mail is an unsuitable substitute.

It can be amusing to commiserate with a group of employees regarding the peculiarities or failings of another worker, or even another department.  But coming from a leader, such negativism contributes to a cold, harsh leadership climate where workers wonder when they will become the brunt of the joke or distain.  Instead, shared respect means as Ralph Waldo Emerson has said, that “every man is entitled to be valued by his best moments.”

In his book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (basic reading at some point for all leaders) author Stephen Covey speaks of deposits and withdrawals from the “emotional bank account.”  Sincere public and private recognition and appreciation constitutes an emotional deposit, while criticism can be considered a withdrawal. Constructive criticism delivered in private in the context of genuine respect will be received by most workers, when it is clear that the leader has the best interests of both the worker and the workplace in mind.

The foundation for such positive reception is shared respect and an understanding of the employee.  How well to you know those whom you lead?  Do you know their spouses and children?  Do you know what matters most to them?  Could you carry a conversation about it with them?  It has been said that General Dwight D. Eisenhower was able to initiate a conversation with anyone he met, from the lowest private to the highest-ranking foreign leader. He learned to ask them where they were from and what their home was like.  Certainly we can do even better with those with whom we work every day.  It is part of a shaping a climate of shared respect.

Shared reason is the second crucial element of a healthy leadership climate.  It is easy for staff members to lose sight of the reason for their work without a leader who successfully reminds them regularly of their shared purpose.  Ronald Reagan was called “the great communicator,” but admitted that it was not his communication that was great, but rather that he “communicated great things.”  It is the responsibility of the leader to communicate the great things that represent shared reason in the workplace, whether it is customer service, quality manufacturing or the delivery of excellent health care.

The leader communicates shared reason by repeatedly reinforcing principles at the level of the “greatest common denominator” not the least. For example, it may be difficult for a worker to relate to or get excited by a discussion of faithfulness or loyalty as abstract concepts.  But they will be able to understand these values in the context of loyalty to customers or faithfulness to patients. The leader must continually ask, “What is the greatest common principle that ties the organization together, and how can it best be communicated to those who work here?”   “What are the shared purposes that tie together all of the sections of the organization?”  “How can the different people and sections within the organization share a common reason for what they do?”  Some business experts call this “alignment.”  Our laboratory staff, almost to a one, told a recent inspector that they never forgot who they worked for: the Warrior and the family.   They know “the reason.”

The effective leader is always prepared to communicate this reason through “writing and rhetoric;” through a carefully prepared “elevator speech” as well as in regular, predictable written communication with staff members.  The latter can take the form of published newsletters, blog sites, or any means of social media.  Electronic mail is another frequently successful way of reaching out to staff.  The elements of “shared reason” may change with time, but the importance never diminishes.

Finally, in a healthy leadership climate the leader must communicate shared risk.  The leader will have pressures and specific risks that most of the staff will not understand and or appreciate. It is too easy, however, for the leader to dwell in a world that the workers cannot identify with in the least.  The staff must perceive that the leader shares the same general risks as they do, if the leadership climate is to be a healthy one.

Unfortunately, it is unreasonable to expect that modern executives will be able to work alongside their employees for long, especially if the work is technically difficult or foreign to them. But what better way is there for the leader to appreciate what the workers are experiencing than to at least visit them in their work space at regular intervals. It gives the leader a chance to listen to the concerns of the workers, to see the workplace processes and to better understand the work conditions.  It is also the best way to get a feel for the climate of the workplace right where the work is being done.

Another way that the leader demonstrates shared risk is by exercising caution with the perks that come with leadership.  Does the leader have a reserved parking spot while the workers park away from work and walk or are bused in?  Who gets the newest computer or Blackberry?  Like the fictional General Waverly in the 1954 movie “White Christmas,” would your workers say of you, “We ate then he ate, we slept then he slept?”  Do your workers see you share their risks?

In any organization conditions that set the climate begin with the leader, they happen whether the leader pays attention to them and acts intentionally, or not.  It is far better to purposely shape the climate through shared respect, reason and risk, than to let the climate develop – and shape your organization instead.

Chuck Callahan  Henry V 4.3 – Lead from the Front  https://henryv43.wordpress.com/