The owner of an organisation’s culture is the one sitting at the top of the organisation, even if they play no part in transforming that culture.

The leader at the top of your organisation (that may be the CEO or the Managing Director) needs to know the truth…they are the owner of your organisation’s culture. If they don’t yet realise that, then they are in for a wake-up call. A wake-up call that may surprise them.

1. Owning The Culture

If the leader of your organisation thinks what I am saying is wrong, and they don’t believe they own the culture then they are not currently a highly effective leader. They are a low performing leader now who constantly looks outwards and takes no responsibility for their people.

Highly effective leadership can and must be taught through my books and other materials, but it must be practiced more. If you have a highly effective leader at the top of an organisation, then their influence and example will filter down through the organisational ranks and create more highly effective leaders.

Taking responsibility is a very important trait of a highly effective leader, and they are responsible for communicating to their own people and others information that they should know about.

DOWNLOAD MY FREE E-BOOK “INCREASE YOUR INFLUENCE”

Highly effective leaders are responsible for retrieving information that they should have or know about, and they must do this through asking, not waiting. If they don’t receive this information earlier, then they can’t blame anybody.

Highly effective leaders are responsible for asking the right questions, helping their people to think deeper and help them come to solutions to problems that will ultimately help them in making the right decisions.

2. Making Decisions

It is always best when a highly effective team makes decisions together, with the final say coming from the highly effective leader. The outcome of these decisions will always fall on the responsibility of the highly effective leader, whether the outcome is positive or negative.

I say that because the decisions made will not always be the right ones, things will go wrong, and mistakes will be made. When things do go wrong, the highly effective leader will always take responsibility and will never blame the team, even if it was the team who made the mistake.

There is never any finger pointing from the highly effective leader. It is not easy to take responsibility when things go wrong, but the highly effective leader will rise to it.

There are leaders around the world who won’t take any responsibility when things go wrong, or mistakes are made. They will finger point and blame members of their team, and when this happens, they are having a very negative effect on the team culture.

The morale of the team will drop and the trust that they had of their leader will drop. A leader who blames others and takes no responsibility is an arrogant leader and should not be in a leadership position.

3. Preventing Things Going Wrong

There are leaders who don’t have the strength or the self-belief to do their best to prevent things from going wrong, and they will just allow it. When this becomes obvious within the team, they will begin to distrust their leader and the culture within the team becomes negative.

An expectation of a highly effective leader is to do their best to prevent things going wrong. Even if they don’t prevent it, it is obvious that they tried their best. When this happens, they still build trust with their team and the highly effective leadership culture remains.

During a leader’s career they will have to deal with big issues, but they will deal with a lot more smaller issues. If they don’t have the strength or the self-belief to make the smaller issues right for their team, then how can they be relied upon to make the big issues right for their team.

If leaders are just allowing things to happen, especially when they have a negative effect on their team, then culture within the team will drop. This is the responsibility of the leader, and they need to know that every day, they are being observed by everybody.

So, when it is observed that they or another leader has negatively affected the culture of the team and the organisation because they haven’t prevented things going wrong, what do you think people are thinking?

They are thinking, “This leader doesn’t care, this leader isn’t listening, this leader needs to be replaced.”

It might be hard to believe but there are leaders throughout the world who don’t want good things to happen within their team, and the prevent any positive outcomes. I have worked with a few of them.

So, when a leader goes out of their way to prevent anything positive happening within their team, they start to distrust the leader. With this distrust, the morale of the team decreases and so does the culture. People throughout the organisation will notice this.

Highly effective leaders want to create a highly effective leadership culture within their team and throughout their organisation.

To do this they cannot be seen to prevent any positive outcomes within their own team, they cannot be seen to allow things to go wrong without doing their best to prevent it, and they cannot be seen to not care.

A highly effective leader must be seen to do their best to prevent things from going wrong, and if they can’t then they will not give up.

A highly effective leader must be seen to allow positive outcomes for their team. A highly effective leader must show their team that they care for them. This will build trust, grow the morale, and transform the culture they are trying to create.

4. Focus On The Right Things

All leaders need to know that they are being observed by everyone, especially by their senior leaders. Highly effective leaders know that they must focus on the right things and how they are performing when working on these right things.

DOWNLOAD MY FREE E-BOOK “INCREASE YOUR INFLUENCE”

They are not interested in what they should be doing or what others think they should be doing. Their team and their people are who they focus on. Managers focus on things and what they should be doing rather than how they are performing.

Their people are not their focus. The difference between a manager and a leader is how much character they have. A manager will focus on competency 80% of the time and character 20% of the time. A leader will focus on character 80% of the time and competency 20% of the time.

Whether you spend 20% of your time on competency and 80% of your time on character is your personal choice. But to become a highly effective leader and to grow a highly effective team, you need to be spending your time in the right way.

You must be able to manage your time and so must your team. How much development have you had in the area of time management, and how much has your team had? How good are you at managing your time in the right way? Have you personally taught your team to manage their time in the right way?

If you want to create a highly effective leadership culture, then you need to communicate from the mind of a highly effective leader.

I welcome hearing how this post has influenced the way you think, the way you lead, or the results you have achieved because of what you’ve learned in it. Please feel free to share your thoughts with me by commenting below.

Check out my other articles by Clicking HERE

All the best,

Tom (Lead, Grow, Influence)