A company’s culture flows from the top to the bottom, meaning that the CEO sets the tone. Setting up a good company culture is completely dependent on the management strategies used by the CEO. Whether the culture is healthy or not comes down to the emotional intelligence and communication strategies of the people in charge.
Communicate Clearly
A company’s culture can be felt in the day-to-day workings of even the smallest parts of the business. When leadership manages to communicate their vision and ideals, they set that mindset in motion and empower their employees to take it even further. So, what a leader must do is make sure their vision and the culture they want are well known. In doing so, employees will either join because they agree with how the company will be run or they will find a different company that works with their ideals.
Either way, positive culture within a company needs to be reinforced at every level. This means making sure that leaders are supporting the positive culture in their communications as well as their actions.
Set up Your Employees for Success
To put the last point into action, CEOs need to make sure that they allow their employees to succeed. By making sure that the expected trajectory through the company is held up by the company’s positive culture, not only will the employee do well, but they’ll feel supported throughout the entire journey. This means success for the employee, success for the company, and living proof that the system set up through the company can be successful. This is a direct reflection on the leader. So, if there is a failure with the system, the CEO needs to take a very hard look at what is being made possible for their employees.
Take Care of Issues within the Company
Another way that leaders can ensure they are maintaining the culture they want is to immediately deal with any problems that arise. Problems pop up in every organization, but as soon as the problem is identified there must be steps put in place to take care of it. It builds confidence among employees when everything that the company is supposed to be built on is not a platitude or cheap slogan. It also ensures that employees are proud to say they work at the company.
Lead by Example
The most crucial part of maintaining a good company culture is for leadership to lead by example. It’s very easy to write a mission statement or a slogan, but to live by your words is a very different thing. So, if the company’s leader is living and working by the words they put in place, it instills confidence in everyone they lead.
It also instills confidence in the consumer. With so many options out there to choose from, we often do business with companies that reflect our values. If it were to come out that a company is not living or working by their marketed values, it could result in a loss of sales. Culture affects everything in the workplace, and the company needs to prove its reliability to maintain it.
Conclusion
A company’s culture goes from the top to the bottom. This means that leadership is responsible for how the day-to-day workings impact the employees. For the workforce to feel good about the company they work for, leaders can take a few crucial steps.
First, they need to make sure they clearly communicate their vision for the company, with executives and interns alike knowing what the company stands for. However, this alone is not enough. There must be a clear and decisive path that allows employees to do well in the company. The success or failure of employees that go through the system will be chiefly due to management. Another important part of making sure that the culture of a company remains positive is to identify any problems within the company and deal with them accordingly. By communicating these ideals, the leader shows that they stand by their words. This leads to the final and most important point: leaders must practice what they preach. Effective leadership is easy to see.
Bill Malloy 