Contents

• Empowered Culture
• Culture of Innovation
• Sales Culture
• Customer-Centric Culture
• Culture of Leadership Excellence
• Culture of Safety

Introduction

Whether they know it or not, every company has a culture. There are many different types of corporate culture. Some evolve naturally and some are intentional, but all of them fit the same definition. When we look at culture, we are looking at the sum-total of the behaviors of all employees; culture is defined by what the people of the organization do.  Culture is not to be confused with your company mission, vision, and values. The mission of the company sets the direction, whereas culture describes environment around how the mission is achieved, and values define what the culture will be.

So, why do you need to identify your corporate culture? There are a few important reasons:

• Operate with intention – Understanding both the type of culture you want and the type of culture you currently have will allow you to forge a path to get from Point A to Point B.
• Uncover gaps – When you evaluate your company culture, it allows you to identify areas that could be improved so you know where and how to take action.
• Identify opportunities – Similarly, taking the time for self-reflection can potentially highlight opportunities that you might be missing out on.

Examples of Corporate Culture

Just as people from across the globe live in different cultures, so do companies; and in some cases, even divisions within a company can have their own culture. Listed below are a few common corporate cultures you may wish to create at your organization.

1. Empowered Culture

The epitome of an empowered culture is when every individual in your organization feel fully engaged and actively participates in the success of the business. People initiate new activities that will benefit your company, take ownership of their work, and are willingly responsible for the outcomes.

People that thrive in an empowered corporate culture are those that are not afraid to take initiative and exhibit confidence in their decisions. Some of the benefits of fostering this type of culture include:

• Potential issues are identified and addressed before they become problems
• Employees feel comfortable coming to superiors with new ideas
• Individuals are engaged in making the organization better
• People feel accountable for their actions and take ownership of their ideas

2. Culture of Innovation

In some industries, innovation is highly valued and necessary for the ongoing success of the organization. A culture of innovation focuses not just on coming up with new ideas, but also on following a rigorous process to bring those ideas to fruition.

In a culture of innovation, having a diverse set of personalities will enable ideas to percolate more readily. While some people may be better at the creative elements of innovation, others may be more adept at implementing the processes to bring them to life. The benefits of developing this type of culture in an organization include:

• A unified commitment to innovation among all members of the organization
• Competitive advantage in the marketplace through ongoing innovation
• An environment where everybody feels comfortable communicating their ideas

3. Sales Culture

Creating a sales culture at your organization may signal that there is an underlying impetus to support the activities that generate revenue for your company. For companies with a large sales force, undergoing a culture transformation to focus on sales within that group can make them better able to promote new products and services, approach new markets, develop a sales process that is in line with your company’s values, and use the tools that will help them maximize sales.

The individuals who thrive in a sales culture tend to be focused on delivering the product or service that best meets customers’ needs. Implementing a sales culture at your organization can provide the following benefits:

• A salesforce that is fully informed about every product and service the company provides

• A commitment from all teams to support the salesforce as needed
• Accountability in committing to targets and trying to exceed those expectations

4. Customer-Centric Culture

A customer-centric culture is all about the consumers who buy your company’s products or services. This type of culture permeates your entire organization, including those who have no interactions with customers at all. Employees in a culture of customer centricity are empowered to see everything through the eyes of the customer and to make appropriate decisions based on their observations The benefits of a customer-centric culture include:

• Company-wide accountability in all aspects of work
• An increase in customer satisfaction
• A workforce committed to delivering an exceptional customer experience every time

5. Culture of Leadership Excellence

In a culture of leadership excellence, individuals at every level have confidence that company leaders are committed to continuous improvement. In turn, leaders demonstrate their commitment by participating in ongoing training, leadership development programs, mentoring, and coaching.

In this type of culture, individuals who have natural leadership tendencies will readily rise to the top. Perhaps more importantly, those individuals who have inherent leadership skills but are not aware of them will be recognized and nurtured to fill their natural role. A culture of leadership excellence benefits from:

• A robust leadership pipeline
• Better employee retention through internal employee development
• Strong leaders in every area of the organization

6. Culture of Safety

In industries that involve physical labor, heavy machinery, or hazardous materials, having a culture of safety means that you are committed to protecting the health and well-being of every individual. This includes having certain safety procedures in place, requiring specific behaviors, and ongoing training to ensure that everybody has all the necessary information to perform their job safely.

In a culture of safety, employees inherently protect not just themselves, but also their colleagues. The benefits of a culture of safety include:

• Fewer incidents and associated cost savings
• A universal feeling that employee safety is valued by the organization
• A proactive approach to safety and compliance

It is important to note that each of these types of corporate culture does not necessarily have to stand alone; there can be crossover. For example, you can have an empowered culture that is also committed to customer centricity.

Which type of culture best fits your company? Which culture do you want for your organization? If these two answers don’t align, it’s time to start planning your transformation. Culture transformation is challenging, but it is possible. When done right, you can achieve lasting behavioral changes that will propagate for the life of the company. Are you ready for a change?

Many B2B organizations recognize the importance of focusing on customer experience in order to drive results and growth—being customer centric is simply good for business. Despite this, most companies are not quite there yet. According to Forrester, only 23 percent of B2B companies have embraced a customer centric approach to their organizational structures. Becoming a customer centric organization may seem like an overwhelming challenge, but making the investment in this culture shift is worth it. When striving to become a more customer-centric company, consider the following strategies to ensure success.

Create Corporate Clarity

Building a culture of customer centricity requires a clear vision and set of values to create a shared foundation. These ideals must be reflected in the actions, behaviors, and thoughts of both leaders and employees when making decisions. The message of customer centricity should be distributed clearly and consistently throughout the organization via meetings, everyday conversations, emails, and company message boards over a sustained period of time. Throughout the transformation to a customer centric culture, reiterate the vision in multiple ways and make it part of the company’s DNA to keep people motivated and engaged.

It’s also important to recognize that just spreading the vision of customer centricity is not enough to create lasting change. It’s essential that every person sees their part in the vision and knows what individual changes they need to make in order for it to become reality.

Employee development is a high priority for many organizations because it helps increase engagement, build loyalty, and achieve organizational goals. The types of training available to companies as part of an employee development strategy are countless, from self-directed online courses to immersive multi-day experiences. Using multiple training approaches helps ensure that you reach all types of learners and allows you to maximize your training budget.

Including experiential learning in your development program offers several important benefits, such as:

• Driving conviction to change behaviors
• Connecting conceptual ideas to actual situations in the workplace
• Delivering a fun and engaging training experience for employees
• Producing measurable results and the ability to track progress
• Providing a training framework that can be used in multiple areas

Let’s dig deeper into each of these benefits so you can see how experiential training can support your professional development strategy.

Drives Conviction

The main objective of any training initiative is to change behaviors in order to achieve a specific outcome. If participants are not aware of that outcome or not invested in accomplishing it, they are less likely to change their behaviors.

Experiential learning starts by building conviction so that participants learn not only how to do something in a new way, but also why it matters. They see the positive effects of using their new skills in the training environment and become motivated to test them in the real world because they have both the confidence that it will make a difference and the conviction to make the effort that will lead to change.

Connects Concepts to the Workplace

Many training formats effectively teach new concepts, but do not provide a safe environment to practice applying those concepts. For example, a classroom-based lecture about leadership skills can enhance the knowledge of participants, but that doesn’t mean they will know how to apply new skills in the real world.

Experiential learning is different because participants not only learn new concepts and skills, they also have the opportunity to try them in a scenario that indirectly mimics their reality. Because the scenarios are metaphors, many people don’t realize they are learning new work skills until the debrief at the end of the training. At this point, a facilitator guides a discussion that prompts participants to make strong connections between the lessons they learned in the activity and similar scenarios on the job.

Participants Have Fun

Employee development is serious business, but that doesn’t mean training has to be dry or boring. The importance of engaging participants during training cannot be understated. If they are not paying attention, they simply will not learn what you need them to.

Experiential learning fully immerses participants, making the full length of training fun and engaging. They aren’t interested in checking their phones because they want to solve the next challenge or see if they can improve their team’s results in the next round. Being fully engaged means that participants are more likely to absorb the information being presented to them, and because they are doing something that has immediate consequences, the experience is much more meaningful.

Provides Measurable Results

Training ROI is a high priority for anybody working with an employee development budget. Collecting feedback surveys or testing participants after a seminar is one way to gauge training results, but these methods do not guarantee long-term behavior change.

Experiential learning provides some of the best results of any type of training program because participants retain more information when they learn by doing. The learning decay curve shows that most people forget up to 70 percent of what they learned within the first week of learning it. Experiential learning, especially when combined with a retention strategy, helps overcome learning decay by instilling conviction, connecting the training concepts to actual behaviors in the workplace, and giving participants a common experience to reference.

Can Be Applied across a Wide Variety of Topics

Some training methods are better than others for certain topics or types of learners. For example, learning new software should include hands-on training. Similarly, digital training platforms are not always effective for people who are not comfortable using new technology without assistance.

Experiential learning can be used to teach to a broad spectrum of skills and competencies. Whether you want to teach time management to every employee or leadership skills to rising stars, experiential learning will produce results. Participants of every age and experience level benefit from this type of training. Programs can be customized to your organization, and even specific teams, so that they incorporate the company culture and internal language that will resonate with participants.

Next Steps: Adding Experiential Training to Your Development Initiatives

Experiential training has quickly become a favorite among HR and training professionals, as well as employees, because it creates conviction, connects the training experience to the real world, and delivers measurable results. Not to mention it’s fun and engaging, and can used to train a variety of topics, including leadership, customer centricity, and sales effectiveness. As you design your employee development initiatives, incorporate multiple types of learning methodologies, and be sure to include experiential training.

As more companies are asking what it takes to provide a customer experience that will set them apart, people are getting hung up on definitions and feeling unsure of where to concentrate their efforts. To differentiate themselves, organizations need to adopt a customer-centric mindset. But how is that different from providing excellent customer service?

What is the Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Centricity?

Customer service is what happens at the front line between someone receiving a product or service, and the business that is providing it. In B2C organizations, this includes the interactions between the paying customer and the business. In B2B companies, customer service most often happens between the end users at the organization making the purchase (individuals and departments), and the provider of the product or service (most often the sales and customer service departments).

Then, what is customer centricity? Customer centricity is a value that informs the behavior of the entire organization. It involves every individual at every level of the organization operating under the assumption that everything they do has the potential to affect the overall experience of the customer. Customer centricity includes customer service, but it doesn’t begin or end with frontline staff. Instead, a customer-centric organization considers the entire customer journey, and anticipates customer needs beyond the single transaction.

Adopting a customer-centric culture can have a tremendous impact on the organization and its employees. In fact, researchers at Forrester found that employees at 93 percent of customer-centric companies are happy to work there, compared to only 20 percent of employees at companies that are less focused on the customer experience. In addition, 95 percent of customer-centric companies said their customers are satisfied with their products and services, compared to only 46 percent of other companies. Meanwhile, a Walker study found that even a moderate improvement to the customer experience can impact the revenue of a $1 billion company by an average of $775 million over three years.

With such an impact on employees, customers, and the organization’s bottom line, it’s easy to see why more companies are putting a focus on customer centricity.

What Do Customer-Centric Organizations Do Differently?

Adopting a culture of customer centricity can be a major shift in mindset for some organizations. By definition, it requires the organization to put the customer at the center of business decisions, and work together to consider the total customer experience at all times. Here are just a few of the ways that customer-centric organizations approach work differently:

1. Place the customer at the heart of all decisions and actions

Customer-centric organizations don’t just promise excellent customer service. They define the customer experience they wish to provide and create policies, frameworks, and procedures to make it happen.

2. Empower individual employees

Customer-centric organizations make sure that every individual knows they can take action to impact the customer experience, and that they know the balance between personal judgment and corporate policy when taking such action. These organizations inspire accountability within their workforces; by giving people the ability to do what needs to be done, each individual is able to take ownership of their part in the customer experience.

3.Communicate effectively

Customer-centric organizations break down silos. They understand that the flow of information between departments and functions has a huge impact on the customer experience – especially when something that “looks good” for the customer’s experience when examined in isolation actually causes friction when considered in the context of the entire customer journey. Open communication helps everyone understand and create the desired customer experience.

4. Obsessed over data

Customer-centric organizations seek out data and use it to improve the customer experience. They watch the market and emerging trends in order to anticipate evolving customer needs. They obtain permission to use customer information to personalize individual interactions. They examine referral rates, customer satisfaction surveys, online reviews, and so on, to understand how effective the organization’s customer experience initiatives really are.

Consider Customer Centricity a Journey

Customer centricity is so much more than just providing good customer service, and becoming a customer-centric organization doesn’t happen overnight. It requires a shift in mindset, new policies, and changes in behavior across the organization. To learn more about customer centricity, the impact it can have on your organization, and how to make the shift, check out Eagle’s Flight founder and CEO, Phil Geldart’s book, Customer Centricity: A Present and Future Priority.

“Putting the customer first” sounds like a selfless, lofty goal for businesses. But organizations wouldn’t be so focused on providing top-notch customer service if it didn’t make sound business sense. In fact, Deloitte and Touche reports that customer centric companies are 60 percent more profitable than companies not focused on the customer. But let’s back up for a moment—what is the art of customer centricity, and how exactly does it lead to business growth and success?

Why Customer Centricity Is an Art (Not a Science)

The shape that customer centricity takes in your organization depends on whom you serve—there’s no one-size-fits-all customer centric formula you can simply plug yourself into. In fact, that’s the opposite of customer centricity! This is much more than a “customer first” motto. Customer centricity is an organizing principle, with the customer at the center.

Think of customer centricity as a painting. You paint the customer into the foreground, and everything else in the painting exists to keep the focus on the customer. Taken individually, the elements of the painting that enhance the customer—all of those background techniques—don’t seem to make much of a difference. But if you take them all away, your painting becomes dull and lifeless—the color seems to drain out of your painting’s central figure (the customer). For example, designing an office that feels inviting to your customer (think comfy chairs, a coffee station, and offices full of natural light) may seem superfluous, but it can have an outsized impact on the customer’s first impressions of your organization. Furthermore, the elements that don’t serve to enhance the customer can be reworked, painted over, and redesigned. Customer centricity, like painting, is a process that takes time, trial and error, and practice to perfect!

A company that truly embraces customer centricity organizes the corporate culture around its customers and ensures that departments don’t operate in silos when it comes to interpreting customer data and the customer experience. In fact, “customer service” isn’t limited to just one department—every individual at the company becomes a customer centric artist, striving to see things from the customer’s perspective, taking ownership of the ways that his or her work can directly or indirectly impact customers, and pulling out his or her paintbrush to take action to improve the customer experience.

Discover Potential Areas for Growth

Creating a customer centric culture isn’t easy, as the description above entails. So, why do companies do it? What’s in it for them?

Customer centricity can be a major boon for business, in part because it allows companies to discover and identify potential areas for growth, where new products or services can be created to meet customer needs. When you put yourself in your customers’ shoes, you can more easily see what may be lacking for them—and that spells business opportunity. Relatedly, customer centricity also helps companies develop the right products and services, the kind that are actually going to be used. When you truly understand your customers’ needs, you won’t waste time developing and marketing services that aren’t going to help them.

Create Long-Term Partnerships with Customers

Customers are going to be appreciative of the care that customer centric companies put forth in meeting their needs. When you consistently deliver solutions that are customized to the customer, that gives them an incentive to work with you further. That’s good news for your business’s bottom line, because the statistics show that it’s far more cost-effective to retain current customers than acquire new ones.

However, the reality is that customers aren’t going to stick with you if you ever stray from the customer centric model. Customer loyalty is eroding; today’s customers aren’t afraid to switch companies at the drop of a hat, and they certainly don’t feel beholden to a company due to past good service. What matters is how you treat customers now. A customer centric organization approaches customer retention as a way to create long-term partnerships with customers. Partnerships that will be mutually beneficial and rewarding to both customer and company for years to come.

Sell More with a Customer Centric Approach

Customer centricity can even inspire business growth by reviving a company’s lackluster sales results. Putting the potential customer at the center of the sales process—by researching the customer’s current reality and the climate of the customer’s industry and by identifying the customer’s real and perceived needs—can lead to more (and bigger) sales. Today’s customers want complex, custom-fit solutions, which companies can only sell to a customer when they put themselves in the customer’s shoes. That’s how a salesperson can determine what solution would truly fit best.

Does your organization possess a customer centric culture? If so, how has that contributed—directly or indirectly—to your organization’s growth?

As a leader, it is always important to be present and accessible to the individuals who report to you, and it is more important than ever during a transition in the company. When not handled well, change can be distressing and potentially damaging to morale. On the other hand, if you implement a well thoughtout change management plan, with accompanying activities, you can successfully undergo a transition that leads to long-lasting, positive change.

Leaders are especially important in the success of any change initiative. Regardless of whether the change is small such as a physical modification of the office space, or as large as an organizational culture transformation, individuals will look to leadership for cues. If you exhibit poise and grace under pressure, your team is likely to follow suit. However, if you express concern about the transition, or even worse, seem oblivious to the worries of those around you, others in the company are more likely to feel anxious. Approach the transition with intention and incorporate these change management activities for leaders and you will be well on your way to success.

1. Build Effective Communication Throughout the Process

Effective communication is essential for successful change management. Start an open dialogue as early as possible in the process and continue to provide updates and ask for feedback. Do not assume that people will come to you if they have questions; make it clear that they are not only welcome to do so, but encouraged to actively participate in the process. By communicating the reasons for the change, the projected timeline, how it will impact each individual, and any other relevant details, you not only minimize the disruption, but you also get the buy-in you need for everybody in the company to embrace the new systems or change behavior.

For your change management plan, consider face-to-face communication sessions that start with executive leaders, move down to management teams, and then to individuals. You can:

• Conduct one-on-one meetings with each of the senior leaders in your organization that foster an honest and straight-forward discussion of the changes.
• Form small group meetings, led by these senior leaders, throughout the organization. These meetings should share the same information, brainstorm solutions, and implement the new processes.

Remember, individuals will be more likely to embrace change if it’s discussed on a personal level rather than by reading it.

Recommended Change Management Activity

If you’re finding that communication is breaking down, try starting your meetings with a communication-focused team-building activity, based on the improv comedy tenet, “Always say yes.” Take ten minutes to do an improv exercise that helps build communication skills.

1. Have individuals break into pairs.
2. One member of the pair starts with a statement and the second person responds with, “Yes and…” The first person continues with another statement and the “Yes and…” cycle continues for five minutes.
3. After five minutes, the partners switch and do the same exercise starting with a different statement.

This kind of activity works in two ways: first, individuals benefit from practicing communication skills. Second, when leaders are involved, they get insight into the kinds of communication improvements that individuals respond the best to. You strengthen communication and leadership skills – all in one.

2. Create an Environment of Accessibility

Your team should always feel that they can come to you and any other leaders with questions, suggestions, or concerns, particularly when the company is undergoing a transition. Make it easy for them to communicate with you by eliminating the obstacles that make it logistically challenging or intimidating. For example, if you have a busy schedule that leaves limited time for one-on-one conversations with individuals on your team, try these strategies:

• Set aside a couple hours a week when you have an open door policy so they know they can reach you without disrupting your schedule. Put it in the calendar as “non-touchable” time.
• Schedule a regular meeting time with team members, giving them the opportunity to speak up when they otherwise might not. Also put it in the calendar as “non-touchable” time.
• Allow team members to participate in decision making by scheduling a brainstorming meeting where each individual will have an opportunity to voice their ideas or feedback.

Recommended Change Management Activity

If you feel that team members aren’t comfortable coming to you and may be holding back questions about the process, try an activity that both opens you up as a leader and encourages questions from the team.

Use a physical activity to demonstrate the importance of open communication.

1. Start with everybody in the group blindfolded and have them pass a ball around the room without speaking. The process is slow and the ball can only go to people who are adjacent to each other.
2. Next, allow them to speak while passing the ball, but still with blindfolds on. Speed increases, but where the ball can be passed is still limited by proximity.
3. Finally, remove the blindfolds and allow them to pass the ball around the room to anybody they want to.

This exercise demonstrates that when all of the obstacles to communication are removed, the flow of information is dramatically improved.

3. Practice Empathy

Remember: just because the reasons for the change and the process to get there might be crystal clear in your mind, they are not necessarily so obvious to others in the company. Take the time to put yourself in other’s shoes (which will mean stepping out of yours) by using active listening:

• Prior to implementing the changes, conduct interviews with employees from various levels and functions.
• Repeat back how you interpret their ideas or feedback by saying: “Please tell me if I’ve got this right. You feel that…”.
• Avoid weighing in with your opinion during these meetings in order to truly see the changes from their perspective.

Once you have clarity on how the changes will affect others in the company, adjust the change management game plan accordingly. Clearly outline the process and make your communications– whether they are email memos or announcements at staff meetings–concise and and organized. This is especially true if the change involves multiple steps or different categories of activities.

Recommended Change Management Activity

Active listening not cutting it? If you’re not feeling like it’s easy to put yourself in your team members’ shoes, try one of the activities listed above–but you should be a participant, not the leader. Instead of leading through a communication breakdown, you’re experiencing it firsthand. Later, you can better lead through these breakdowns because you’ve recently been on the receiving end.

Even the smallest of changes will inevitably be disruptive to some degree, especially if the stage has not been set properly in advance. Therefore, by employing change management activities like effective communication, being accessible to your team, and looking at the transition from their perspective, you can successfully lead change.

Attending team meetings are an everyday occurrence for many of us. Gathering people together to discuss a topic or decide a course of action can help to maintain and improve workflow. However, not all meetings make good use of employees’ time.

A team of researchers surveyed senior managers across a range of industries, and 71 percent of them said meetings were unproductive and inefficient. One key reason meetings can be unproductive is because only an estimated 20 percent of leaders receive training on how to run them effectively, according to research by Steven Rogelberg, author of “The Surprising Science of Meetings.”

Meetings don’t have to waste anyone’s time. With targeted training, leaders can learn to take the following eight steps to ensure every team meeting is effective and relevant.

Know the Meeting Objective

Team meetings can have all sorts of objectives, from informing to providing an update to getting input from others to solve problems. Unfortunately, many meetings don’t have a stated objective. They may simply be called based on an assumption that participants understand and agree on the purpose of the meeting. To ensure that everyone involved understands the objective of the meeting and the intended outcome, it’s necessary to establish what the meeting will accomplish before or at the beginning of every meeting. Before the meeting, send out an agenda that outlines the goal of the meeting, along with any items you want people to prepare or provide updates on. Once everyone understands the meeting objective, you can start the meeting off on the right foot.

Get Input from Everyone

A meeting is not effective if only a handful of participants are actively involved in the discussion. All participants in a meeting should be contributing, whether by offering new ideas, asking questions of others, or volunteering to take responsibility for follow-up action. Some ways to get input from meeting participants include:

• Regularly asking for input during the meeting, including from those who have not yet spoken up
• Having the team engage in brainstorming or brainwriting exercises that encourage idea generation
• Asking a select number of individuals to perform follow-up work and present their findings at the next meeting

Ensure Clarity Between Fact and Opinion

Although an effective meeting benefits from participant viewpoints and opinions, it must also include facts and data that help the team make progress. After all, a team project is not likely to find success if activities are guided by individual guesses or conjecture. Instead, reports, trend analyses, and other data will be more effective guides for team discussion and action. One good way to ensure clarity between fact and opinion in a meeting is to include a presentation of key data, and then offer each person the chance to weigh in on their interpretation of the data.

Recap Periodically

It’s not uncommon for a meeting discussion to stray from the agenda. Team leaders can ensure agenda items aren’t overlooked by adding periodic recaps of what’s been discussed and agreed upon. Periodic recaps ensure that each agenda item gets its necessary attention and discussion. Recaps also help to focus the team and keep off-topic discussion to a minimum.

Make Decisions

An effective meeting doesn’t dance around issues but brings them to closure through definitive decision-making. A decision outcome can be as small as an agreement to revisit a specific topic once more information has been gathered. It can also be as large as a decision to change some part of the team strategy. Making a decision ensures the team doesn’t stagnate and keeps the agenda moving forward to action.

Assign Tasks to Individuals

An effective meeting specifies deliverables and who will be accountable for achieving them. As one Inc. article describes, “Great meetings result in decisions, but a decision isn’t really a decision if it’s never carried out.” When you carefully assign follow-up tasks along with deadlines, there’s a greater likelihood of ensuring that nothing is forgotten and that team members aren’t duplicating efforts. Producing meeting minutes and using project management software are examples of ways you can ensure efficient task assignment and keep track of deliverables.

Keep the Meeting Engaging

Meetings shouldn’t be tedious or boring. Instead, they should be designed to hold participants’ attention and use everyone’s time efficiently. Some ideas for keeping meetings engaging include:

• Limiting the duration of the meeting
• Adding an experiential activity that encourages participants to interact and communicate on a deeper level
• Using video conference tools to involve remote employees

Commit to Follow Up

An effective meeting requires follow-up so that each member of the team knows what to expect and what they need to do after each meeting. Following up after a meeting also ensures that important information isn’t lost and helps to memorialize what was discussed and agreed upon. Whether the meeting follow-up is in the form of an email to the team or a discussion in a subsequent meeting, it keeps the meeting agenda and deliverables top of mind for meeting participants.

Conclusion: Start Running Effective Team Meetings Today

Running an effective team meeting is a critical skill for leaders to master because it helps to move projects forward in an efficient manner. Because leading meetings effectively doesn’t come naturally for many individuals, it makes sense to include opportunities to learn and master that skill as part of a robust leadership development program. From there, individuals will be equipped to get broad participation, regular follow-up, and clear decision-making in each of the meetings they lead.

The way a manager leads a team is a driving factor behind what their team accomplishes and produces. It can impact the productivity of their staff and the overall output of the organization. Organizational efficiency is a byproduct of each department, which can be significantly influenced by the different forms that management can take.

Unfortunately, there’s no universal standard or approach, when it comes to management styles. The most appropriate approach ultimately depends on the structure of your team, including your people—their experience and expectations—and situational factors such as short- or long-term growth and organizational goals.

While there is no definite way that managers can apply every organizational style to their management technique, it’s best for leaders to at least be aware of a range of leadership characteristics so that they can appropriately apply facets of the techniques to specific situations.

Directive

Also known as the coercive style, the directive management technique has a primary objective of obtaining compliance from employees. This authoritarian approach closely monitors employees, motivates employees through discipline, and generally positions the manager at the center of the organizational structure. While this management technique is effective when there is a crisis or potentially perilous situation in the mix, it is not effective as a long-term management strategy if you wish to further develop employees.

Ultimately, this managerial style is useful when deviation from the norm is a risky decision. In highly litigious industries or situations, the directive manager drives their team to success. However, if employees are highly skilled, or you’re looking to develop certain skill sets, this management preference can stifle growth. Little to no learning happens within this style, and employees often become frustrated and unresponsive to the micromanagement that occurs.

Authoritative

Authoritative managers lead with the idea of implementing long-term direction and foresight across their teams. Also referred to as visionary leaders, these managers embody the “firm but fair” mentality. While they provide employees with clear explanation and direction, they may choose to motivate by persuasion. These leaders include a large amount of feedback on their employees’ performance.

Authoritative leaders are effective when clear direction and standards are needed. These leaders lead by example and manage with a high level of conviction. When leaders are credible, employees are apt to follow their guidance. While this leadership technique works in some situations, like directive management, it does not develop employees to their fullest ability. Because management provides guidance, employee insight and opinions often take a backseat, which can limit collaboration.

Affiliative

Affiliative leaders work to develop strong teams. This style of management is concerned with creating harmony between employees, management, and departments. These leaders promote open communication and place an emphasis on building cross-departmental, interpersonal relationships. Often, managers work hard to avoid conflict and motivate their employees by keeping them happy.

This management style generates positive results across companies that rely on structured teams. When combined with other management styles, affiliative leadership can help coach employees. Leaders manage and mitigate conflict, which ultimately fosters a collaborative work environment that produces results. While this management technique does build harmony, it does not create much accountability. Therefore, this style is most effective in work environments in which tasks are routine and performance is reliable.

Participative

Commonly recognized as democratic leadership, participative management has an overarching objective of fostering commitment and consensus across a team. In this style, management actively encourages every employee to voice their opinions in the decision-making process. As opposed to directive and authoritative leadership—in which management emphasizes individual performance—participative managers motivate by rewarding team effort.

This honest, transparent work environment can inspire employees to feel involved and part of their organization. It’s especially effective when an organization has a structure in which experienced, credible employees work together in a steady, stable environment. Participative managers can foster collaboration and drive creative solutions. However, much like affiliative management, this style does not work well in environments that need to be closely monitored.

Coaching

The coaching technique is a self-explanatory style that centers on learning. Much like the authoritative leadership, this management style has a primary objective of fostering long-term professional growth and development. Managers spend significant time training, evaluating, and coaching employees. By encouraging employees to develop specific skill sets and strengths, managers can positively influence the performance and output of their team members.

While this style doesn’t directly contradict team-driven approaches such as participative and affiliative management, it does tend to drive a one-on-one mindset. Taken to an extreme, managers that deploy coaching techniques can be misinterpreted as micromanagers. In this regard, it’s important for managers to offer coaching opportunities to every employee, which, in some situations, may be time-consuming.

While each of these leadership traits has something different to offer, not every management style will suit your organization. How would you describe your own management style?

Organizational change is happening all the time, especially during times such as these. It can bring about a range of emotions in people, including fear, resistance, frustration, and confusion. Leading change successfully in the midst of those emotions requires the ability to define and communicate a vision that inspires others. It also requires helping others to adjust their thinking and behavior in the workplace so that they can successfully navigate change.

One powerful tool that helps leaders guide their teams through change of any kind is emotional intelligence—the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions and to handle interpersonal relationships with empathy and good judgment. Not only is emotional intelligence a strong predictor of overall job success (research has found that it accounts for 58 percent of success at work), but it also influences individuals’ ability to successfully navigate the emotions and behavior of others during times of change. Here are four ways emotional intelligence helps leaders guide their employees through changing times.

Helps to Overcome Resistance

Resistance to organizational change is common for many reasons. Some individuals may want to avoid certain changes to their responsibilities and work processes, and others may simply resist being pushed outside of their comfort zones. Because emotional intelligence involves understanding others’ emotions, it requires listening and asking questions rather than simply telling employees what they should and should not do.

Leaders can leverage emotional intelligence to hone in on the source of employee resistance to change and can offer ideas, strategies, and coaching that will help to overcome feelings of resistance. Some key activities that can support getting at the heart of resistance to change include:

• Q&A sessions that allow employees to air their frustrations and fears about change
• One-on-one discussions that provide opportunities to talk about specific employee experiences with change
• Employee surveys that ask individuals to describe their experiences and share feedback on company change initiatives

Encourages Continuous Learning

Change implies that there will be an ongoing requirement to think and behave differently in order to be successful in the future. Change in the workplace requires the same—that individuals will acquire new knowledge and skills to help them navigate the waters of change. Research points to emotional intelligence as a key factor that drives the willingness and desire to learn because it helps to encourage both curiosity and an openness to learning lessons from successes and failures.

Leaders who possess emotional intelligence and model behaviors that demonstrate their support for continuous learning can encourage those behaviors in others. Leaders can further instill a dedication to continuous learning by encouraging employees to participate in training that helps them develop healthy attitudes toward change.

Improves Decision-Making

When navigating organizational change, individuals must be equipped to use their judgment and make decisions in the midst of uncertainty and shifting circumstances. Because those with high levels of emotional intelligence are more self-aware and also more socially aware of others’ feelings and emotions, they are better equipped to make well-informed decisions when solving problems or determining a course of action.

Leaders who employ emotional intelligence can help themselves and others become better decision makers during times of change. Instead of making a decision based solely on assumptions or a single person’s interpretation of the facts, emotional intelligence helps leaders consider the emotional needs of others when leading their team through important decisions.

Supports Healthy Relationship-Building and Trust

During times of change, individuals need support from leaders and need to feel like they’re not alone. Emotional intelligence allows leaders to provide the understanding and empathy that builds confidence and trust in others. Through active listening, patient conflict resolution, and mentorship, emotionally intelligent leaders build healthy relationships with others and allow employees to trust them as they lead the team through change successfully.

Emotional intelligence is a valuable tool in all aspects of working life, but it is particularly important when leading in times of change because it helps individuals take the emotions and feelings of others into account. When leaders take the time to provide support, training, and coaching to help individuals manage their emotions during the uncertainties of organizational change, there is less chance for resistance, fear, and distrust to derail organizational change efforts. With a combination of leading by example, providing opportunities for employee learning, and establishing forums for communication and feedback, it’s possible to fully leverage emotional intelligence to successfully lead others through change.

It’s of the utmost importance that we recognize how employee engagement and staff retention are connected. When employees are not engaged at work, they have little incentive to stay. Even pay increases often cannot keep an employee who is not engaged, especially if they don’t see a promising future that includes satisfying work and a clear development path.

Given this, it’s not surprising that an SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey indicated that the top three workforce challenges for HR professionals are retention, engagement, and recruitment. Rather than dealing with the symptoms—turnover and recruitment issues—getting to the root of the problem leads to long-term solutions. Focusing on engagement can help reduce turnover, which also alleviates recruitment issues because there are fewer empty positions to fill.

Why Is Retention Important?

One of the most motivating reasons for businesses to improve retention is the fact that it’s expensive. The cost of turnover includes lost productivity, lost profits, recruitment, training, and more. A Deloitte report found that the average cost to replace an employee is around $7,000. For large organizations with high turnover, this can quickly add up. While this number might seem reasonable, the more shocking number that is less easy to see in a financial report is the cost of lost productivity, which is estimated around $120,000 per employee. Even the loss of one employee can have an impact on the bottom line.

Another reason to focus on retaining valuable employees is the company culture. High-turnover companies have a hard time building the culture they want because there are fewer long-term employees to demonstrate the ideal behaviors. Additionally, when employees see that others frequently leave the organization, it sets a negative tone and prompts them to question why they are staying.

How Engagement Impacts Retention

Gallup’s State of the American Workplace report captures the link between engagement and retention in a nutshell:

“Employees who are engaged are more likely to stay with their organization, reducing overall turnover and the costs associated with it. They feel a stronger bond to their organization’s mission and purpose, making them more effective brand ambassadors. They build stronger relationships with customers, helping their company increase sales and profitability.”

The same report found that only one-third of workers are engaged, which should be a red flag for most organizations. If you’re not confident that the majority of your employees are engaged, this could lead to a costly turnover rate.

How to Improve Employee Engagement

Improving engagement is possible, but it requires a sustained effort. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will immediately shift mindsets, organizations should focus on the following three components to improve employee engagement:

Recognition

Publicly recognize employees for a job well done. When leaders demonstrate that they value an employee’s contribution, it fosters further engagement. Employees also want to stay at a company where they feel valued and appreciated. You can do this by creating a rewards program, hosting monthly or quarterly dinners where employees are recognized for their contributions, or simply thanking your team at the next staff meeting.

Culture

Create a culture that encourages, supports, and motivates employees to do their best work. Whether you do this by allowing dogs in the office, having a company-wide ping-pong tournament, or having quarterly team meetings, your culture should remind people why they want to be there. So, while the elements that make up your culture will be as unique as your organization, determining the desired culture will be the responsibility of leadership.

Development

Employees today value education and learning opportunities. They also want to know what opportunities lie ahead. Create clear growth paths and provide the resources that will help people achieve their development goals to keep them engaged as they progress in their careers. This requires more than a single annual review and should include coaching and mentoring to help employees reach their personal career goals.

Conclusion

Retention is a real issue that should be addressed, especially if you already have high turnover rates. Increasing employee engagement can help improve retention and also provide the benefits of better productivity and greater employee satisfaction. Focus on your company culture and take proactive steps to improve engagement, especially among your top talent.