Something that I never believed in was telling people what to do. – Carolyn Swora
Today we are going to dig into the topic of why culture is so important in the workplace. Our guest is Workplace Culture Architect, Carolyn Swora. She is the principal and founder of Pinnacle Culture, and author of the great book, Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World.
We talk about the importance of creating a shared vision, connecting people to their “Why”, knowing your people’s strengths, culture and values, and many more.
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The power of creating a shared vision
Carolyn went from being a peer to being a manager in her first leadership role. Below, she shares one of the biggest things she has learned:
Because I had worked with these two people before, I thought, “I can’t come in and tell everyone what to do.” I naturally gravitated to “Let’s create a vision or an image or what the end state looks like for us,” and that really worked well.
It really set me up to realize the importance of doing that. Great managers don’t come in and tell everyone what to do. They give people the space to do it on their own, and they inspire them to connect to something bigger and essentially find their ‘Why’. Finding their ‘Why’ is important.
Why is culture important
So much has changed in our workplace. People recognize collectively, now more than ever – how we get our work done really matters, and how we get our work done will impact what gets done.
You can have the most wonderful, perfect, beautiful strategy, and it will not get executed half as well as you would like it to if how you’re getting things done isn’t given some attention.
Building blocks of culture
Values are the building blocks of your culture. Quite often you’ll see these beautiful words or values painted on a wall when you walk in, in the corporate brochure, on the website, etc. and employees might look the other way and think, “Yeah, right. We don’t really do that.”
Values will tell you how people make decisions.
Carolyn’s advice for New Leaders
You are an enabler. You’re not a doer. You’re there to create an environment for people to do their best work. Help set the context, help them find the vision and the purpose in what they’re doing, and then go let them do their thing.
You’ve likely been promoted into this job as a leader because you were good at getting stuff done, but that is not what is going to define your success moving forward.
Links and Resources
Connect with Carolyn: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Visit her website: http://carolynswora.com/
Rules of Engagement: Building a Workplace Culture to Thrive in an Uncertain World by Carolyn Swora
