Peter Greedy: What does the culture of your business say about its leadership?

What makes great organisations?
What makes great organisational cultures? What makes great leaders?

The answer to all three questions is the same – people – and it starts with the leadership.

So, what and who makes a great leader? Some people are natural leaders and others become leaders. Both have to work on it and continue to learn and evolve their leadership.

In this article I look at some of the aspects of leadership that are important. This is not exhaustive or complete, as each individual brings their own personality, skills and knowledge to leadership. These are my thoughts on leadership from a particular angle.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT LEADER?

First let’s think about what are the attributes of leadership that are important. Here are my 7A’s: • Authenticity
• Awareness
• Alignment

• Autonomy
• Agency
• Acceptance
• Appreciation.

Authenticity is behaving in a way that is a true representation of one’s self, being true to your values and beliefs. The root of the word authentic is “genuine”: not being authentic is pretending to be something you are not. How often have you considered that you (or someone else) would behave differently if no one was watching or listening to you? That’s not to say one should ignore the accepted norms of appropriate behaviour for various situations – being professional in the practice environment, for example is essential. I’m referring to those times when we say we agree with someone when we don’t, or we say what we think people want to hear rather than what we actually think. We end up being people pleasers because of boss or peer pressure without thinking this is compromising our authenticity. Being authentic requires real courage at times. The courage to raise your hand at the end of a team meeting when asked if anyone else has something to add; the courage to speak up when you see someone being singled out and picked on unfairly instead of choosing to say nothing or even joining in.

Awareness functions on many levels and can be defined in the following sub-categories:

Self-awareness – being clear about who you are, your values and beliefs and how you are feeling at any given time; Situational awareness – being aware of your environment physically and emotionally; Social awareness – “reading the room” at social events and work meetings; Meta awareness – being aware of your awareness.
Learning to tune in to yourself and the situations you’re in can make such a difference. Emotional intelligence and empathy are really key ingredients to becoming more aware and both can be taught, learned and improved upon.

Alignment can be described as holding to values and beliefs with integrity, even when no one is watching. In leadership alignment is similar to authenticity but where authenticity refers to self, alignment refers to the values and mission of the organisation. There will likely be a large overlap between personal values and the organisations values. If this isn’t the case then you probably should not be working there. It would be like a vegan working in a meat factory or a conservative doing an admin role for the Labour Party. In the optical world we have different types of businesses, from the volume retail focus of some high street chains to the bespoke service value proposition of an independent practice. As a locum optometrist I have worked in all types of practices over the years and am very clear on the type of business I prefer to work in and be aligned with.

Autonomy in leadership is granting those who work for you or alongside you the freedom to do their thing- the thing they were hired to do – and, assuming a good recruitment process, the thing they are great at. This is the opposite of toxic micromanagement. Granting autonomy to those in your team or business means you need to let go while also ensuring they have the right environment to be successful. Regular checking in is important to see if they have any concerns about their ability to do the role and if you can help in any way. Great leaders will optimise the work environment of their team, accommodate personal needs, give encouragement and have peoples’ backs if needed.

Agency is both having and granting yourself and those in your team the power to act in the best interests of the business. For yourself it’s the feeling of control you have over your actions and their consequences and for those in your team it’s granting them the same agency to do a job for you, so that they have the feeling of control, and are free to make mistakes – the most powerful way of learning, yet for some the hardest thing to let go of.

Acceptance without judgment and with the assumption of positive intent. This is one of the toughest challenges. The assumption of positive intent is about relating to people from a place that assumes they are doing their best AND that we do not always know their story ie what’s going on in their lives at that particular moment. It is so easy to assume when someone makes a mistake that it’s because they weren’t trying hard enough or paying enough attention. Reframe that by asking yourself this – did they do it on purpose? If you have good people in your team, and you yourself know, even when doing your best, mistakes happen, we get things wrong and we fail sometimes. Giving people room to fail and make mistakes is so important for growth and yet we too often jump to negative thoughts and words in those moments.

Appreciation is a crucial practice to be developed by all leaders. Appreciation should be expressed regularly, sincerely and at times significantly. A regular “thank you” and “great job” from the boss goes a long way and should not be restricted to moments of success. To take it to the next level the leader will say “thank you for the work you are doing, do you have what you need here?” This expresses so much more in terms of care for the person. At other times a more significant gesture of appreciation is important: a hand written card, a bunch of flowers or a celebration event. Many other ways of showing appreciation are available too: additional responsibility, benefits, perks, learning and development opportunities, promotion or grade increase, and of course a wage rise.

WORKPLACE CULTURE AND LEADERSHIP

There’s a lot of research about what makes a good work culture. For you, what aspects of culture would you think have the biggest impact on how employees rank their company’s culture? Friendly colleagues? Flexible schedules? Manageable workloads? In the research cited below these aspects were commonly  discussed but had little or no impact on a company’s overall culture rating. The top 10 aspects were as follows, with their relative impact rating for each element noted in RED.

WHO MAKES A GREAT LEADER?

We now have a lot of information about what makes a great leader, but the other question is: who makes a great leader? When thinking about the “what”, the “who” gets a lot easier because we all know people that live a lot of the 7A’s naturally, and quite often they are not official leaders. I know lots of people who are not official leaders and yet they exhibit so many leadership qualities and people do follow them. Or at least people follow and aspire to the example these “leaders” live out day to day.

In my opinion, everyone is a leader in one way or another. Whether they are officially recognised as a leader in a particular organisation or not. Being a leader does not usually have a title. In business people are managers, directors, executives, coordinators, analysts etc. Very few have leader in their title.

Apart from the 7A’s, the one quality that has gone unmentioned is perhaps the most important:

If you are not prepared to serve those you lead you should not be a leader. The 7A’s are attributes of leadership; qualities that can be learnt and improved to make you a better leader. They can be taught, learned and improved with practice. Being a servant to those you lead is the embodiment of the value of service. If service is not one of your values, you should not be a leader.

One of the easiest ways to identify who should be a leader is to ask who would not make a good leader. Who is not authentic? Who is unaware? Who is more aligned with their personal agenda than that of the organisation? Who does not appreciate me? Etc. Ask these questions and people will come to mind from both past and present; and sadly some of these are the actual leaders.

In any sphere of life, at work, socially, on the sports field, in the family and wider community, you we encounter leaders all the time. They have a certain self confidence that comes from knowing who they are. They are authentic with an awareness of their situation, are attentive and appreciative and operate with a tangible sense of agency.

I have already cited a paper listing the elements that matter most to employees within companies. All of these have a good expression and a bad expression in an organisation. When these elements are lived out well, the culture will be good. When the elements are expressed badly the culture will be bad. For example, the biggest factor was that employees wanted to feel respected, and when they do the culture is consequently better. However, when employees are disrespected the culture is adversely affected. The same authors did a follow up article this year entitled “Why Every Leader Needs to Worry About Toxic Culture” (Donald Sull, Charles Sull, William Cipolli, and Caio Brighenti, MIT Sloan Management Review, March 2022).

They found five attributes that have by far the largest negative impact on how employees rate their

company’s culture. They called them The Toxic 5:

1. Disrespectful

2. Non inclusive

4. Cutthroat

5. Abusive

How do you and your organisation measure up and what are you doing to proactively ensure these toxic behaviours are monitored and addressed? They are not always obvious, however there are ways to assess the culture of your organisation.

I have developed a simple quantitative tool aptly named The Toximeter. It’s a set of questions about experienced behaviours in an institution or group. It involves a series of 30 questions that will give an indicator of the culture within your business, from a healthy culture to a toxic culture.

An example question: If you voice your opinion at work, do you feel safe doing so? You are asked to score it: Yes, Sometimes, or No. From this I can build a quantifiable score that will put your organisation on a spectrum from healthy at one end to toxic on the other.

The advantage of such a tool is that it can highlight areas to celebrate and areas for improvement. I can then work with your organisation to improve the areas needing attention, either in teams or one to one. As the Toximeter provides a quantifiable result it also has value if repeated at appropriate intervals to demonstrate trends – hopefully in the positive direction.

In conclusion: Great leaders build a healthy culture in organisations. Great leaders are authentic with a finely tuned awareness and behave in full alignment with the group’s values and mission. They foster individual autonomy and agency in those they lead, accepting and appreciating the value each one contributes to the whole. Above all they work in service of those they are privileged to lead.