BUILDING A LEADERSHIP

CULTURE AS A PROFIT STRATEGY

It may be a personality you like or don't like, but a personality none the less.  So what type of personality do you want it to have?  What values should drive decisions in your business and leadership decisions?  What should be acceptable forms of behavior?

If you take a close look at your organization, what do you see?   Is it profitable, goal-oriented and mission-focused?  Is it flexible, leading-edge, at the forefront of new frontiers?  Is it positioned to maximize every opportunity, to scale greater heights of achievement?  

Research Supports the Value of Leadership Cultures

Overwhelmingly, current research points to the quality of leadership in an organization as the single most defining characteristic for on-going success.  And, it’s not just the quality of one leader or even a few leaders at the top.  The driving factor for high-performing organizations is the presence of an overall leadership culture.  In addition to whatever other characteristics or values your organization has, it needs to incorporate a Leadership Culture which creates a change effective organization and gains a high level of engagement and commitment from the people that work there.

The key for leading-edge organizations to achieve ongoing success is in their development of a sustainable leadership culture:  a system of shared values, assumptions, beliefs, and practices that operate to achieve organizational goals.

In addition to having a healthy culture, your organization needs the right people to execute organizational initiatives.  To do this you must attract and retain the best employees within a limited pool of potentials, and as the workforce shrinks this challenge becomes tougher.  In light of this reality, organizations must offer these candidates not only the best opportunities for career growth but also an attractive corporate culture.  It is these organizations that will be ahead in the race to hire and retain the most talented and motivated employees.  If you want a high performing organization, this is simply a fact that cannot be ignored or undervalued any longer.

In fact new research, from the Corporate Leadership Council, indicates that up to 70% of people leave companies because of personality and relationship conflicts with supervisors and managers.  It is this type of alarming but correctable problem that can be directly addressed by developing a consistent corporate culture which values specific leadership attributes and behaviors.

    

The Return on Development of a Leadership Culture

 For any investment of time and resources, organizations ultimately seek and demand bottom-line results.  While building a leadership culture is targeted toward maximizing the resources of your organization’s human system, the benefits of an all-encompassing leadership culture are decisive in impacting profitability.  Successful outcomes are measurable in key areas including:

 

• Aligning the organization to focus on bottom line results
• Lowering costs
• Increasing employee satisfaction and retention
• Fostering innovation

 

Through an encompassing leadership culture, employees throughout the organization learn to work proactively and to step up in leadership roles, even in positions that are not specifically designated as leaders.  Through the support of visionary senior leadership, these dynamic organizations benefit from a deliberate, systematic and sustained effort to train their employees for maximum performance in their current roles as well as future leadership opportunities.     

If your organization is ready to improve performance, attract and retain the best and brightest, then creating a leadership culture is a necessary step.  Call Farr Associates, we can help you with every step of the process, from developing your goals, assessing the situation and executing on the change process. Farr has the experience to transform your organization and its leaders into a high performance organization.