Culture to Engage, September, explores how  leaders can strengthen their business culture’s commitment to employee engagement.  This issue of my e-newsletter has generated more e-mail comments than any in more than a year. Most e-mails asked “How do I…?”

So today we look at the first of the three ways leaders can be “personal trainers” for their business culture.

Here’s where I started the e-newsletter:

Leaders must weigh the culture.

In a series of meetings, your leaders should examine the culture’s intent and meaning. They need to explore its specifics and integration. And they want to express the culture in concrete, “this is what it looks like” terms. Recommendation: hold at least one facilitated session for these leaders to do exercises to help them build a variety of images of your culture at work. If leaders “see” how clerks express and demonstrate true care for the customer, they more ably build the shape and structure in which that will occur.

Now I’ll offer you three sets of  “reps” you and your leadership team can sweat through to build engagement muscle. These should happen in meetings devoted to strengthening your business culture and its emphasis on employee engagement. Sandwich such an important item in a bigger agenda and you downplay its significance.

1. Warm up the first meeting with everyone writing their statement of your business culture.  Use the degrees of agreement and/or disagreement to stimulate lots of) discussion. Be sure to note how much “employee engagement” (in those words or synonyms) is identified in your culture by your leaders.
2. Increase next meeting’s workout by focusing on critical elements of the culture, whether stated or implicit. Leaders should do advance thinking of how these elements integrate with one another to give a unified culture. Encourage critical observation. Be sure to note how much (more) “employee engagement” integrates with other elements
3. Add intensity to their efforts. Dedicate one meeting to participants translating culture from words to images they can “see” and “hear.” They need to know what your culture looks and sounds when it’s at work. Then, they can build (or modify) the business structure, the processes and procedures that allow such reality. A facilitator can help build activities to stimulate these creative observations of your culture at work. Same facilitator can then heighten discussion and potential application of this “visioning” among all participants.

This weighing of the culture is a valuable first step. The better leaders know the culture, the better they can incorporate employee engagement. The more clearly they understand the culture’s piece-parts, the more easily they can integrate engagement as a core. The more vibrantly they see the culture’s applications, the more vital engagement is to how they lead the business.

Tomorrow we’ll look at the second area of training with which leaders can buff up your business culture: Exercising a plan. Sounds simple, yet it’s too important to skip.

Interested in more information about how leaders can build a business Culture of Engagement? Give a click.

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Tags: business culture, Employee Engagement, Leadership