Building a Great Corporate Culture: A Frontline Festival

Welcome to the Let’s Grow Leaders Frontline Festival on building a great corporate culture. We asked thought leaders from around the world to share their very best post on culture and to answer two pertinent questions in the process: what does a great corporate culture look like? And, how do you build a great corporate culture?

Thanks to Joy and Tom Guthrie of Vizwerx Group for the great pic and to all our contributors!

The culture of a workplace – an organization’s values, norms and practices – has a huge impact on our happiness and success. – Adam Grant

What Does a Great Corporate Culture Look Like?

Sophie Blumenthal of Resume Library gives us Six Key Areas to Focus on If You Want a Happy Work Environment.  What constitutes a favorable work environment and what questions should you ask a prospective employer to ensure your wellbeing is a top priority for them? Here are six areas that you can look for at your next interview. If you’ve just started a new job, there are some small things that you can do to improve your work environment that will make you happier and more productive too.  Follow Sophie.

Jesse Stoner of Seapoint Center for Collaborative Leadership suggests Polarities Hold the Key to a Healthy Organizational Culture . Instead of looking at one type of organizational culture as better than another (ex. thinking that collaborative is better than competitive) here’s how to incorporate the upside of the opposite type to avoid ending up with too much of a good thing.  Follow Jesse.

Jon Mertz of Thin Difference provides Generations: Leading Younger and Older. A great work culture values the contributions of team members from every generation. Navigating challenges and issues becomes easier when we are open to learning from colleagues in a different career stage than ours.  Follow Jon.

William Steiner of Executive Coaching Concepts gives us Company Culture: Will We Know it When We See It? In it he explores what is meant by company culture and how we tell stories to distinguish our own.  Follow William.

Julie Giulioni of DesignArounds provides Cultures That Support Career Development.  This classic post addresses the hallmarks of organizations that engage in meaningful and sustainable career development. It’s also particularly timely as the field research that went into this article is the basis of a new chapter in the second edition of Help Them Grow or Watch Them Go, scheduled for release 1-15-19.  Follow Julie.

Tanveer Naseer of Tanveer Naseer Leadership Asks Do Your Organization’s Values Reflect What it Stands For? Organizational culture is often a product of the values that define what matters to the organization … But are these values truly reflective of both the working environment and of what employees are expected to do to achieve their goals? Follow Tanveer.

Wally Bock of Three Star Leadership provides Four Vital Truths of Team Culture.  There’s lots of good advice on team culture. Here are four vital truths you can’t hear often enough. Follow Wally.

Shelley Row of Shelley Row Associates provides Three Leadership Tips from Tango.  Leading a great culture often takes the finesse of a ballroom dance. Follow Shelley.

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything – for better or for worse. – Simon Sinek

How Can Leaders Build and Improve Corporate Culture?

Nate Regier of Next Element Consulting gives us Three Types of Imbalanced Work Cultures: Which One is Yours? Work cultures can become imbalanced because one or more of these three skills are over-developed or underdeveloped: Openness, Resourcefulness, Persistence. Follow Nate.

Ken Downer of Rapid Start Leadership asks, Who’s Your Second? Leading well means producing results, but if we only focus on today’s output we could be setting our team up for failure in the future. By taking a future-focused approach to our team’s culture, we become better leaders today.  Follow Ken.

Chris Edmonds of Driving Results through Culture offers a Culture Leadership Charge: Culture Details Matter.  Does your work culture allow – or even encourage – fear, intimidation, and humiliation? Or is your work culture based on trust and respect in every interaction? In this post and video episode, Chris shares how great bosses keep their fingers on the pulse of civility and respect in their work cultures.  Follow Chris.

Chip Bell of Chip Bell Group gives us The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Culture Change.  People do not resist change! They resist the prediction or perception of pain over which they have no control. Effective culture change is all about changing predictions and altering perceptions. Follow Chip.

Laura Schroeder of Working Girl offers Diversity’s the Secret Sauce of a Great Culture.  Diversity matters in ways we can’t measure. It makes us more resilient, curious, compassionate, and open to new cultures, ideas and experiences. It tests us and forces us to adapt, compromise and question our assumptions. Follow Laura. 

Lisa Kohn from Chatsworth Consulting Group presents Vulnerability is Not a Dirty Word It’s a Leadership Skill where she questions a myth that is an important part of being human … and of leading … and of building a great corporate culture. Follow Lisa.

Rachel Blakely-Gray of Patriot Software, LLC  writes Building Company Culture? Take These Three Critical Steps.  If you want to shape your corporate culture, don’t expect it to happen overnight. To build your company culture, decide the type you want, establish it, and hire employees who fit it.  Follow Rachel.

Paul LaRue of The UPwards Leader gives us How Open Book Leadership Builds Trust. Trust builds engagement. The toughest challenge leaders have with trust is being an open book organization. Here’s why leaders should embrace it.  Follow Paul.

Sean Glaze of Great Results Teambuilding asks, Are Team Building Events Effective? Teambuilding is a nebulous, foggy, vague term. It is used to label an incredibly broad spectrum of activities used to improve an organization’s culture. It’s important to discuss the difference between recreational and intentional team building. Follow Sean.

Ronni Hendel of InsightOut Leadership gives us Leaders and Culture: The Polarity of Being and Doing.  Our being, often more than our doing, determines whether our organizational cultures can handle complexity and adaptive challenges. This post suggests ways that leaders can be more attentive to the “being” of leadership.   Follow Ronni.

David Grossman of The Grossman Group shares Building a True Culture of Communication. A report released from Gallup reinforced the belief that leaders who embrace communication build truly engaged and inspired workforces. Gallup found that workers whose managers are consistent communicators—holding regular, informative meetings—are three times more likely to feel committed and enthusiastic about their jobs. Get more actionable tips to further engage your teams. Follow David.

With the right people, culture and values, you can accomplish great things.  – Tricia Griffith

Next month’s Frontline Festival will be a celebration of your “Best of 2018” posts. New contributors are always welcome. Submit your relevant posts here!