People talk about not just working in your business but on your business. However, they don’t often relate this concept to their team. They work in their team, but do they work on their team?
WHAT DO YOU FOCUS ON FOR YOUR TEAM’S DEVELOPMENT?
Teams
Managing Organizational Culture
The three words of this article’s title seem simple enough to understand and many organizations invest heavily in trying to achieve just this. But I think in order for us to intelligently discuss this topic, we need to ask a couple of questions and bring further clarity to the topic. The first question is, “What is organizational culture?” The second question is, “Can organizational culture be managed?” So allow me in a few words to answer these questions by examining different definitions and then to investigate any potential steps that could be taken to produce positive change. Most people who deal with this topic will articulate organizational culture through summarising the individual elements that make up culture such as, collective – behaviours, values, myths, symbols, norms, rituals, beliefs and assumptions that “this is the way we do things around here.” It would be difficult to find leaders who would disagree with these fundamental components as being the essence of what makes up organizational culture. However, it is the expanded definition of culture that I am going to discuss shortly that starts to expose different opinions. Furthermore, the preferred perspective chosen profoundly affects the strategic approach taken to deal with it. Generally speaking there are two main paradigms of organizational culture that people choose between. Some see it as a singular dominating influence that each individual operates within. Others see it being made up of various sub-cultures within the one organization with continual superficial adjustments being made by those in each
Trust Building: How do you do it!
There are a number of crucial elements required to create high performing teams. I have worked with many different types of teams in different contexts over the past 25 years and have picked up a few strategies that might help. The foundational element needed to create an effective team is that often elusive characteristic of TRUST! Despite what people say trust is earned. But don’t look at this as an obstacle – “Just go out and earn it!” There are some fundamental steps to take in order to earn trust. One key is to take the time to understand your team member’s perspectives on trust. It helps to understand that there are four main characteristics of trust, and people tend to have a more dominant focus on one or two of these characteristics. The four main traits of trust are reliability (do what you said you would when you said you would), openness (being transparent to feel free to share information and opinions with team members), acceptance (that I know if I share something about our work, no matter how negative it might be, that I as a person am respected and safe from personal attack) and directness (not brutal bluntness, but feeling free to directly give and receive helpful feedback) (Dr. Ralph Colby). Inevitably, we all tend to view others through our own interpretive filters, thus if a team member (or team leader for that matter) highly values reliability and another in the team esteems acceptance it can cause a value conflict, undermining team trust.