Shifting Culture through the Shadow of the Leader
One of the most important realisations for any business leader is that they are the owners and drivers of the culture in their organisation, not the victim. Far from culture being impossible to change, in my experience it takes between three and six months for any team to mimic the behaviour of their leader (for better or for worse). The most effective leaders use this to their advantage and thoughtfully and intentionally shape the behaviour and performance of their organisation by engineering their leadership shadow to best effect. This is what Ghandi meant when he said, ‘be the change you want to see’.
As with all behavioural science, this effect is grounded in anthropology. Like all animals, when we join a new group or new tribe, through our drive to be safe we are hardwired to seek out the leader and copy their style and behaviour. In the jungle we are less likely to be attacked it we have the patronage of the alpha, and in the workplace, we are less likely to be ridiculed (and more likely to progress) if we have the favour of the boss. Every sports fan will be able to provide examples of teams who evolve to display the style and values of their manager – whether this is sporting discipline of the New Zealand ‘All Blacks’ or the more questionable timewasting habits of some premier league football teams. This metamorphosis can be quick, and in the cases of the top managers is entirely intentional.
Great customer service comes from embedding customer service habits through the organisation, great safety performance comes from embedding preventative and reactive safety habits.
In previous articles I have talked about how ‘culture is just a collection of habits. Great customer service comes from embedding customer service habits through the organisation, great safety performance comes from embedding preventative and reactive safety habits etc. Building habits comes from understanding the ‘habit loop’ – i.e. the cue (the trigger that stimulates the habit to be practiced), the routine (the step-by-step implementation of the practice itself) and the reward (the positive that motivates the repeat of the routine in future).
A practical way of looking at this is that as the business leader, you are the provider of ‘cues’ to stimulate the habits of your people. Through understanding that people will want to copy you or attract your approval they will look out for clues as to what they should be doing – the most obvious cue is to copy what you do. Having provided the cue, people will build their own habits to align their outcomes to what they interpret as the clues you are giving them of ‘what good looks like around here’. For example, If you want people to focus on safety practices, start each meeting by asking what they have done to drive safety. If you want people to focus on your top three priorities, base agenda and your questions on these and these alone. You will be amazed how quickly you will be able to shape the attention, energy and focus of your people.
The care point with this concept is, as mentioned above, people will follow your shadow for good or ill. They will focus on what you measure, what you prioritise and most importantly, mimic what you do, not what you say.
When I work with leaders on thoughtfully and intentionally curating their shadow, we start with looking to understand their current impact. It is hard to understand your current shadow, its shape and impact. We then start to build practice habits that, through the power of the leadership shadow build a team and organisational culture that enables and accelerates the delivery of the strategy. This is the key to creating the culture you want, building high performing teams and impacting the culture of your whole organisation. In my experience, this is the quickest and most effective way of shifting culture, and in my years of working with C Suite Leaders and their teams, I have not come across an example yet where this has not had a significant and positive impact.
