As a leader, your role in building a healthy culture is never more crucial than when entering heated waters.
Let’s face it; when there are no contentious issues on the table, it’s relatively easy to forge an atmosphere of collegiality and even warmth.
But when the stakes are high, when issues of vital importance are on the docket, that’s when your culture-building skills are put to the test.
There are plenty of times in leadership when you can anticipate that the water temperatures will be rising:
– When budgets need to be trimmed,
– When performances need to be evaluated,
– When new opportunities need to be weighed.
In each of these, and a hundred more similar situations, leaders must be able to engage in conversations that are clear, unequivocal, potentially harsh, and yet at the same time, culturally enriching.
How?
The most effective leaders maintain the balance between culture-building and truth-telling by rigidly adhering to these 3 principles…
1. Focus on passion, not anger
When there is a contentious issue on the table, it’s entirely appropriate, even necessary, to summon all the passion you have in presenting your case.
Just don’t confuse passion with anger.
If your perspective is being met with opposition, let that fuel your deepest passions, but don’t let it drift into anger. At the same time, monitor the tone of your team. If you’re hearing passion, fan the flame. If you’re hearing unhealthy anger, let things cool down.
Passion builds up a culture; anger breaks it down.
2. Built your case using facts, not rhetoric
You can always tell when an ill-prepared leader is losing their case. If they haven’t lined up their facts they’ll often begin to pepper their talk with clichés, worn-out slogans and empty sound-bites.
These are all culture-killers.
Instead, do the rigorous preparation that effective leadership requires. Study. Research. Consult. Lay out your case in lawyerly-like precision. In other words, build your case and your culture.
And if you hear rhetoric rising from your team, call them on it. Foster fact-based debate.
3. Target the problems, not the people
The ability to debate the most controversial of topics while offering genuine respect to one’s opponent is perhaps the noblest of leadership virtues.
Indeed, our divided culture is crying out for leaders who will restore such nobility to both public debate, as well as to organizational dialogue.
When the team’s disagreement veers away from the problems and towards the people, you need to call a foul. Keep the focus on the problem at hand.
The bottom line; a healthy culture is not one where there is constant agreement. Rather, it’s one where the team has learned to engage in positive, healthy disagreement.
Such cultures do not emerge by chance. They emerge by the skills of effective leadership.
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