Aligning Your People With Your Values and Creating Company Culture
What is company culture? How do you determine what your company culture is?
Company culture is best described as the set values and principles you share with the people within your business. To create a strong sense of company culture in your business, you need to understand what your primary values are and align your people with these values. Your primary values are not values you come up with or values you think you should have. Rather, your primary values are the values you profoundly and authentically already have due to your own innate beliefs and the experiences that have shaped you.
Alas, your primary values are not something you set out to discover, they are principles that are intrinsic to you. They are values that you passionately believe in, not values that you think you ought to believe in. But keep in mind, just as you have a set of particular values that are shaped and formed from your experiences and that determine your work ethic, your employees do too. When you’re trying to establish and promote a certain type of company culture the last thing you want is to be challenged by employees that refuse to share the same values and work ethic as you. Establishing a set company culture will never work that way. Therefore, the trick to aligning your people with your company culture is simple: find people that share the same or similar values as you.
How do you align people with your company culture?
The decisions you make regarding your staff, including who stays, who goes and who maintains or achieves positions of authority within your company, has a major affect on your people. Regardless of your plan or vision for your business, the way you treat your people says more about your company culture and your values than anything else. Lead by example. Communicate and demonstrate your values to your employees through your interaction and treatment of your people.
On the same idea of leading through example, keep the lines of communication between yourself and your employees open. And be sure to convey the same consistent message about your values through every outlet. Whether you’re holding daily meetings, interacting with clients or fixing a problem on site, make sure you speak to your employees in a way that coincides with your primary values. For instance, if you’ve built your company culture around the idea of respect and honesty, don’t shy away from confronting employees about problems. Be upfront with your staff when a problem occurs on site. Respect their feelings, but at the same time offer honest, constructive criticism so that you keep in line with your primary values and set a good example for them. By consistently demonstrating and communicating your values in all situations, your employees will understand what your values are and will know what you expect from them.
Measuring your employees is another way to align your people with your company culture. Measuring your employees is one of the most effective ways to get a response out of your staff. The fact is people are more alert and productive when they are being measured, even when compensation or incentive isn’t involved. The presence of numbers is a powerful thing. Measuring employees and showing them tangible results is one of the greatest ways to get people on board and in support of your company culture. Bottom-line: people want to be involved in initiatives that produce great results.
Share your opinion:
What primary values do you base your company culture on?
How do you align your employees with your company culture?
