Leadership has the highest direct impact on company culture. Good leadership often translates to solid company culture, while lousy leadership gives undesirable results. The activities of leaders, especially in periods of organizational change, influence what becomes the company norm.
Your organizational culture influences the commitment and dedication of your employees. The company culture shapes the way your team feels about their work and how they do the job. Therefore, great company culture is imperative if you want to improve the morale and mentality of workers in your organization.
Excellent company culture has a unifying ability that’ll foster teamwork and respect among employees in a company.
As the leader or team manager, it’s up to you to ensure a great company culture. AMP SEO is a task that requires research and deliberate action for success. Similarly, to create a great company culture, you’ll also need due diligence and intentional action.
Below, we’ll discuss seven ways in which leadership plays a role in company culture.
1. Leaders are standards
You may not realize it, but most of your team members in the company will look up to you if you exhibit leadership qualities. Your position as a CEO means you’re the proverbial light guiding the paths of the people working with you.
Since the other employees see you as a model, they’ll automatically pattern their conduct after you. You are the standard they follow. All things being equal, employees will do what they feel you’ll do or will be acceptable to you.
As the role model, you can use your influence to shape the way workers go about fulfilling their responsibilities in the company. Your workers can get complacent if they observe you shirking your responsibilities.
When employees get complacent, things can go down fast. Team members can mishandle customer data and do poor jobs because their leader didn’t act the part.
Leaders standing as standards or models hold a lot of influence on the people behind them. When the leader sets the right example, the employees follow it. The leader can then use this influence to create an organizational culture.
2. Leaders provide actionable insights
People run to leaders for help when they need insights. As a leader, you can encourage your subordinates to come to you for advice and tutoring whenever they need it. By encouraging asking for guidance, you can build a company culture that promotes collaboration and team spirit. Workers will be open with each other. They’ll be able to approach each other without reservations whenever they need help.
Good leaders will often take their time to look around and soak in what's happening in the workplace. By observing happenings in the workplace, leaders can be more aware of how their team members prefer to do things.
You can go as far as taking notes of your observations. Search engines have a featured snippet to show you essential information in response to your queries. Similarly, these notes can be a reference whenever you need to approach tasks with different team members. You can use already-noted points to modify existing company culture to accommodate individual preferences.
3. Leaders push for action on feedbacks
How a leader accepts and reacts to subordinates and third-parties alike is essential to company culture. A positive reaction by a leader towards the opinion of others will inspire team members to emulate the same approach to handling feedback. 89% of HR leaders opine that employee feedback is key to success in the workplace.
As a leader, you can never get it wrong with a positive reaction to any form of feedback, be it criticism or encouragement. You’ll garner more respect and quickly unite the team on all fronts to create a company culture of unity. However, if you exhibit negative behavior, it can lead to a lack of cohesion in the team. It’ll also paint a negative image of the company.
4. Leaders empower employees
The level of autonomy employees enjoy is an indicator of the values and culture of a company. It also depends on the leadership of the company. The administration can decide to restrict the decision-making freedom of its employees or increase it. The level of decision-making leeway that employees have is a significant indicator of company culture.
For example, imagine working in a digital marketing firm and not having the clearance to work on SEO reports without permission from a superior. That indicates a low level of autonomy for the employee. Higher levels of freedom indicate a company has a culture of trust and professionalism. Increased independence means the leadership trusts the decision of its employees.
5. Leaders urge accountability
The presence of a leader figure indicates that team members have someone to whom they answer. When you have to answer to others, you often condition your conduct to please them. In other words, employees will often act in a way that’ll satisfy their leader. That unofficial code of conduct can become a culture at the workplace during the leader’s tenure.
Since employees know they’ll be accountable for certain activities, they do their best to satisfy the leader’s work demands. For instance, to cover all bases, a digital marketer may decide to conduct keyword gap analysis even on projects where it’s not absolutely necessary.
6. Leaders drive employee development
Whether entry-level or a proven professional in the field, all employees have room for further development. Every employee can always learn, unlearn, and relearn as the case may require.
Say you’re switching from Magento to Shopify. It’s expected that the leader has adequate knowledge of the work process and will help each employee fit into their role. Consistent employee development will become a company culture as the leader takes a personal interest in developing each employee.
For example, a leader in digital marketing with sufficient knowledge about email newsletter software can easily show other employees how to use it. The leader, in their wealth of experience, will help employees develop and grow.
7. Leaders care about the employees’ welfare
Ensuring the welfare of employees while at the workplace is a leader’s responsibility. The leader is responsible for the health and job satisfaction of the employees. A leader showing genuine interest in the wellness of team members can influence others to care about each other's welfare.
Leadership Can Bring the Change You Desire
The greatest asset of leaders is the influence they have on their subordinates. They can use their significant influence to instill significant changes in an existing system.
Thanks to your leadership position, you can change and alter your workplace culture to a large extent. Don’t underestimate your role as a CEO and leader in shaping the culture of your company. Take action now.
Author Bio:
Nick Brown is the founder & CEO of accelerate agency, an SEO agency based in Bristol. He has over 12 years experience in digital marketing and works with large companies advising them on SEO, CRO, and content marketing. He has written for sites like Hubspot and PandaDoc.
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