S. Chris Edmonds's Blog, page 4

Culture Leadership Charge – A Crisis of Culture

In July 2020, results of an investigation reveal multiple current and former employees of The Ellen Degeneres Show reporting racism, bullying, sexual harassment, and intimidation by executive producers and other senior staff.

Her show is deep in a crisis of culture.

Ellen herself was not the cause of the toxic environment – but she was insulated from the day-to-day employee experiences.

Ellen wrote a letter to staff members expressing her disappointment at the toxicity of the show’s culture. “On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that ‘The Ellen DeGeneres Show’ would be a place of happiness – no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect,” she wrote. “Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry.”

At the core of this culture crisis is a senior leader who was disconnected from the employee experience, who did not keep her “fingers on the pulse” of whether or not employees were happy working on the show, whether they were treated respectfully in every interaction, or not.

Degeneres is not alone in this “miss.” Far too few senior leaders have an authentic understanding of the experiences employees have daily in their organizations.

To address this crisis, Ellen needs to actively engage with the show’s primary customers – employees – now and regularly. The show’s secondary customers – guests and viewers – will be well served by show employees who experience a purposeful, positive, productive work culture on set.

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I describe how formalizing the show’s work culture can help build respect, monitor respect, and ensure respect on set.

This is episode eighty-seven of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – raw pixel. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – A Crisis of Culture appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Validate Employee Contributions

How often do you receive praise or recognition at work? We’ve had bosses that expressed gratitude well and bosses that never did it.

To understand the impact of expressed gratitude, let’s look at three common types: praise, recognition, and validation.

By praise, I mean the communication of appreciation for a person’s ideas, efforts, or contributions. Expressing praise can be as simple as writing or emailing a thank you note or calling a person up to thank them verbally.

Praise has the least beneficial, sustained impact of the three types. It is typically one-way communication – from you to the receiver. It is often a simple expression of thanks without delving into the actions you are praising or the benefits of their actions.

Praise is better than no communication of gratitude, but there are better ways to inspire.

In today’s 4-minute culture leadership charge video episode, Chris shares the benefits of recognition and validation, and directs leaders to leverage the positive impact of only one of these two types.

This is episode eighty-six of Chris’ Culture Leadership Charge video series. In these concise videos, Chris presents the best practices for creating and maintaining a purposeful, positive, productive culture – at work, at home, and in your community.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Michael Jung. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Validate Employee Contributions appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Rise up

This is an important point in time for our country’s republic.

Society is bent, if not broken.

George Floyd’s death has generated international protests – most of them peaceful, calling for an end to racial bias and discrimination from police.

We have the opportunity to eliminate systematic racial bias and discrimination from our society.

Now is the time for white people to work together to eliminate privilege and implement fairness, inclusion, justice, and opportunity for every human.

In today’s 3.5-minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video & podcast series, I outline how leaders can inspire change in their organizations – and their communities – to create justice, equality, and opportunity for every human.

This is episode eighty-five of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Flamingo Images. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Rise up appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Leadership Audit

We’re living in unprecedented times. With non-essential businesses closed and many people working from home, the world of work looks very different than it did three months ago.

The demands on folks working from home are extensive. Besides experiencing anxiety about the well-being of their family, friends, and community, team members are juggling multiple requirements that are new, different, and exhausting.

To lead effectively under normal circumstances is not easy. To do so under these circumstances is much more demanding.

A great practice for all leaders to embrace is to conduct a regular audit of their leadership efforts and impact.

A leadership audit helps leaders to:

Plan their weeks better to engage in higher value tasks and strategic planning that moves the business forwardMonitor important reoccurring tasks – financial review, department review, culture review, strategic planningIdentify things that you can delegate to qualified team leaders and team membersTreat others with dignity and respect in every interaction, whether things are going smoothly or not

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I describe exactly how leaders can conduct a leadership audit and what to look for when analyzing your data.

This is episode eighty-four of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – pressmaster. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Leadership Audit appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Instead of crisis planning, do this

New data coming out of Wuhan is showing that Covid-19 may be far deadlier than originally thought. Moreover, none of us knows what our economy will look like after the virus has run its course (or, more optimistically, after a vaccine is implemented.) The big, glaring takeaway? As leaders, we can no longer arrange our thinking and actions around crisis planning. Crisis planning runs on adrenaline and an unspoken assumption that this is a short-term challenge. Coronavirus is not. In fundamental ways, it’s our new normal.

Today I present five steps we can all take to help us shift perspective, turn the corner emotionally and intellectually, and build stronger systems that can endure. Here are the first two:

Allow yourself to grieve what’s been lost. Acting like this will all blow over means that you aren’t letting yourself acknowledge what’s been lost. This is the critical first step to being able to move forward.Assess what’s truly needed. If you’re like the rest of us, you’re realizing just how many of your activities weren’t absolutely essential. Now is the time to reassess what you’re doing with your time, energy and energy. What does your organization contribute to the world? If you’re not certain of the answer anymore, that means you need to change what you’re doing. What else can you offer?

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I outline the three additional steps we need to take – and set short-term crisis planning aside.

This is episode eighty-three of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Monkey Business. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Instead of crisis planning, do this appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Build a Stress-Purging Culture

Does your work culture amp up stress – or does it purge stress?

Stress is an emotion that’s created by limbo. If team members don’t know answers to questions like, “What should I do?” or “What if x, y, or z happens?“, they experience greater stress. Greater stress means they can’t act. They can’t move forward. And they worry about every single bad thing that could happen when they do take action.

Workplace cultures riddled with stressed-out people are environments built on uncertainty — not healthy uncertainty, which can fuel ownership, engagement, creative problem solving, and high performance.

Stressed-out people create unhealthy uncertainty — the kind of fear that arises when people aren’t sure that they will continue to be valuable to an organization if decisions they make don’t pan out.

Unhealthy uncertainty amplifies stress, erodes confidence, and creates anxiety. Stressed out people are not calm, cool, and creative. Stressed out people are much more likely to stop and observe rather than to proactively solve problems. They’re more likely to withhold information, to react angrily to changing requirements, and to take out frustrations on customers.

And that costs you money, customers, and engagement within your work environment.

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I share three proven steps that will help leaders create and sustain a stress-purging work culture – and quash a stress-amplifying one.

This is episode eighty-two of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Kraken Images. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Build a Stress-Purging Culture appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Grounded in Servant Purpose

What is your company’s servant purpose – its present day “reason for being”?

Most companies do not go to the length required to formalize their servant purpose and then communicate frequently to team members how their work contributes to that higher purpose.

Recent research from Gallup notes that only 4 in 10 US employees agree that they know what their company stands for and what makes it different from their competitors.

Higher purpose has been shown to boost company performance. A 2016 Harvard study found that companies with high purpose and high clarity from management systematically outperform companies with low purpose and low clarity.

A servant purpose statement has three elements. It states what your company does, for whom, and “to what end” – how what your company does improves customers’ quality of life.

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I look at two different company’s purpose statements – one effective, one rather awful – and outline how to craft an effective servant purpose statement that inspires.

This is episode eighty-one of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!Shortcode

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – sushiman. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Grounded in Servant Purpose appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – Make Culture Change Stick

How often have you seen change efforts fail? It happens all the time.

If your change effort isn’t gaining traction, I’ll bet you’re missing a key element – senior leaders championing the change, daily.

The greatest temptation is for senior leaders to assume that communicating the change – be it your your servant purpose, values and behaviors to your people – ensures they will embrace the change. They’ll align to your desired culture.

A communications campaign – putting up posters with your new values logo, your new servant purpose, your new values and behaviors, etc. – helps build awareness across the company. Awareness, alone, though, won’t change your culture.

The single most important lever to embed change is for senior leaders to be role models of the desired change.

Senior leaders have the greatest impact on shifting “awareness” of your desired culture to “demonstration “of your desired culture. Demonstration by staff throughout your organization won’t happen unless senior leaders invest time and energy daily reinforcing your company’s valued behaviors.

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I share three critical practices senior leaders must use to embed and sustain their desired work culture.

This is episode eighty of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a 3-4 minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!Shortcode

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – fizkes. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – Make Culture Change Stick appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – The Service Advantage

To what degree does your organization demonstrate service to others?

As part of my consulting work with senior leadership teams, I help them define their company’s servant purpose – a concise statement of what their company does, for whom, and “to what end.”

The “to what end” piece is critical because it describes how “what their company does” improves customers’ quality of life. It formalizes the company’s desire to serve others.

Demonstrating service to others definitely brings benefits.

In her excellent 2018 article, “Why Being of Service Improves Happiness,” Dr. Barbara Edwards describes how serving others boosts human satisfaction. The same benefits she describes for individuals occur when organizations make service to others a foundation of their work cultures.

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I share three specific benefits that employees enjoy when they engage, with their peers, in active service. (One difference – writing a check to a deserving charity creates passive service. Active service requires investment of time, energy, and care.)

This is episode seventy-nine of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a ~three-minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Make respect as important as results in your workplace with @scedmonds' #Culture #Leadership Charge videos & podcasts. #WorkPlaceInspiration #PurposefulCulture http://drtc.me/ytube http://drtc.me/pcast
Click To Tweet

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Monkey Business. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – The Service Advantage appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.

Culture Leadership Charge – The Cost of Rudeness

To what degree might rudeness impact team performance – and team member performance – in your workplace?

Rudeness and incivility is rampant in our organizations. A 2013 study featured in the Harvard Business Review found that 98% of employees reported experiencing incivility at work by bosses and peers. Individual reactions to incivility include:

48% intentionally decreased their work effort.38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work.63% lost work time avoiding the offender.80% lost work time worrying about the incident.

What hasn’t been examined is how rudeness and incivility impact team performance.

A 2015 study did exactly that. It examined how rudeness impacts medical team performance.

This research used simulation-based experiments with neonatal intensive care teams. No humans were placed at risk during this study. The hypothesis was that “interrelating processes essential for collaboration are adversely affected when medical professionals are victims of others’ rudeness.”

In today’s three minute episode of my Culture Leadership Charge video series, I share the startling findings from this study and how to reduce the incidence of rudeness and incivility in your workplace.

This is episode seventy-seven of my Culture Leadership Charge series. Each episode is a ~three-minute video that describes proven culture leadership and servant leadership practices that boost engagement, service, and results across your work teams, departments, regions, companies – and even homes and neighborhoods.

You’ll find my Culture Leadership Charge episodes and more on my YouTube and my iTunes channels. If you like what you see or hear, please subscribe!

Make respect as important as results in your workplace with @scedmonds' #Culture #Leadership Charge videos & podcasts. #WorkPlaceInspiration #PurposefulCulture http://drtc.me/ytube http://drtc.me/pcast
Click To Tweet

Have you responded to this month’s culture leadership poll? Add your perspective to two questions – it’ll take you less than a minute. Then click the “results” link to see what others from around the globe think!

Photo © Adobe Stock – Тихон Купревич. All rights reserved.

The post Culture Leadership Charge – The Cost of Rudeness appeared first on Purposeful Culture Group.