Develop a Winning Culture

The way to building and sustaining a winning culture and gaining the benefit of a team is where everyone is helping one another and are happy.

If we want excited, appreciative people who truly care about doing their best individually and as a team, we must, as leaders ourselves, model humility, honesty, courage to make necessary decisions and genuinely care for our team members, and expect that they too embody those same principles.

As leaders, we must let our people know that they are appreciated and valued. To do this, they need to see us. We must walk the halls, be out there with our people, having one on one conversations with them, asking how we may help, what are their ideas, what are they learning from our clients, and similar questions.

We must fully present, sincerely listening to understand and learn. Then we must follow through. Our follow-through is key to strengthening respect, trust, and rapport.

Developing a winning culture also means investing in our people helping them to learn, grow, and succeed. This does not need to be a big expense. It is teaching, mentoring, and coaching, which all leaders can do. We can also bring in trained facilitators for discussions in our conference rooms.

It is important that we address problems and difficult team members. We cannot let things fester. That is our responsibility. If we do not resolve issues in a timely manner, undo and unhealthy stress results. This failure on our part is not being fair to our team members. Not only will we lose their respect, team effort, morale, and our work productivity will suffer.

Leaders focus on people, while managers focus on numbers. There is a huge difference. Of course, leaders also have to focus on results but they realize it’s the great work of their team members that leads to success. Their emphasis is on helping their team members. That’s what highly effective leadership is, helping others do great work and succeed.