Culture: Your employees want to make a difference

By Rob Wolff, Senior Consultant

Part of our intentional culture process is rooted in a three-hour meeting (we call it a “rollout”) that we guide all employees through.  Without exception, our clients (the firms\’ CEOs) worry about how their employees will respond. They anticipate a healthy degree of skepticism when employees find out that they\’ll be discussing corporate culture for three hours.  Almost without exception, those very same CEOs are amazed at the level of engagement across those three hours.  I often hear comments along the line of “we\’ve never had that much participation and enthusiasm in a meeting before.”

Well, truth be told, the employees usually are pretty skeptical – I know I was when I was in those types of “all employee” company meetings. The key is getting past the skepticism.  We do that by presenting very logical and common sense information in a very simple and easy to understand way. Once your audience understands that you\’re not trying to sell them something, the barriers come down.  That\’s when the good stuff happens and everyone starts to participate.

As it turns out, I haven\’t encountered a group yet, whether they\’re blue-collar, white collar, for profit, not for profit, tenured or new hires, which doesn\’t want to be a part of the solution.  What leadership tends to forget is that those people out there putting it on the line every day want to know that they can make a difference.  Baggage may pile up, and internal or external issues may affect attitudes, but deep inside, I find that most of the people I come into contact with want to accomplish something of relative substance every day.

So, what are you doing to give those employees an outlet and the opportunity to succeed?  What are you doing to break through feelings of negativity or despair?  Are you creating the type of culture where employees know what\’s important, and are you teaching that every day?  Are you a living example of what you want to see in your people?

If you\’d like to learn more about how to unleash the power and hidden potential of your workforce, just give us a call or shoot us an email.