The critical leadership ideas taken from the book, The Culture Code, are techniques to create an ideal environment and strong culture from the hiring process and maintaining that. Based on more than 200 companies’ case studies by Harward, a strong culture increased the net income by almost 700% over 11 years. The critical point is that the interaction between team members matters the most. The book suggests using three skills effectively.
The first step is building safety. when team members’ underlined communication is based on safety and connection; they will succeed. Safety is built over time with initial consistent social behavior cues, active listening, attentive courtesies, and soft skills. To build a feeling of belonging, it matters that as a leader, communicate in a way that he/she ensures has a high standard to reach the team’s goal, and he/she believes in his/her employees. Also, giving feedback to support his/her employees and acting to bring belonging cures among employees. There are three types of feedback:
1-personal: making the up-close connection
2-performance: continuing training as a team to work on development areas of the individual to get closer to the desired high standard
3-big picture perspective: to give a message that we have a bigger mission than our current project.
The second step is to share vulnerability and create a culture that employees can do the same. A leader should send a clear signal that all individual has a weakness, and the goal is to improve individually and use help in a team. To create a collaboration culture, when it comes to failure, we have to follow three steps:
- Find out where they failed.
- Answer what activities were done by each individual and by the team.
- Apply the differential solution and method for the next time.
The third step is to establish a purpose. Leaders should create a culture that everyone believes there is no end to trying, failing, and learning by ranking their priority, being clear about what they think, and figuring out where their employees focus on creativity and expertise.
