Six Ways to Build Culture and Leadership at Your Organization

Two common themes that emerge from conversation centered around growth, startups, scale, and business success are culture and leadership. In our panel discussion on Cultivating Thriving Leadership, common themes from everyone centered around the importance of cultivating a thriving culture and developing leaders, while also considering business implications. See some of the top takeaways from our panelists:

Katie Hughes | Partner from General Catalyst – “Shared language & frameworks are used to create clarity & fluidity.”

Margaret Gillette | Strategic HR Leader at HashiCorp – “Learning initiatives need to be business-oriented.”

Anna Binder | Head of People Operations at Asana – “Couple experience with training when promoting people into leadership roles.”

Shawn Vanderhoven | Leadership Researcher & Contributing Author of Multipliers – “Great leaders learn how to ask really good questions.”

Insights on culture and leadership:

Culture

Define culture early on and proactively steer the culture in the direction you want it to go in.
Create a common language within the organization that creates space for transparency through open idea sharing and constructive feedback. Shared language and frameworks are used to create clarity and fluidity.
Foster consistent feedback that that includes critical and appreciative feedback. Feedback needs to add meaning, and it needs to be intentional.

Leadership

Amplify others’ capability through being a multiplier. How can we leverage the potential of others through seeing the intelligence and abilities of those around us?
Create a safe place for people to make mistakes by letting people know where it is okay to fail (and take risks) and where it is not okay to do so.
Ask questions and seek to understand. Try reframing a statement as a question!

Culture and leadership are crucial elements to the success of any company. Recruiting is an example of a crucial organizational function that requires attention to culture and leadership. Recruiting is more so than not an expensive, time-consuming, and hard undertaking. Once new people are invited to join the company (and accept the offer), onboarding needs to be tight. Setting the right tone for new employees around behavioral expectations, culture, and values is needed to ensure long-term new hire success. Having a well-honed leader at the helm of recruiting and onboarding provides thoughtful and intentional integration of new people into the company. All in all, culture and leadership need to be considered to actualize a successful business.