Leading Teams for Purpose, Prosperity & Performance – Part 2 - SOCH

Please accept my sincere thank you to all, especially those who wrote back their dilemmas and concerns on the same. I believe it is much simpler to be profound when even if you don’t write a gratitude note once in a lifetime or decade but if we have an environment where thank you(s) are in abundance, every day, every hour maybe. Most of you who gathered the courage to write saying a simple thank you, I owe to your value, encouragement, and objectivity. Thank you for the same.

Back to value now: After seeing all notes and discussions on this topic since the last publication this week, I have created a practical guideline on many of those questions. For the rest of you, gents and ladies, please find below the question on which I will try to share my views. I hope it will add value to you all.

How do we create teams from a group? (This question was one of the highest frequency ones)
How do we establish norms where people can perform?
How do we get what business needs from teams every day and hour?

At SOCH, we believe we have created an atmosphere where there are 3 essential things we take care of, to transform a group into a team and then transcend them into a force of good.

(A disclaimer: We are not perfect at all but a work-in-progress company in everything we do).

The 3 essential things are:

An atmosphere which gives profound psychological safety to individuals
Vulnerability is powerful
A purpose we share that leads us to help family businesses transform into an outstanding and fulfilling institution of love and success for generations to come

Now, why do we have these simple rules of engagement (and they alone aren’t enough to succeed, yet they are an instrumental piece in the puzzle to create an abundance with meaning).

In this article, let us understand the first point– An atmosphere at work with high psychological safety.

So, long-term high-performance companies know that getting to the truth of the matter where the strategic advantage is hidden is usually a tedious, daunting, and a giant task. Tedious because you cannot do it alone. It must be done in teams. No one can.

And if the group chemistry has challenges, such as individuals don’t feel they belong, they have a fundamental lack of showing respect to each other and trust in helping each other generously as the core. Finding the truth for strategic results becomes a tedious, boredom-filled, daunting, and sometimes impossible task.

We have learned from workplaces that hold nationalities on one floor of more than 120 countries or more that diversity is a special blessing if there is a conscious effort to create a culture of deep respect, belonging, trust and shared purpose. It is a myth that culture is formed when people work together.

The work atmosphere that fuels a sense of solid belonging and, just to be clear, not the kind of belonging that exists in some public offices that don’t perform yet people belong to pensions and other financial comforts – this isn’t the belonging it is a mere soul selling for surviving safety and no thriving.

So, a strong sense of belonging comes with everyone’s small, clearly visible behaviours. These small, visibly apparent behaviours send a message to others that read as – we are connected, we share a future, I care about you, you have a voice here, you matter, and similar.

These are not fluffed feelings. These visible behaviours give every other individual a feeling of not to hide but reveal, get united and lead yourselves. Don’t be threatened as it closes your mind instead stay open to build a positive connection with each other on the visible grounds that everyone is equal and no favours or preferences or anything but purpose of business if lord almighty.

This is the hard stuff to create in culture. It won’t happen with pep talks, philosophy, high religious standing, employee charity, lunches, or anything like this.

Building culture is a SKILL. It is not an occurrence but a conscious design system of systems that create the hard stuff, which makes people feel safe enough that they together tackle problems of strategic or immediate nature with a systemic and systematic approach caring for the results of a business.

This system of systems is an overarching business or whole enterprise with a simple plan of continuously delivering the promise of business to all stakeholders, bringing unstoppable growth and an ever-strengthening identity. The system that is crucial in creating a profound culture that delivers consistently high-performance results effortlessly is to design and invest in a ground-up built communication function at your organisation. No other systems you built to enjoy your success can deliver without a robust, homegrown, and purpose-aligned communication centre of excellence or some well-engineered communication function.

The key is there is no size fit all approach in building a culture and the system that sustains its profound impact on competitive advantage. It must be developed ground up, and it must be developed before the race for growth among all begins.

Think about it – what is your culture? Are your people finding the atmosphere psychological safe (and not a government safety environment), such that they take helping themselves and helping others at centre stage and act on strategy whilst enhancing the power of culture through their visible daily hourly behaviours?

I do hope it helps to reflect and make an essential decision ahead.

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