Next Foundation Blog

There are 5 key factors that contribute, create or inhibit the growing of a positive, proactive organizational culture.

1. Passion

Leaders are motivated by factors other than compensation. In a healthy leadership culture, team members understand the mission of the organization and are motivated by their connection to it. They are passionate.

Real relationship in a team environment will encourage you to pursue your goals with all that is in you. Your team will urge you forward, not pull you down. Your teammates will hold you up, not drag you down, but passion and commitment to a vision isn’t enough.

2. Accountability

Your leadership, your example, can give those around you the reason, courage and purpose to change for the better. That is called accountability. It must be explicit in every interaction between you and your team. It may get ugly at times, and everyone may be uncomfortable, but this kind of discomfort is necessary for growth.

Inner accountability is the force that fills you with a sense of integrity. External accountability is the force that makes everyone else work with integrity.

3. Consistency

Consistency builds trust within a team. Consistency of purpose and vision is the strongest antidote for discouragement, and it will keep team members engaged. Consistency is the balm on the open wound of office politics. It is the quality that will prevent accusations of favoritism. It is the anchor that your team members will come to rely upon.

As a leader in the middle, you must consciously and purposely be consistent with your team. You must consistently communicate upward and downward in your organization. You bring the vision from the top, and communicate it throughout the organization, everyday, with passion, accountability, and consistency.

4. Transparency

Transparency is the thing that gives you the freedom to be open and gives you the ability to instruct and receive feedback. Allow mistakes to happen in the open. Don’t hide failures; learn from them. One of the 5 foundational values at Toyota is tolerating failure—not just tolerating it, but actually embracing failure as a mechanism for learning. They recognize that you have to FAIL in order to PROGRESS, and consider that one of their top 5 core values.

So create a safe place for ideas to grow and develop. You need an open forum for input. Transparency also provides your forum for change. If there is no transparency, there is no opportunity for change and growth. You need to encourage failure as the fuel for success. All growth and development is a by-product of process and stress. The manure of today is the fertilizer of tomorrow. Reward peoples’ attempts and encourage vulnerability. The only difference between a lump of coal and a diamond is time, heat, and pressure.

5. Stability

And finally, middle leaders are essential to stability. Your passion, your accountability, your consistency, and your transparency all combine with stability to create a culture for growth and excellence. It means that consequences and rewards are the same every day, regardless of situations or personalities.

It means that the vision you had for the company yesterday is the same vision you are pursuing today. Your focus is the same. Your efforts are the same, yet the fruits will be multiplied.

Every person has three levels of relationship:
Those above them,
Those beside them, and
Those beneath them.

Each of these levels gives people an opportunity to lead and to be led.

Often in business circles and in leadership training circles, we talk of the power of vision, the role of vision, and the need for vision, but very rarely do we talk about the application of vision and the people whom we employ and entrust to pursue it and help us obtain it.

I believe that we have developed what I call “The Field of Dreams Mentality.”

Remember the line from the film “Field of Dreams….”

“If you build it, they will come.”

That was the ethereal message that inspired Costner’s character to construct a baseball diamond in the middle of the cornfield upon the premise that if he constructed something that has no other value outside of the value of the dream, then somehow it will not only be successful, but will also pay for itself. Sounds good in Hollywood, but it doesn’t work in real life

In reality, we need more than just a vision to build a great company or to succeed in the areas of life we feel called to. There was no plan in Costner’s film, just wishful thinking and a fantasy.

A vision is more than a fantasy; it is a dream with a plan attached.

Success comes not with the obtaining or writing of a good vision but with the execution of a good plan.

And the people who are called upon to execute the plan are the real visionary leaders. I’d like to call your attention to these unseen 80% of the sometimes overlooked, under trained and often disregarded, middle managers, or middle leaders.

Now when I say disregarded, I am not suggesting that they are not well looked after or poorly compensated.

What I am alluding to is that the majority of the power, the majority of the influence, the majority of the success does not lie in the top 10% of an organization but lies in the middle sections—the leaders in the middle.

This group of people who lead from the middle of an organization, who lead from the middle of the pack, we have come to see as being the most influential, yet under-trained and in some organizations the most undervalued group of people across the corporate culture.

The reality is that 99 percent of all leadership occurs not from the top but from the middle of any organization. Usually, an organization has only one person who is the number one leader.

So what do you do if you are not that one person?

Regardless of who you are or what you do, most of you will be in a situation where you are on, but not necessarily leading, a team.

No one in our society encourages us to be second.

No one ever talks about the benefits of being the unseen support.

No one talks about the glory and rapture of playing second fiddle.

In an orchestra, composers often assign the melody to the first-chair violinist, while the second-chair violinists play the harmony or accompanying pattern. Although the first violin gets the prominence of the overall melody, second violin, or second fiddle, to use a more colloquial term, often plays the more musically challenging part. Even if the harmony is technically easier, playing the supporting part can actually require more rhythmic skill.

Leadership is best defined as influence.

If you are on a team—if you are committed to a team—you have an opportunity to lead and influence in all directions within that team.

You can influence those that work for you, those that you work with, and those that you work for.

You can influence them for good and for the sake of the vision of your organization, or you can influence them negatively, to the detriment and sometimes even the death of the organizational vision.

Serving for some in life today has become about preparing a platform for my future prominence. That is not serving. That is manipulation and politics. Serving is really doing what has been asked of you because it has been asked of you…and for no other reason than that.

1. A Servant but also a leader.

2. A hard worker but not a workaholic.

3. Humble but not devalued.

4. Generous but not wasteful.

5. Positive but not unrealistic.

6. Teachable but not easily swayed.

7. Flexible but not unstable.

8. Fearless but not foolish.

9. Submissive but not passive

10. Dependent but also decisive.

11. Truthful but not too dogmatic.

12. Joyful but also sober.

13. Merciful but also just.

14. Loving but not sentimental.

15. Obedient but not fawning.

16. Loyal but not blind.

Leadership is not a popularity contest.

It is a commitment to a cause more important that personal comfort or popularity.

It is a decision to lead people where they want to go, but they are unsure how to get there.

It is a commitment to lead them along unfamiliar paths and personal uncharted territories.