More than 10 years ago, I had the privilege to co-author The Secret with Ken Blanchard, a book about Chick-fil-A’s point of view on leadership. It was a lot of fun doing the book with Ken and even more fun talking to groups all over the world about leadership. What I didn’t expect was the question that I received over and over again… “We’ve read The Secret, what’s next?”

In the beginning, I wasn’t really sure what people wanted to know. Were they asking about my next book? Did they want to know my career plans or what time my flight was going to leave? Most often, it was none of the above. Leaders around the world appreciated the lessons we tried to convey in the book, but they had an intuitive sense, informed by their experience, that the book was not the end of the conversation. They were right.

What organizations desperately need is not just a point-of-view on leadership, they need a leadership culture. I define a leadership culture as a place in which leaders are routinely and systematically produced. In a leadership culture, it is not unusual when there is a surplus of qualified leadership candidates for an open position.

Here are five keys to creating a leadership culture.

Define it – Does your organization have an agreed upon definition of leadership? If not, that’s the starting point.

Train it – Having a definition is critical but insufficient alone. Can your leaders deliver on your definition? Some can, I’m sure, but training is probably required – at least for emerging leaders. Leadership skills are not innate.

Practice it – Do you give emerging leaders the opportunity to lead? Most of what leaders learn about leadership they learn from leading. Give them the chance to practice by actually letting them lead.

Measure it – This can take many forms – Performance reviews; 360 feedback; “Readiness for Next Opportunity.” Then there’s always the “9 Box” popularized by G.E. which evaluates leaders on two dimensions – performance and alignment with organizational values. You can even measure participation in leadership training.

Model it – If your existing leaders are not showing people what great leadership looks like in your organization; if they aren’t working diligently to demonstrate the attributes outlined in your definition of leadership, none of the previous ideas will have much impact.

How deep is your leadership bench?

Originally published on GreatLeadersServe.com

I’ve heard this dozens of times. You probably have too. In most cases, the blank is filled with “leadership” or “accountability,” but it can be all sorts of other things too: communication, collaborative, engaging, development-oriented, execution, work-life balance-friendly – you name it.

Not many things can top being part of a great team with a great culture. I’ve written about culture several times (here are my two favorites on building a leadership culture and assessing the team culture of the champion Kansas City Royals baseball team). Unfortunately, many times I hear leaders lamenting the problems they experience and simply uttering the sentence above – as if the simple prescription will foresee the remedy.

In graduate school, my leadership textbooks (yes, we read those – a couple were really interesting!) contrasted different theories of organizational culture. Do leaders create culture or does culture exist independently? As a leadership development practitioner, I can tell you it’s undoubtedly the former. A poor culture is a sure sign of deficient leadership. But simply identifying the need for a better culture doesn’t create any change.

Harvard Business Review published an article recently titled “Culture is Not the Culprit.” In it, they describe how culture isn’t a cause, it’s an effect. Leaders don’t “fix culture,” they fix problems and then receive an improved culture as a benefit. This is easy to intuit, but more difficult to accept because of the leadership implications. If the culture stinks, it’s time to get to work. Leaders have many responsibilities in this regard.

Understand the Nature of the Problem

It’s impossible to adequately address what we don’t understand – whether it’s a broken down vehicle, sick body or low-performing team. But it’s amazing how many business professionals put hasty (and costly) plans into place without doing a proper assessment. I’ve come to understand it’s mostly because everyone is so busy with their regular job – they don’t have time for extra projects. Then results stay stagnant. So talk to the people closest to the problems. Get wide input. Address actual, rather than perceived, issues.

Pull the Right “Lever”

Bobb Biehl likes to say, “When the facts become clear, the decisions jump out at you.” That’s immensely different than throwing out solutions like spaghetti on the wall and seeing which ones stick. Specific interventions require less time, effort and dollars in the long-run (and often short-run too). Instead of telling people to be more collaborative, have team leaders schedule regular meetings to address key items together over the course of a change initiative. Focus on precise rather than broad action.

Monitor and Readjust

In my first couple years playing high school football, our coaching staff promised us we’d be the best conditioned football team on any field. And they kept their promise. We were good but not great. Then my senior year, they said being conditioned wasn’t enough – we needed to focus more on scheme. So they changed the practice regimens. Conditioning was still important, but we cut some to make time for extra drills. That was the year we had the strongest team and won our conference.

Some elements of culture should be preserved, but even positive aspects will need to change over time. Leaders need to be willing to proactively make adjustments.

Anticipate Future Impacts

Any time “management” enacts a change, culture “tweaks.” That’s the nature of cause and effect. Unintended consequences can be devastating. Results suffer and top talent leaves (among other things). Don’t be the leader who, in attempting to fix one problem, creates several more. Anticipate the broader impact.

The next time you speak the word “culture,” take a pause. Is there a specific action you can take that will help generate the results you want? If so, you’ve found your opportunity to create the culture you desire.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

You may not work in the front office of a professional sports team. (Neither do I). But shaping your organization’s culture is always a top leadership responsibility. Here are just a few things the Royals did to build a championship culture.

Make Your Players Proud to Represent the Organization

Admittedly, when your team is the perennial laughingstock, this can be quite a challenge. But Dayton Moore didn’t wait until the Royals were a proud organization to instill pride in the players. Little initiatives can go a long way. One of the things the Royals did was place large action posters of each player inside the clubhouse – rookies included. That way each player would begin their team experience with a constant and visible message that being on the team is a royal privilege. Another thing the team did was give the spring training facilities a makeover. That way players could see that even a little used home away from home was a special place to be if you’re a Royal.

Give Everyone a Voice

In his book, More Than a Season, Dayton Moore talks about the importance of everyone in the organization having a voice. In the Royals organization, this means having a preference that each person has some experience as a scout – even for front office staff and coaches. This allows more voices to weigh in on personnel decisions.

In lousy cultures, only a select few make organizational decisions. In good cultures, the right people make the appropriate decisions. In great cultures, the right people make the appropriate decisions with input from as many qualified sources as possible. According to Moore, it’s important for every person to have a sincere appreciation for the expertise of every member of the organization. “If they feel like they can never weigh in, they’ll never buy in.”

Put Family First

Baseball is one of many industries that places large demands on family life. Long road trips often compete with family time. That’s where the Royals get creative in their commitment to family. In recognition of the fact that many players trace their roots to playing with their dads as boys, the team invites each player’s father to join the team on an incredible road trip experience the week before Father’s Day. In 2015, three players had the misfortune to lose parents during the year. Each situation was handled delicately and uniquely given the circumstances – with the player’s well-being placed first. As a result, team members consistently returned stating their desire to be with their “team family.”

Work and family should never have to compete with each other. That said, sometimes it takes getting creative to help foster a healthy balance. For Moore, it’s about creating an organization you would want your children to be a part of.

Stand Up for Each Other

Everyone makes mistakes at work, but one of the challenges in athletics is that most mistakes take place in the public eye with instant analysis and critique. Standing up for each other doesn’t mean a lack of accountability. It means helping each player perform to the best of their ability for the benefit of the team. It means having confidence that a player who made a mistake will come back and get it right the next time (and providing that opportunity as well), from the top of the organization all the way to the bottom – both in public and in private.

Share the Glory

Even though seven players represented the Royals at the 2015 All-Star game, the team was often heralded as the one lacking any real superstars. Team success always trumped individual success. Coach K lauds the value of team’s ego when it is a collective (vs. individual) one. The Royals fell right into this category in 2015. When an organization is on the same page (from ownership to front office to coaching to scouting and to players), winning is truly a collective success.

The common message from the players of the Kansas City Royals 2015 baseball team was short and simple: “We play for each other.” Do your teammates say the same thing? If not, your culture may be ready for a Royal makeover.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

At the end of the day, the organization is going to do what it’s going to do, right? So maybe a better question is: why do we even have core values?

We’ve probably all come across sets of core values that were easy to make fun of or were too vague to impact anyone. But well constructed, specific core values can add tremendous benefit both to organizations and individuals. In fact, here are three ways I’ve seen this happen.

Drive Culture

Every organization is driven by a number of things. Hopefully there is a clear purpose that all stakeholders know by heart. Customer value creation ought to drive action. If your organization is a company, earning a profit ought to be at least one of the drivers. But none of these should come at the expense of core values. Each driver should align and core values should empower the organization to move forward.

Wouldn’t you prefer to work in a values-driven organizational culture? Imagine what could happen in an organization without values. A quick look at the news and you’ll see many examples.

Influence Mindsets and Behaviors

As most of us have observed, nearly every organizations have a set of core values. Sometimes they even get talked about, which a great step. But how often are they referenced or recalled? To take it a step further, how often do they invoke personal change?

If your organization has core values, they need to be part of the corporate conversation. Then you’ve got to relate them to the way people think and act in the context of everyday situations. Point out when the values were present. “Our team did a great job demonstrating ________.” Use values-oriented language to assess future work. “Here’s an opportunity for our team to demonstrate _________.”

Over time, common language begins to turn into common mindsets and common behavior.

Guide Decision-Making

In any organization, there are many leaders who operate at many levels. The temptation for new or risk-averse leaders can sometimes be to push the difficult decisions up to the next level. Once this happens enough times, the leaders at the top start wondering why they have to solve every problem and make every decision that comes their way. What’s the point of having leaders if they don’t take responsibility, they wonder.

That’s where organizational strategy comes in. That’s where training comes in. And that’s also where core values come in. These are the tools every leader ought to be able to use to make the decisions appropriate for his or her level.

Core values enhance leadership responsibility by helping to guide decision-making.

So the next time you look at your core values, ask yourself what difference they make in your organization. If that answer is “not much,” it may be time for a refresh. Or it may be time to simply speak up.

What difference do your core values make?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Just like in medicine, the last thing a change practitioner should do is prescribe before diagnosing. You don’t want to “fix” the wrong problem. That usually just makes things worse and hurts your credibility.

So how do you diagnose an organization?

Don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as you might think. While survey and data analysis have their place, the method I like to start with is the interview. I’ll identify the key leaders who make the management decisions (VPs, directors, managers, etc). Never just one, but several. Then I’ll schedule time with them to get their input.

The First Three Questions

As I’ve mentioned before, I have a set of three questions I always ask to leaders I meet with, whether I’m doing a diagnostic or not. It allows me to cut straight to the chase of how their organization is doing without being overly intrusive. Here they are:

• What excites you about your organization?
• What would you like to get to next if you could?
• What concerns do you have about your organization right now?

With these short questions, I’m able to quickly capture an overview of the passion, strategy and fear of the leader in a relatively pressure-free way. But if I will be responsible for proposing and/or delivering a solution, I don’t stop there.

In graduate school, I read the book How to OD…And Live to Tell About It by William Becker. In it is an organizational diagnostic I’ve come to really appreciate. Below is a sample of the most important questions from Becker that I use and you can use as well.

Culture

• What are people like and what seems to be important to them?
• What type of person succeeds here? Why?
• How are people professionally developed?

Strategy

• What is the organization’s mission?
• What are your key organizational goals?
• What do people perceive they are most rewarded and recognized for doing?
• What are the top three challenges facing your organization/industry now? Over the next 3-5 years?

Change History

• What are some of the recent (or current) change initiatives your organization has undergone on over the last few years?
• What was their purpose? What resulted and how has this impacted your organization today?
• What were some of the obstacles faced and how were they addressed?

Needs

• In your view, what is the most important thing your company needs to address?
• What do you want to take on right now? Why haven’t you?

Influence

• How is the executive team composed in your firm? What are they good at (as a team)?
• What seems to drive decisions here?

Preferences

• Are you looking for a pair of hands to tell them what to do, or an expert to tell you what is the problem and provide a solution, or are you looking for a collaborative effort where someone facilitates you and your stakeholder’s discovery of the problem and create solutions together?
• Is there anything else I should be aware of if I am to be helpful to your organization?

Once you’ve interviewed enough of the leaders to get an accurate assessment of the situation, you have will generally have the information you need to get started. Compile the results, highlight the major themes, and report them back to the leaders you interviewed. Include your recommendations for what needs to be done and how you propose to make it happen – along with their necessary involvement.

Congratulations, you’ve just completed step one – and what some consider the most important step – in the consulting process!

What other questions would you include? Keep in mind that most leaders don’t have time to answer all of your questions!

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Following are six specific ways many organizations have traditionally thought about training – with a culture “shift” for each one.

Learning takes place during training events.

Shift: Learning takes place before, during and after training events – as well as on the job and after hours.

Gone are the days when training is simply viewed as a “vacation” from actual work. With attitudes like this, it’s no wonder management got so eager to cut training budgets. Make sure employees understand that they must complete pre-work assignments before arriving at the learning event so they are prepared to engage with the content as soon as the events begins. Have a follow-up plan. Even more importantly, help them understand the importance of learning through experiences on the job – as well as from external sources.

The instructor is the expert.

Shift: Everyone is an expert: facilitators, self and peers.

If the instructor is the only expert, the purpose of a learning event will be to simply download the information from the instructor to the participants. If everyone is an expert, the facilitator operates as more of a guide and participants learn from assessing their own experiences and from collaborating with the content and with others – both inside and outside of the event.

The organization is responsible for each person’s development.

Shift: Everyone is responsible for own their development and for sharing what they know with others. The organization is responsible for supporting development via the learning infrastructure.

If only the organization is ultimately responsible for the development of each employee, then employees will understandably take a passive role in the development process. On the other hand, if the organization plays a support role, each person must be a proactive participant in the process. The organization builds the system and the participants engage with the content, resources, and most importantly: each other (are you catching a trend for collaboration?).

Mistakes are unacceptable, so hide them.

Shift: Mistakes are unavoidable – so share and learn from both successes and failures. Encourage creative experimentation.

Some mistakes are truly unforgivable, especially if they involve safety, privacy, sensitive information or ethics. And yet they still occur. The worst response is to sweep them beneath the rug and pretend they never happened. This only ensures that the same mistakes will take place again in the future. Not only that, it damages an organization’s credibility with employees (and outside stakeholders) who know the mistakes happened. Many mistakes are not fatal. It takes guts to admit when we’re wrong, but it’s one of the most development-rich opportunities out there. Mistakes become examples of what not to do (again). Moreover, when there is freedom to fail, there is extra incentive to succeed. Truett Cathy once said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing wrong… until we can learn to do it right.” When it comes to admitting mistakes, leaders ought to lead the way and go first. And if you are going to fail, take risks and fail in a training environment first.

Grades come from learning assessments.

Shift: “Grades” come from feedback of self, peer, trainers, supervisor and business results.

The ultimate grades of any learning event come in the form of business results. It’s not enough to give a right answer – you have to perform the correct action on the job. But the real catch is that often there is no “right” answer. Many decisions are situation-specific and don’t net a result until further down the road. And let’s not discount the value of feedback. Oftentimes we have a decent assessment of our own level of understanding. “I’ve got this,” or “I definitely don’t get this!” Peers, training staff and supervisors help provide additional insight that we can take or leave. Take them.

A passing grade completes training (emphasis on passing).

Shift: Development is never “complete” (emphasis on continual growth, mastery and collaboration).

Learning is only “pass/fail” in the classroom but never in real life. For some technical training events, a certain level of quantitative proficiency must be attained. I don’t want someone operating on my who hasn’t passed extensive competency assessments! But the learning is never over. A training event is simply a stepping stone on the path to mastery. Also, the most complete learner is not the one who knows the most, but the one who shares the most with others.

Which of these shifts does your organization need the most? What additional learning shifts would you add?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

So how do you go about creating change in your organization? Change seems like it should be simple enough – until we experience resistence from people who want things to stay the same. What’s the solution?

Below are John Kotter’s eight stages:

1. Establish a Sense of Urgency

According to Kotter, the biggest mistake change practitioners make is allowing too much complacency. The organization has been successful so far, so why change things now? Or, if a change is necessary, they do not make enough of case for how critical it is. So do your homework first. Is the change critical or merely a whim? If critical, how much? What opportunities will the change bring? What crises will take place if no change occurs?

2. Create the Guiding Coalition

The guiding coalition needs to have enough organizational influence (including positional authority, I’ve found), to pull the change off. They not only need to be committed to the change itself, but able to work together as a team to that end. If you are responsible for creating a major change but do not have enough positional authority, make sure to enlist the influence you need or you’ll likely waste your time.

3. Develop a Vision and Strategy

The change vision is the picture of what the present will look like – in the future after the change has taken place. Urgent data can’t inspire the masses the way a vision can. As a rule of thumb, the shorter, more concise and easier to communicate the vision is, the more likely it will be caught. The strategy is simply the plan for accomplishing the vision. Both the vision and strategy create enormous context for all the decisions that will be made down the line.

4. Communicate the Change Vision

Don’t just communicate the change vision. Over-communicate it. Use any and every possible method available. Then refuse to stop, no matter how far along in the process you get. The most influential communication is the modeling of new expectations by the guiding coalition. Communication with words is powerful. Communication with deeds is infinitely more so.

5. Empower Broad-Based Action

Oftentimes change in one area preempts change in another area. If you want change in behavior, you will probably need to change the environment as well. In this stage, it is critical to remove the barriers that impede the change you seek, whether systems, processes or infrastructure. Employees should be empowered to take risks in removing change barriers.

6. Generate Short-Term Wins

If there is no payoff for the change you are working to create until the final end, most people won’t be able to weather the storm. Part of your strategy needs to include visible improvements in the short-term. Once these short-term wins are reached, publicly recognize and reward the people responsible. Point to the desired end result, but be patient enough to celebrate in the present.

7. Consolidate Gains and Produce More Change

Whatever you do, do NOT declare victory too soon. Stay the course. Celebrating a win and declaring victory are much different. Don’t use wins as an excuse to get sloppy, but to reinvigorate the process with new projects and themes. Find ways to include people who haven’t gotten a shot on the front lines as of yet. A lack of focus will allow old traditions to seep back into the mix.

8. Anchor New Approaches in the Culture

Kotter points out that, “change sticks only when it becomes ‘the way we do things around here.'” Once victory has been achieved, it must be protected with shared values, performance standards, leadership development and succession decisions – all over time. Make continual references to the relationship between new behaviors and organizational success.

What changes are you attempting to lead? What’s your change plan?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Mindsets

Mindsets are crucial since they drive behavior. Therefore it follows that if we can change the way people think, their behavior will change as well. But you can’t get there without first identifying the current mindsets that exist as well as the ones you want to replace them with. Maybe employees see training as on-the-clock vacation and you want them to see it as a critical part of their development. Maybe they view leadership as the ability to fight fires and you want leadership to be viewed as the ability to manage proactively so that fires don’t occur. Or they could they see leadership as the ability to execute tasks and instead you want leadership to be seen as the ability to empower others to execute. It could be any number of things, technical or strategic. The key question to identify is: how does the organization (or department or team) think currently and how should it think differently?

Processes & Infrastructure

The temptation at this point is to develop a communication campaign or training to convince everyone of the benefits the new mindsets will bring to the organization. But just identifying new mindsets (no matter how good they are) is not enough. They need the supporting processes and infrastructure to be in place to make the change possible.

To illustrate, imagine a mayor of a city speaking fervently about the benefits of public subway transportation. It will save people money, use less gas and open up access to different parts of the metro area. You are sold. The only problem is, the city doesn’t actually have any tracks (no supporting infrastructure). Or, if they do, you have to fill out 10 forms, navigate a complicated website and wait six months to get your pass approved (exasperating process). So you simply stick with driving. That’s what happens when your processes and infrastructure don’t support the new mindsets. As good as it may be, people won’t embrace a change that doesn’t work.

Roles & Responsibilities

Ultimately, a new culture change is still just wishful thinking until everyone is given responsibility for embodying it at their level. While mindsets drive behavior, behavior is much easier to measure. And ultimately, changed behavior should translate into new business results (also measurable). Whether the new behaviors and results become integrated into performance objectives or business analytics, they need to be visible, not as sticks, but carrots. What gets recognized and rewarded gets repeated. Remember Zig Ziglar’s mantra, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Show people how embracing the new mindsets, utilizing the new (or existing) processes and infrastructure and accepting the new roles and responsibilities will not only improve the culture of the organization, but will set them up for success as well.

In all of this, what we can’t allow ourselves to forget is Miller’s last point: model it. If the leaders in any organization don’t model the change they’re selling, no implementation strategy will sell it for them. So see and shape the future, but don’t forget to always embody the values. Actions will always speak louder than words.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.