Shaping your company culture is one of the most important things you can do as a business owner. It is the invisible guiding hand that could make the difference between you reaching your goals or missing the mark. And for many business owners, they struggle with the company culture that they envision in their head, versus the reality of their day-to-day culture.
1. Feedback Is Discouraged.
Many business owners suffer from control issues and fear that no one will be able to do the job like they do. So they instinctively micromanage people on their team. This behavior can affect your ability to hire and obtain team members, and can also prevent you from scaling and growing your business. Team members who don’t feel able to do their job without constant oversight are often fearful of giving feedback or offering up suggestions. Which means that there may be a lot of good ideas left on the table.
It’s important that you take steps to keep your micromanaging tendencies in check. Allow your team members to own projects or tasks within their skill set, and ask for and listen to any feedback that they may have along the way. If you follow the gold standard of hiring, you can be confident that you have team members that have experience in their position and can offer insight outside of your own.
2. You Are Never Happy.
Another issue many business owners face has to do with feedback given to team members. Are you one to gloss over victories and successes and focus on shortcomings and mistakes? This can have a huge impact on your company culture in more ways than you think. If your team is constantly worried about whether they can do a good job, this can breed procrastination amongst your team members. They are so afraid of doing the wrong thing, or presenting a presentation or a report that isn’t up to your standards, that they will subconsciously hold off on doing it until the last minute.
To prevent this issue, give your staff the ability to make mistakes. Ask them for a draft. Give them room to grow and make mistakes, and work with them on how to improve things in the future. In the same realm, if you find yourself making a mistake, own it and give yourself grace to do better next time.
3. You Don’t Eat Your Own Cooking.
The last way that you are sabotaging your company culture has to do with your inability to eat your own cooking. Do you tell your team to be on time for meetings but consistency show up five minutes late? Do you ask them to complete their quarterly action plan by next Friday but fail to turn in your own? Your team is watching and anything that you ask your team to do, you should model yourself whenever possible.
Company culture is an ongoing task. Every day you have the opportunity to help shape the future of your business. By changing these three behaviors, you will be well on your way to shaping a company culture that you can be proud of.