#ISPA2021
Seth will speak at the newly announced
2021 ISPA Conference & Expo next May.
For more information, visit attendISPA.com.
about your culture?” Then I would say,
“Show me your culture contract.” A
culture contract is a formal agreement
that’s been collaboratively created to
establish the specific values and behaviors
all members of the team have
agreed to embody.
These values can be anything. Candor,
courage, kindness, accountability—whatever
values mean the most
to you and your organization. The key
is in identifying the values, collectively
agreeing on what it means to embody
them and then empowering the team
to hold each other accountable to
those values, consistently.
What we’re talking about here is
not aspirational words on the wall.
This is about action. I know lots of
leaders that feel good about claiming
a value like candor, but then their
team shows up and their actions towards
each other are passive-aggressive
and conflict avoidant. It’s the kind
of environment where the “real meeting”
happens after the meeting, and
rumors and gossip run wild. This is
what I call a culturally counterfeit
team. It imitates high performance
but it’s not the real thing.
Once we’ve established “how”
we’re going to show up as a team, the
key to high-performance is to shift responsibility
from people being responsible
to the leader and to their
individual performance expectations
to people feeling responsible to the
team. I want my team’s primary motivator
not to be feeling accountable to
me but to each other.
The job of leadership is one of the
most difficult but rewarding gifts in
the world. The only way you can fully
step up to the responsibility is to truly
love and care for people. If you don’t
love people, you can’t be a leader. You
can a mediocre manager, but you’ll
never be a true leader. If you feel
called in your heart to do this work
then you have to wake up every morning
and recommit to leading yourself.
Am I embodying the values we established
as a team? How am I showing
up today? How will I be remembered
by the people I lead today? Lead yourself.
Lead the team. The team will
take care of the rest. n
JUNE 2020 ■ PULSE 53