What echoes are you listening for from the people you lead?
If you missed my last post I have decided to share one leadership lesson a week for the rest of the year, aiming to encourage and challenge you to grow in your leadership.
One of the key responsibilities of a leader is to create and shape the culture of the organizations or teams they lead. The culture is the sum of the things we value, the actions we take to put those values into practice, and the behavior of individual team members on a consistent basis.
How can we know if the people we are leading are buying into the culture?
Listen.
More specifically, listen for echoes.
Let me explain: I coached youth baseball and softball for almost 20 years. After coaching for so many years, I've come up with a fair amount of “isms.” You know, things you say to encourage or teach your team. Things like “get your glove down” on a ground ball. How about “be tough with 2” to encourage your batter to focus when they have 2 strikes on them?
One of my most used “-ism” is “Nothing above our hands.” If I’ve said this once, I’ve said it a thousand times. I say it to remind our players that we don’t swing at pitches above our hands. Our hands are at the top of the strike zone, so if it’s over our hands we don’t swing, or “we don’t chase up”, another “-ism” of mine that means the same thing.
That is part of the culture I try to create on every team I coach. The value is discipline. We are disciplined hitters. We don’t swing at high pitches. Every season, we would have new kids on the team who I hadn’t coached before. I knew we would have to learn the culture all over again. I would say it early and often.
Inevitably every season, a few games in after weeks of practice and hearing me say, “nothing over our hands,” one of our players would swing at a pitch that was way too high. Before I could say it, I would hear one of the other players remind the batter, “Nothing over our hands”. I ALWAYS love that moment. It tells me that the team is getting the culture. We are disciplined hitters; we don’t swing at those.
In short, I hear an echo.
They echo back what I’ve been saying all season long. There are a bunch of other echoes I listen for, but I think this one paints a clear picture.
What echoes are you listening for from the people you lead?
If you want to hear echoes, you HAVE to say things... a LOT. We need to remind our teams about what we value and what we are trying to accomplish. The teams I lead hear me talk about reproducing leaders all the time. “Who are you investing in?” is a question I rhetorically ask all the time.
The echo I hear back isn’t always a verbatim parroting of what I say. I hear some of my leaders asking the people they lead, “Who are you pouring into?” Or, “Who are you developing?” These are all getting at the same thing.
The things you say to the people you lead WILL help shape the culture if you are patient and consistent. Keep saying the things you are trying to develop and then listen for echoes.
When you start to hear echoes, you know it is becoming a part of your culture.
If it feels like you are saying it too much…good! There are people who haven’t been on the team as long or have come from a very different culture in their last position. You need to reinforce what you value.
One important note about echoes that can be hard for leaders: If you never listen, you’ll never hear them.
Leadership is often more about WHAT we hear than it is about just talking all the time! We need to take time to listen to the people we are leading in formal and informal settings. When you have the chance in staff meetings, training, or onboarding, let team members share about the things you value and see if you hear echoes! I promise you: over time you will!
There are a lot of other things that shape culture, but those are for another day. Today, listen for echoes, echoes, echoes.
See what I did there?
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