OrgHealth Ascent Assessment for Individuals
Strategic Momentum
Collaborative Culture
What does this mean?
Here’s what you are likely experiencing on your team based on what you’ve reported.
High: Strategic Momentum
- Fewer wasted work hours, quicker progress towards goals due to clarity and higher energy.
- Revenue growth is keeping pace with job satisfaction.
- The leadership team seems to be able to resolve issues quickly due to a clear and shared understanding of exactly what the key priorities and strategic anchors mean.
Medium: Leadership Accountability and Talent Magnetism
- Your leadership team is likely to do their jobs without too much fuss. Relationships seem to be stable, and at least some of the staff feel the leadership can be trusted.
- Attracting and retaining proven and talented executives and workforce may be costing you more time and money than it should.
Low: Collaborative Culture
- A low Collaborative Culture compromises all other areas of organizational health.
- Likely, everyone’s energy, focus, and willingness to offer of their own resources is significantly lower than it should be, throughout the company.
- An “it’s just a job” mentality results in high-performing staff being more likely to be poached.
- Progress towards goals is slowed when the unexpected happens, and certain departments are over-extended due to lower flexibility and silos.
- Important information does not get passed on consistently to those who need it.
Action Step
Here's what you can do.
We would recommend reading through all the suggestions below and choosing either one or two to build an action plan around.
Build trust.
To be truly effective, leaders need the trust of the people they lead. A high level of trust in our organization pays off with a commitment to continuous improvement, adaptability during change, collaborative teamwork, people who are motivated to high productivity and engagement, and a great reputation that attracts even more outstanding talent. But trust isn’t just handed out to us with the job title and we can’t just assume that it will appear spontaneously on its own. We have do the actions to build it, moment by moment, day by day.
Watch for artificial harmony.
When executives always agree with the CEO (or each other), it indicates they’re trying to survive in an environment where all the signals imply that opposition is bad and agreement is good. A ‘yes person’ culture surrounds us with like-minded individuals—on the leadership team, the new people we hire, and even the consultants we work with—and then rewards them for their consistent agreement with us. Under the guise of “cultural fit”, it seems totally logical, but what’s often really happening is the culture is being decided at the top and the loss of collective intelligence, creativity, and capacity to evolve undermines our leadership performance and organizational results.
Get real feedback about trust levels.
Talk to managers and team members who you know will be straight with you about their observations around trust and fear. Ask questions like:
“Are we encouraging people to innovate or does it feel like they have to conform?”
“Are differing perspectives and opinions tolerated?”
“What happens when mistakes occur? How does leadership respond?”
Focus on collaborative wins.
By consistently focusing on others instead of ourselves, we exercise underused core competencies of leadership like self-awareness, active listening, and empathy. When an organization’s most senior leaders model these behaviours, it’s much more likely to cascade through all levels and become a natural behaviour in our company culture.
Build real connections with your people.
While there should be no expectation to form deep friendships with colleagues, most executives should push themselves to cultivate more curiosity and prioritize relational connection. You'll need a deeper level of investment and commitment to create the strong bonds that will ultimately lead your team to remarkable results.
On this note: Notice that none of these next steps are “host a day-away fun event”! Grand gestures usually worsen the situation when the real work isn’t being done by the leadership team to improve the things that are less than healthy. We recommend starting with the hard work and using events to cement the work already being done to build a healthy culture of collaboration, rather than relying on them as substitutes.
How can our team help you succeed?
We would love to help you tackle your goals and see the change you know is needed. Let's get the conversation started!