3 Lessons business leaders can learn from NFL team leadership failures

The second annual NFL Players Association Report Cards were released yesterday, February 28, 2024.

Our beloved hometown Kansas City Chiefs ranked 31st out of the 32 teams, which is down three from last year. (Link to the Chiefs Report Card)

The team won the Super Bowl last year and earlier this month, yet their scores are at the bottom of the League.

What’s up with that?!

Here are three lessons for leaders who want to outperform the Chiefs when it comes to leading their teams:

1) The Chiefs players were promised a renovated locker room after last year’s poor report and Super Bowl victory, and all they got were chairs at their lockers. The owners did not follow through on what they told the team, according to the Report.

Lesson for leaders:
Follow through on your commitments. No excuses, especially when the excuses would be lame anyway.

2) The Chiefs gave the players chairs in 2023. It’s mind boggling to think the team’s owners thought benches and stools were reasonable for grown men in the NFL for 65 years, isn’t it?! They won the Super Bowl and went from stools to chairs with backs. Additional examples of insufficient resources revealed in the Report include players sharing hotel rooms when traveling for games, average weight room facility, and poor access to rehab and training staff.

Lesson for leaders:
Take care of your people. Don’t make them ask for reasonable things that would help them perform their jobs better. YOU should be looking out for THEM! Anticipate their needs and reward them for cool accomplishments instead of thinking, “I hope they don’t ask for equipment that’s better than Planet Fitness!”

3) The Chiefs team owner received an F- grade. The Report said it is for not investing in the facilities. The Hunt family does not invest in its team, and they do the bare minimum for the community, unlike some of the players. For example, after one person was killed and more than twenty people were shot at the celebration of the recent Super Bowl victory, the Hunt family and Chiefs organization they own joined with the NFL to donate a total of $200,000. Total. Between the three. $200,000. According to Forbes, the Hunt family is worth nearly $25 billion.

Lesson for leaders:
Dance with the one who brung ya. Show loyalty to the people who support you, cheer for you, and help you succeed. Do not just take from them; help them succeed too. If all you do is gouge people to get the highest ticket prices, parking fees, and tax cuts, one of these days, they’ll realize you’re not worth it. Competition is fierce, so don’t take the ones who love you for granted.

When you’re 95 years old, you’re not going to care who won the Super Bowl in 2024. You are going to care if you matter to people.

You are not going to care if you have a billion dollars at 95yo either. You are going to care if you matter. You will care about how you will be remembered.

Be leaders who matter. Be leaders people want to work with and would want their kids to be like. Create your leadership legacy by keeping your word, taking care of your people, and being loyal to those who are loyal to you. Those three are a good start.

Whether you lead a company or project team, being cheap with the budget and focused on the short-term won’t pay off in the long-run. Focus on what really matters. Businesses of all kinds, even in the NFL, need leaders like that these days.

127 Ways to Influence Your Company Culture

Do leaders influence culture or does culture influence leaders?

That question comes up often in culture forums and leadership discussions. It’s quite like the chicken-egg dilemma debated for years, isn’t it?

In this case, the definitive answer is that leaders influence culture a little more than culture influences leadership. Two caveats:

#1. Poor leadership.

You have worked with poor leaders who seek approval from peers and direct reports before making any decision. Or, those who say “no” to every new idea that comes their way. Or, those who make no effort to connect with people whether they are direct reports, peers, higher levels, or customers. Leaders like those are rarely influential, yet their poor leadership makes them dependent on the culture but overlooked. Maybe even mocked.

#2. Most of the time.

There are exceptions, of course. There are companies that “eat their young.” New people who do not assimilate quickly exit exhausted from their efforts. Some cultures are so demanding and all-encompassing, they do not depend on leaders.

I met with a potential client company years ago with a culture that did not depend on leadership. The leaders came and went, but the people stayed for dozens of years. Leaders saw that location as a place to learn a few things and check the box of cross-functional development. After a year or two there, they moved on to another division. They were not really interested in influencing anything other than the budget. The company had poor leadership and a poor culture.

It is much more common to meet leaders who do care about their culture. Often, they do not really know what to do. They have covered the basics and need more.

To help leaders steer their ships, we created a list of 127 ways to influence your company’s culture. The first five are below.

1. Have a vision. Answer this, “In five years we will ___________.” There, now you have a vision.

2. Share the vision. Ensure everyone knows it, loves it, and works toward it.

3. Determine the work priorities that will lead to the vision. There are many ways to go about it. Which ways is your company ready to employ and support? Don’t make people guess.

4. Ask each employee where and when they want to work. Discuss, set expectations, try and assess.

5. Define a company leadership philosophy and how it looks throughout the organization.

This list is for leaders seeking ways to influence the culture of their organizations positively and productively. In short, follow the Golden Rule and the Platinum Rule. Be good and do good. No ethical shenanigans. Companies with cultures that align with this list are among the most successful and sustainable in the world. Google it. You’ll see research galore. Yours can be on that list too if (it’s not already).

Leaders who want to build a culture that meets the needs of today’s people, pace, problems, and promise must evolve how they interact and influence. Leaders who do not evolve to meet today’s needs will be left behind, and so will their companies.

Leadership is tough today, and leading others or an organization is not for everyone. If you read this list and are not enthused about taking many of these actions, consider your own leadership philosophy.

Are you the leader needed today? What do you need to do to be the leader needed right now?

We hope this tactical list helps you identify how to evolve as a leader so you are even more influential within your company culture. There is a special 30-minute virtual conversation coming up about this list and leadership influence. You can get access to the conversation and to the full list by becoming a Voyage VIP. (click here to join)

5 ways leaders can reduce culture tension and save their reputation

Fast, accurate, cheap: pick two.

When companies try to do all three, they create culture tension.

Aaron Kloch, Director of the HR Advisory Practice within Gartner, defines culture tensions as the “points of conflict or contradiction between cultural priorities (e.g., innovation and cost consciousness).”

When values, goals, and branding are at odds, it is confusing to people and creates tension between people.

The tension reduces productivity, increases distrust, and greatly diminishes performance.

Guess what percent of employees face culture tension daily, according to Gartner?

77%!   

Consider these three examples…

#1. A bank whose branding flaunted their tremendous service. Customers came expecting service from empowered, friendly people. Employees saw those commercials too and were eager to provide that level of service. But reality was different for the customers and employees. Service satisfaction was not measured on the annual performance review. Call length was. Call length determined raises, bonuses, and promotion potential, so it was the standard.

The incongruency between brand and their experience caused customers to distrust the company and leave. Employees distrusted it too. They wanted to provide better service but were penalized for it.

See the tension? The company valued service to its customers but call time to its employees.

#2. The tech company whose values include “innovation,” yet five signatures are required for a $1,500 purchase, even though it is within the innovative team’s budget.

See the tension? The company tells employees to value innovation, but the process is so riddled with red tape, it’s exhausting. It discourages innovation and performance.

#3. Nearly every company’s compensation plan is an example. Many companies proclaim their people are their greatest asset, yet the disparity in compensation proves otherwise.

See the tension? Mixed messages cause employees to distrust their manager, HR department, and company leaders.

Do the three examples feel familiar? Can you identify some of your companies culture tensions?

Culture tension is common. Every company has them, especially as they change and grow. Gartner found that 96% of companies are in the midst of organization transformations, so of course culture tensions arise.

The three most common tensions employees face are…

1. Emphasis on quality v. speed

2. Focus on customer v. employees

3. Pressure for efficiency v. innovation

When does your company experience each of those three common tensions? Recognize them so you can do something about it.

Here are five actions leaders can take to reduce culture tension:

1. Understand your culture beyond the words and promises. Really get to know what is happening so you can address the right tensions instead of irrelevant data points.

2. Align the culture with your operations and brand, then communicate this with employees to help guide their behaviors when conflict happens.

3. Arm employees with resources and guidance so they can make decisions when faced with conflicting values.

4. When you look at your culture data, don’t fix the numbers. Focus on the causes for the numbers.

5. Source culture solutions from your people, not just from HR. The solutions will be received better/faster when more are involved.

The key for leaders is to be aware of what is happening, inclusive about solutions, and deliberate about nourishing your culture. Without your attention, your company culture becomes meaningless.

Just last week, a local company’s employees slammed it on reddit in long, public posts that named the leaders who sabotaged the culture and treated employees appallingly. (Note the past tense—the leaders were terminated after the reddit posts went viral.) The company’s reputation is damaged, along with its revenue and retention, because the culture was left to people who did not care for it.

Would your company survive if your employees posted publicly about its culture?

If you are not 100% confident that it would, do something about it. Do not let culture tension get out of hand and damage your company and reputation permanently.

Voyage Consulting Group created the culture assessment that excavates below the surface much better than a survey. Our process includes qualitative steps too, and we synchronize the data so it becomes a more relevant and reliable foundation for understanding and action—better than numbers alone.

Schedule a call to discuss your culture and whether our assessment would be useful to you as you work to ease culture tension. We can help you align your culture, values, brand, and goals so you build trust, improve productivity, and boost performance. Plus, it gives peace of mind to live and lead in alignment.

What a year last week was!?!

The first full work week of 2021 began with the excitement of a new year, a clean slate. Sure, many of us were a bit tired and out of our routines after the holidays, but all-in-all, the energy was upbeat. Then Wednesday’s hostile takeover of the United States Capitol in Washington D.C. occurred.

The week changed. Our time management, conversations, focus, and energy in and out of work changed.

As leaders, you may have intended to kick off 2021 a certain way but had to adjust.

🔷 Did the way your company shows empathy change over the course of the week?
🔷 When you think about how the "company" shows empathy, who are you thinking about?
🔷 What have your leaders done to show empathy in the last week?
🔷 What have you done to show empathy for your coworkers? Yourself?

All of that, and more, was part of the #CultureMatters live conversation January 8th. We talk about issues and ideas that impact culture each month, and we bring them back to business.

As facilitators of the monthly Culture Matters forum, Kathy Holmes and I chose to start the year with empathy because it aligns with the values of our #culturematters friends.

When companies value empathy, it shows in how they treat people and goes further into how they make decisions, prioritize, innovate, and more.

A company that tells people to leave their emotions at home and just keep their mouths shut, for example, shows it does not care about its people. Back in the old days, that command-and-control style of leadership was rarely questioned. People did their jobs and went home.

Now, however, that company would struggle to stay alive. A company who treats people that way would struggle with collaboration needed for innovation, along with retention of employees and customers. Makes sense, right?

The research is clear: people want to work for companies and leaders who care about them. Companies who develop empathy gain a strategic advantage for retention of employees and customers.

Empathy is worth attention. Plus, it is a nice, basic value.

Join the Culture Matters conversations via Zoom each month and on LinkedIn. All are welcome!

5 ways leaders can make room for discomfort in their workplaces

We thought business was VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) when the pandemic hit, then businesses closed and people were sent home for good or to set up offices on top of their kitchen tables. Parents were expected to home-school their children and Zoom their meetings and social distance. After three months of virtual operations and increased tension, our world changed again.

Racial inequities arose significantly across the country. From police killing unarmed Black men and women to white people calling the police to report Black people for #LivingWhileBlack, protests and riots took over the streets of many cities and conversations of many meetings.

Last week’s gathering of The Culture Matters centered around how leaders can bring the conversations society is having into their companies. We talked about HR leaders especially, but most of us are not in HR roles, so our ideas extended beyond HR.

Below are five actions leaders can take to step up and lead right now. Now’s the time to be relevant and contribute to your companies during this tumultuous time of pandemic, WFH (work from home), returning to work, racial unrest and healing, other inequities (still have gender and LGBTQ too), and more going on. Leadership is needed more than ever, but it is going to be hard. Not every leader will do it. We see good ones stepping up and hope more do so as well.

Here are five ways leaders can make room for the discomfort that needs to happen for forward progress to be possible.

1.       Ease the Pressure. Leaders need to recognize that people are on edge. Recognize that and do something to ease the pressure people feel in general before trying to have conversations about race, other inequities, or even major changes to your business model.

• Consider sharing programs and resources on the following: stress management, mindfulness, physical fitness, nutrition, time management, balance, and various hobbies. One of our clients has had experts on everything from home care to garage organization to lawn care to how to paint rooms to Marie Kondo organization regularly.

• A second idea is to update your Employee Assistance Programs, or get one if you do not have one already.

• Third, make apps like Headspace, Sanvello, or Calm available for your people.

2.      Create the Space. Create the space for people to talk and listen—BOTH are key! You might encourage group conversations, town halls, surveys, pulse surveys, one-on-ones, or other types of conversations.

• Consider the location carefully. For example, HR’s conference room might not be the ideal location for small group conversations about race between management and staff.

• Rely on experienced facilitators for group conversations.

• Do some basic listening skills training. (A smart resource is Dr. Laura Janusik.)

3.      Talk to your People. A great example of this has been Brian Chesky, Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO, who kept in touch with his company during the pandemic. He shared honestly about the possibility of layoffs and that “nothing was off the table.” When layoffs were coming, he sent an emotional letter to all staff, and it was received well.  

In the past two weeks, many leaders and leading companies have issued statements in support of racial equity. If you are inclined to do so, speak up too. You can comfort your people by being present, recognizing where your company stands in relation to equality, and telling how you will move forward. You do not have to know all of the answers or go backward in time, but you could focus on how you will help the company do better starting now.

Enrique Rubio, founder of Hacking HR, said, “This is the time for leaders to shine. You cannot shine in the dark corner of the room.”

Talk to your people and, perhaps more importantly, listen to them.

4.     Be Congruent. There must be harmony between your internal and external messaging. WW, formerly known as Weight Watchers, blew it recently. In May, they started a weekly series open to the public for free. Oprah Winfrey leads the series called A Vision Forward, and it is about “resetting, refocusing and renewing our commitment to what matters most.” The day before the second event, WW laid off part of its staff via a big Zoom call. The incongruence between the internal messaging (“we don’t even care enough to talk personally”) and public messaging (“commit to what matters most”) was staggering and bad for their business. Luckily for WW, they had Oprah to compensate for their misstep. (Source)

When leaders and companies behave incongruently, they cause their stakeholders to distrust them. When your actions do not align with your words, your team will not trust you. When your internal policies do not align with your external messaging, your employees, customers, and suppliers will not trust your company. Distrust costs millions of dollars every year, so if nothing else gets your attention, pay attention because of the impact on the bottom line. (If you need help understanding how brand and culture connect, reach out. We have resources to support your effort toward alignment.)

5.      Evolve as a Human. To be an influential and impactful leader in business today, you must continue to evolve. The world has changed, and if you do not change too, you risk unconscious incompetence with regard to workplaces and stakeholders. Keep learning and adding to your experiences, or you will become irrelevant. Treat people as humans, not as “capital,” or you will become like the dinosaur…dying alone.

This is an important time in history. People matter. Leadership matters. Culture matters.

You are warmly invited to join us for the next The Culture Matters and to join the group on LinkedIn. All are welcome.