Leadership influences company culture heavily. Leaders can reinforce organisational values by helping their people grow and develop through goal setting, opportunities, and recognition. Elevate employees through frequent one-on-ones and regular two-way feedback. When employees have open and ongoing dialogue about their work, their trust in their leader strengthens.
Leadership culture is important to building organisational culture. Leadership culture is how leaders interact with one another and their team members. It’s the way leaders operate, communicate, and make decisions. And it’s about the everyday working environment: their behaviors, interactions, beliefs, and values.
Leaders must understand their role in shaping an organisation’s culture, and organisations must make intentional efforts to help develop their leaders. Effective leadership development goes beyond training classes, adding on to your organisational structure, or even determining the right cultural fit when hiring new leaders. The best way to ensure your leadership culture is positively contributing to your organisational culture is to create modern leaders.
Organizational Culture and Leadership is hand in hand together in building, controlling and enhancing organizational performance, but the question is how far the relation is between both.
The contingent reward of the transformational and transactional leadership is more prominent than culture. Also, some researchers supposed that leadership is a simple component of organizational culture, they assumed that by shaping the organizational values and constructing the social reality by leader an organization naturally became a strong organizational culture, Where In any organization, leaders create their tools to either evolve the current culture or to change the existing standard. The leadership patterns differs based on how the subordinates observe their organizational culture.
However if leadership and organizational culture can work together, then leadership can play a major role and be an effective factor in changing organization’s culture when needed, also to foster and impact it when there is a decision or plan by decision makers.
There are other theorists confirmed for being leadership a key of both organizational effectiveness and change.
traits of organization’s culture link to the organization’s performance. The performance of an organization depends on organizational culture values that been shared among its members. Comparatively, Successful organizations are often distinguished by the company’s ability to promote their strategies, which mean it relies on the power of their leaders.
After all, we can settle that both leadership and organizational culture can evolve the performance of organizational. Furthermore, leadership is part of an organizational culture and they are essential factors that work together to enhance and increase organizational performance. Accordingly, to the latter, we cannot separate between these three concepts since they fit at best.
Leadership traits and also skills are useful in promoting a healthy organizational culture.
There is no specific leadership characteristic to promote a healthy organizational culture. But to have a successful organization you have to combine between the organizational culture’s standards and the employees’ personal win. Therefore, a leader should have the skills of sharing his vision and motivating the subordinates to reach the desired goal altogether.
Knowing that a healthy organizational culture is linked to a healthy leader, below is a list of leadership traits from different leadership’s styles that contribute to maintaining and evolving subordinates:
Behavior for a successful leader:
- A leader should be directed toward providing psychological structure for subordinates which means giving subordinates a clear scope of work, scheduling and coordinating work, giving specific guidance, and clarifying organizational structure’s policies, rules, and procedures.
- Supportive directed toward the satisfaction of subordinates needs and preferences, such as displaying concern for subordinates’ aid and building a friendly and psychologically supportive work environment.
- Participative, directed toward encouragement of subordinate influence on decision making and works unit operations: discussing with subordinates and build decision by taking their opinions and suggestions into account.
- Achievement oriented, directed toward encouraging performance excellence: setting challenging goals, seeking improvement, featuring excellence in achievement, and giving confidence that subordinates will attain high standards of performance.
Leadership characteristics a servant leadership should be:
- Listening, communicate by listening first, through listening they acknowledged the point of view of a follower and validated this perspective.
- Empathy, Is standing in the shoes of another person and attempting to see the world from that person’s point of view.
- Healing, the personal well-being of their followers.
- Awareness is a quality within servant leaders that makes them acutely attuned and receptive to their physical, social and political environments.
- Persuasion is a sharp and determined communication that convinces others to change.
- Refers to an individual’s ability to be a visionary for an organization, providing a clear sense of its goals and direction.
- Ability to foresee what is coming based on what is occurring in the present and what happened in the past.
- Is about taking responsibility for the leadership role entrusted to the leader.
- Commitment to the growth of people. It’s about treating each follower as a unique person with intrinsic value that goes beyond his or her tangible contributions to the organization.
- Building community. A collection of individuals who have shared interested and pursuits and feel a sense of unity and relatedness.
Leadership affects organizational culture
Managers can teach organizational culture through social interactions. Through their own actions, leaders show employees what behavior is acceptable and encouraged. Here are ways that leadership affects organizational culture and leadership:
Promotes a culture of recognition
When leaders let employees know that their contributions are valuable, they foster a culture of recognition. The task of the leader is to reward and incentivize hard work and good behavior. When leaders give positive praise, they help employees feel fulfilled and confident. Leadership fosters a culture of appreciation. Quality leaders encourage their employees to recognize other coworkers for their positive contributions. For instance, during a team meeting, a manager could ask coworkers to share specific instances of when a colleague excelled. A workplace culture where everyone celebrates success builds stronger teams.
Defines and teaches core values
You can define a strong business culture by its firmly held core values that are organized, shared and transmitted by employees. Leaders are role models who demonstrate behaviors that reflect the company’s core values. Effective leaders show their employees what actions they should take to fully embrace workplace values. It’s the duty of a leader to translate the mission of an organization into tangible results.
Fosters a desire to learn
A quality leader demonstrates a genuine interest in promoting the growth of their employees. For that reason, they freely share what they know with others. They help team members build a career path, then share the knowledge that the employee needs to follow it. Leaders promote the idea that employees can learn from any opportunity.
By encouraging employees to take risks in order to grow their knowledge base, effective leaders are able to foster a culture of learning and growth. Employees who feel safe to explore and learn may find their work more fulfilling and meaningful. They feel more inclined to collaborate and learn from others.
Changes the culture
Leaders understand that workplace culture continually grows and changes. Understanding the dynamic nature of the workplace helps them guide their team members through these changes.
When changes in company culture are necessary, leaders have a responsibility to communicate the information to employees effectively. Cultural changes require clear communication with every person in an organization. Leaders who value workplace culture understand that their duty is to keep actively creating a healthy organizational culture. They show their team members what behaviors align with the cultural changes and what behaviors they can alter.
Encourages a shared vision
Effective leaders define a shared goal for which everyone can strive. They promote a vision of the future that’s positive and value-based. By outlining detailed steps, they show team members how to successfully reach a goal. Employees receive a clear understanding of their role within any collective process and collaborate to achieve a shared vision of the future. Being able to describe a realistic vision inspires employees to be more productive. When they accomplish goals, employees feel fulfilled and valued. Seeing results helps them understand how they contribute to the company.