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It takes one person
It takes one person to acknowledge your idea.
It takes one person to ask a good question and listen, to offer to help, and to say, “Yes, I can help.” It takes one person to believe you can do better, to say “thank you” genuinely, to spark your thinking, to increase your hope or to restore you to yourself.
How do you change workplace culture? The answer is the same. One person at a time. No one person is standing with their hand on the lever of change. There is no magic formula. It doesn’t matter what your policy says. Change happens from moment to moment, person by person, by people who show up and take responsibility for their impact.
We should all appreciate people who believe their leadership matters and lead with deliberate intention and conscious choice. Leadership is, after all, a practice. It is what you do every day in the moments nobody is watching. It is what you do when you are stressed, busy, and overwhelmed with your own tasks that often make the biggest difference for someone else—or not. The challenge is massive.
What is your leadership practice? Do you have one? I hope so. Leadership is not something that can be done passively. Without practice, the ideas languish. So what matters are the practices you commit to daily.
Five simple leadership practices
1. Start at start
Choose your mood. Check in with yourself. Acknowledge how you are feeling. Life and work can be rough. Take a breath and a moment to decide how you would like to be today. Maybe it is present, patient, calm, focused, inspired, optimistic, hopeful, confident, brave, or lighthearted. Now, imagine your leadership and the impact you would like to have on your team, colleagues, and customers. Decide in advance to make a difference for one person today.
2. Have a great conversation today
Have the kind of conversation that tracks, has a through line, and feels productive. You can tell when this happens. The other person leaves the conversation feeling better. You notice this. Every conversation you have leaves people feeling better or worse because of the interaction.
There are a few simple ways to have a great conversation:
- Ask questions and listen using EAR (Explore, Acknowledge, and Hold Back Response). Don’t interrupt, don’t offer advice, don’t be distracted, listen for what isn’t being said, and allow silence. Silence is awkward, but it means the person is thinking. A simple way to acknowledge this is by saying, “What I like about your idea is…”
- Stop giving feedback. Have feedback conversations.
- Create brave spaces for real dialogue.
- Keep talking about what matters. Spend less time in transactional conversations.
3. Turn your inner critic into your inner coach
Think about this: You are the person you will be with for the rest of your life. Isn’t it time to treat yourself like someone who matters? Self-criticism and turning against yourself isn’t helpful. When you feel incompetent, it’s hard to take bold action.
So why not befriend yourself? Give your inner coach a name. Maybe it's an old nickname. Something that makes you smile. It could be Tam Tam, or Grande Dame, or Mr. Fabulous…as long as it helps you lighten up some. Then don’t boss yourself around. The mind resists commands and loves big possibility questions. A few you could ask are, “What’s possible now?’ or “Who knows if this is good or bad?” or “What’s the story you are making up?” or “What is one step I can take today?” The point is to stay open to possibility and learning. And cheer yourself on.
4. Expand your mind
Determine to learn something every day. Embrace ambiguity and uncertainty and get comfortable not having all the answers. Can you stay curious? The challenge of the massive amount of change in our world is to find comfort in learning, not in knowing. Stop trying to be perfect and hustling for approval. There is such relief here. Releasing the need to be seen as smart and perfect opens the door to real growth and mastery.
Ask your team for their thoughts and ideas before you weigh in with what you think. The more you do this, the more your team takes ownership of challenges. Encourage your whole team to learn something each day. Become known for the great questions you ask that stimulate ideas that lead to better performance.
5. Invest in yourself
Burnout is prevalent. Don’t wait until you have nothing left in the tank. Life is too short to sacrifice yourself for a job. Commit to doing one thing a day to stay physically healthy: Do some yoga, go for a walk or run, or play some pickleball. Commit to one thing a day that brings you joy and makes you laugh: Play a game, take the dogs out, or watch a funny movie. Commit to one thing a day that brings you peace: Read poetry, meditate, listen to music, or sit quietly on a park bench.
A great culture does not exist on a higher plane or in eutopia. It starts with one person acting on some of these ideas, and then another person impacted by these actions also operates in this way in their next conversation. Change happens one person at a time.
So, go ahead and run some experiments. Give an idea a whirl. See what happens. Commit to small actions daily.
Remember…
Change will not come if we wait for another person or another time.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Tammy Robertson is an inspirational speaker, coach, author, and engagement expert. She helps leaders and organizations engage people's hearts and real desire to make a difference! Tammy offers keynote speeches, training sessions, and leadership coaching to inspire individual and organizational success.
Originally published in Dividends.
