Culture and Leadership

I have spent 25 years with over 7,000 people in rooms in 25 countries around the globe introducing and motivating people towards an approach to leadership that unlocks the potential of people in an organisation and removes the barriers to development. Like all good approaches to leadership, it’s based on what helps people to achieve at their highest level. It’s also centred on humans. What we, the human species actually need to feel motivated.

In the 24,000 hours standing in front of all of those people there have been many challenges, so here’s one of them.

It’s a show-stopper. You suggest something that sounds innocuous – for example, “let’s agree to start the meeting at 0900 – can everyone commit to being on time?”

‘We’ll try to be there’ comes the dreaded reply. ‘But what you don’t understand is that in our culture we are mostly late for meetings…..’

To begin with this fooled me. It’s a great tactic – if you claim that your behaviour is as a result of your culture – either business, religious or social, it becomes taboo for anyone to try to change that behaviour.

There is a challenge to this which works so well. It just sounds like this….

“Culture……. Or behaviour?”

I would not demand that a Muslim eat pork, a vegan eat meat or someone from Pepsico drink Coke ( or vice versa other than in a market research capacity!). However is being late for meetings really part of a culture?

The other beautiful example is where someone is complaining that the worst behaviour in a meeting comes from the more senior members of the group (a frequent and very sad indictment of the arrogance of seniority). “Nigel, you don’t understand. In our culture we always respect our elders and superiors”. Again the stance is ‘back off- you have no right to challenge this’.

So my response is: ‘Ok, that’s fine, however where in your culture does it say that you should disrespect your youngers and subordinates?’

There is often a long, slightly puzzled silence, and then the normal reaction is ‘Ah!’ – nothing else, and it’s a significant ‘Ah!’.

We can bring this ‘tactic’ closer to home.

“I’ve been doing this job now for 25 years, don’t expect me to change…..”

“I don’t DO email……”

“In this company we have never had senior managers in open-plan offices”

A great response is what I call the £1,000 rule. ‘If I gave you £1,000 if you made it, would you be there on time?’.

By the way this also works with recalcitrant teenagers at home who find many reasons why they just didn’t have time to tidy their room/ feed the cat/clear the table. The good news is that the amount ‘on offer’ can be reduced – £10 will generally do!

Because great leadership happens at home too.

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Nigel Allfrey is a leadership enthusiast, a facilitator and people development professional and a  Director of The Leaders Club.