Today I want to talk about something that has got me thinking lately as I travelled through business after business around Australia over the last few months. From slick Sydney startups to family operations in regional Queensland, I’ve observed a common pattern: the organisations that succeed aren’t the ones with the shiniest mission statements hanging in their lobbies, but those where leaders regularly walk the organisation’s values day to day.
Allow me to introduce you to Rebecca, a production manager I met in Adelaide last month. She provided a great role model experience when she had to wear safety equipment for a specific role. But Rebecca? She couldn’t change the mechanics of her job, so she decided to buckle her safety gear on faithfully, even just when walking through the factory for a couple of minutes at a time. Within weeks, her whole team was doing the same. No speeches, no threats, just action that spoke louder than any policy manual.
The Power of Rolemodelling
The workplace really is the best leadership classroom, isn’t it? We lead by example, and when we model the behaviours that we expect to see, we are walking, talking examples of our organisational culture. And I’ve seen this transformation over and over again in my work as a consultant. A CEO rolling up his or her sleeves in a crisis gets everyone’s attention on the whole management team. Especially if a team leader sounds like he is genuinely considering every suggestion, even the shy voices start sharing.
Consider it this way: If you want your employees to be curious about diverse points of view, you need to be genuinely curious about theirs first. If you value truth in your organisation, you need to be real about the wins and the losses. This is not just good leadership philosophy, it is practical psychology that I have seen result in success time and time again.
I worked with James, who had a small firm of accountants in Perth. He felt that his team weren’t being proactive on client relationships. During our interview, I asked him when the last time was that he personally phoned a client just to ask how things were going, not because there was a problem. The silence told me everything. In just one month since James started making those calls himself, all of his team members were proactively reaching out to their client base. Cliché but so, so true.
Rewarding the Right Behaviours
I’ve learnt this from working with companies large and small: We don’t create meaningful workplace cultures around what we say in meetings, we create them around what we celebrate and reward on a daily basis.
At a tech company in Melbourne, I saw the HR director revolutionise their culture of innovation. That sounded to her like it was nothing more than lip service for “thinking outside the box.” So she initiated a simple action: every Friday, acknowledge in some public way one person who had tried something new that week, irrespective of the outcome, success or failure. The secret was to celebrate the attempt, not just the result.
In fact, in three months this simple recognition program had delivered more innovations than they’d seen in a whole year with an innovation effort. Why? Because people felt safe to take risks and knew their work would be appreciated, not just their results.
Building Accountability That Actually Works
And now accountability, not the finger pointing misery inducing kind. Real accountability means crafting systems in which individuals feel personally invested in an outcome because they can see how their work affects something larger than they are.
I used to work for a Brisbane logistics company and delivery delays were an issue every day. The managers had tried everything from performance reviews to discipline. Then we introduced something stunningly simple: Each driver could now see how their delivery times were affecting customer satisfaction scores in real time, and those data were refreshed weekly.
All of a sudden, what had been corporate aspirations became personal missions. Drivers began phoning in advance to make sure they would have delivery windows, plotting more efficient routes and even enquiring about certain important packages. They were no longer just doing their job, they were solving a problem, because they could see why their job mattered.
The Magic of Regular and Meaningful Feedback
The most powerful building action oriented cultures tool I have seen is regular, meaningful feedback, just not the annual, formal kind that happens in a stuffy performance review once per year. I’m referring to everyday conversations that make it possible for people to understand how their work contributes to a larger whole.
It was happening at a retail chain in Darwin. The general manager had a store manager who was doing something brilliant. Each morning, for 10 minutes, the store manager walked the floor, standing in front of each team member and asking them what they’d learnt from customers the previous day. Not monitoring them, or judging them based on what they propose, just sincerely interested in what they had to say.
This simple exercise turned their customer service scores around in months. Staff began paying more attention to what customers wanted, as they knew their observations were important. They started making recommendations based on actual feedback from real customers, which turned all employees into customer experience experts.
How Authentic Action Leads to Ripple Effects
Yet when companies really begin to take action over rhetoric, magic occurs. Trust increases organically, when people can anticipate what to expect from their leaders and peers. Productivity improves, as everyone knows how their effort adds up to shared objectives. Innovations thrive because people feel safe experimenting with success or failure.
This shift I’ve witnessed in a family owned restaurant in Tasmania, where the owner began having lunches with different people in his staff, every day, asking each staff member about ideas to make their customer’s experience better. In just a few months the restaurant had adopted over twenty ideas, ranging from new dishes to better service. Revenues soared by 30%, but more important, staff turnover nearly disappeared.
Building Lasting Change For the Long Haul
Creating a culture that values action more than words is not a one off project, it is a way of life that requires both consistency and patience. The organisations I have worked with that have achieved true transformation, who have been able to change the way they function and not revert back, all have one thing in common: They have made authenticity an integral part of effective leadership and the way they do business.
This involves not only being upfront about the challenges and celebrating the learning that comes from failing, but also letting them see that actions matter, more than nice sounding initiatives. It means you invest in the growth of your people not because it looks good in a company brochure, but because you believe deeply in their ability and potential.
Your Next Steps Forward
So where do you start? Begin with yourself. Take stock of your values and be honest with yourself if the way you live your life on a day to day basis aligns with those values. Ask your team for feedback, not necessarily about their work, but about how well you are exemplifying the kind of leadership that you want to see.
Remember Rebecca from Adelaide? Six months after advocating a simple safety gear process, her plant had not one safety incident and the highest employee satisfaction scores in the company. Not because she gave better speeches on the topic of safety, but because she demonstrated that safety was more important, and always would be.
Start small, be consistent, and have faith that real action makes for the kind of workplace culture that we all deserve. Your team is watching, your individual contributors are learning, and they are waiting to follow your lead, make sure you set a good one.
Until then, keep walking the walk!
