Every church, business, athletic team, non-profit, educational institution, and even your home has a culture. Your culture is your way of life. It is how you do things. And how you do things is based upon your set of beliefs, behaviors and core values. Ultimately, your beliefs and behaviors will determine whether you have a healthy or unhealthy culture.
When it comes to culture, leaders must embody the culture and hold everyone accountable to what and how you go about your daily activities. Leaders set the tone. They lead the way. Leadership truly is a picture of the desired destination at which others should wish to arrive.
Every two weeks at INJOY Stewardship Solutions I lead a meeting of company executives and teammates as we go over how we are doing against our goals and objectives and look to the month ahead. It is an opportunity to connect, celebrate, coach, realign if needed, and train. Also, I often take this opportunity to drive home our organization’s culture.
For this meeting I felt a divine prompting to drive home the value of gratefulness. We are a very grateful organization. In particular, the following are some specific things I wanted to communicate we are grateful for:
- We are grateful we get to serve churches.
- We are grateful we work for generous owners like Joe Sangl and Ken Friar.
- We are grateful our work allows us to provide for our families, and put a roof over their heads, and send them to college.
- We are grateful Joe and Ken give us insurance allowing us to take care of the medical needs of our families.
- We are grateful Joe and Ken give us the tools and resources to be successful in our jobs.
- We are grateful Joe and Ken invest in our retirement so one day when INJOY Stewardship is far in the rearview mirror, we will still be the recipients of their generosity.
I was being honest with everything I said and wanted to take the opportunity to personally thank Joe and Ken. But I also wanted to drive home our culture and value of gratefulness – gratefulness for what we get to do and gratefulness for the leaders God blesses us through. This is how we will think and approach each day individually and as a team. What I enjoyed most was how my teammates echoed my sentiments. That’s culture.
Thankfully, entitlement is not an issue at our organization. However, as a leader, you should not wait until something goes wrong to remind everyone of your culture and what is acceptable.
I felt the timing was right to drive home our culture and values while things were going right. There are few things as satisfying to a leader as celebrating a healthy culture.
So what were Joe’s comments after my teammates and I expressed our gratitude for he and Ken’s leadership and generosity? Joe said, “Brian, I appreciate the kind words but you guys have earned all those things.”
Of course, Joe would say something like that. In the area of creating a culture of gratefulness and generosity, he is the picture of the desired destination we all wish to arrive one day.
As a leader, are you?
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