Culture is currently one of the most popular buzzwords in leadership and rightfully so. Seth Godin has my favorite definition of culture. He defines it in 11 words – “This is what we say and this is what we do.”
Your organization’s culture is its competitive advantage. It is who you hire and why, how you treat internal and external customers and why, what you value you and why, and how you handle success and failure and why. Culture is what we say and what we do.
One of the best resources I have found regarding the subject of culture is Daniel Coyle’s incredible book The Culture Code: The Secrets Of Highly Successful Groups. Combining leading-edge science, on-the-ground insights from world-class leaders, and practical ideas for action, this book offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded.
No matter the size of your group or your goal, this book can teach you the principles of cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together. Click HERE or on the image provided to order this book today!
The following are 35 Leadership Quotes from The Culture Code: The Secrets Of Highly Successful Groups:
- “A strong culture increases net income 765% over 10 years, according to a Harvard study of more than 200 companies.”
- “Words are noise. Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected.”
- “One misconception about highly successful cultures is that they are happy, lighthearted places.”
- “At their (highly successful groups) core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness that around solving hard problems together.”
- “He’s very smart, but the smartest thing about him is that he thinks like an eight-year-old. He keeps things really simple and positive when it comes to people.” – Jeanne Markel, the Downtown Project’s Director of Culture, on Zappos founder Tony Hsieh
- “Collisions – defined as serendipitous personal encounters – are he (Hsieh) believes, the lifeblood of any organization, the key driver of creativity, community, and cohesion.”
- “This place is like a greenhouse. In some greenhouses, the leader plays the role of the plant that every other plant aspires go. But that’s not me. I’m not the plant that everyone aspires to be. My job is to architect the greenhouse.” – Hsieh
- “The most successful projects were those driven by sets of individuals who formed what (MIT professor Thomas) Allen called ‘clusters of high communicators.'”
- “When I visited the successful cultures, I kept seeing the same expression on the faces of listeners. It looked like this: head tilted slightly forward, eyes unblinking, and eyebrows arched up. Their bodies were still, and they leaned toward the speaker with intent. The only sound they made was a steady stream of affirmations.”
- “It’s important to avoid interruptions… Interruptions shatter the smooth interactions at the core of belonging.”
- “The top salespeople hardly ever interrupt people.”
- “When you enter highly successful cultures, the number of thank-yous you hear seems slightly over the top.”
- “The performance of a restaurant depends on the person who performs the humblest task.”
- “The groups I studied had extremely low tolerance for bad apple behavior.”
- “Laughter is not just laughter; it’s the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.”
- “Vulnerability is less about the sender than the receiver.”
- “Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust – it precedes it. Leaping into the unknown, when done alongside others, causes solid ground of trust to materialize beneath our feet.”
- “Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway though which trusting cooperation is built.”
- “One of the traits that set Navy SEAL teams apart is their combination of stealth and adaptability. They can reliably navigate complex and dangerous landscapes in complete silence.”
- “He (Navy SEAL Dave Cooper) happens to be the best at a skill that is at once hard to define and immensely valuable. He’s the best at creating great teams.”
- “Having one person tell other people what to do is not a reliable way to make good decisions.”
- “Those might be the most important four words any leader can say: I screwed that up.“
- “Being vulnerable together is the only way a team can become invulnerable.”
- “While questions comprise only 6% of verbal interactions, they generate 60% of ensuring discussions.”
- “The most important moments in conversation happen when one person is actively, intently listening.”
- “Skilled listeners do not interrupt with phrases like ‘Hey, here’s an idea’ or ‘Let me tell you what worked for me in a similar situation’ because they understand that it’s not about them.”
- “The best teams tended to be the ones I wasn’t that involved with, especially when it came to training. They would disappear and not rely on me at all. They were better at figuring out what they needed to do themselves than I could ever be.” – Cooper
- “High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and the future ideal… Here is where we are and here is where we want to go.”
- “Stories do not cloak reality but create it… Stories are not just stories; they are the best invention ever created for delivering mental models that drive behavior.”
- “One of the best measures of any group’s culture is its learning velocity – how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.”
- “What seems like repetition is, in fact, navigation.”
- “This is the way high-purpose environments work. They are about sending not so much one big signal as a handful of steady, ultra-clear signals that are aligned with a shared goal. They are less about being inspiring than about being consistent. They are found not within big speeches so much as within everyday moments when people can sense the message: This is why we work; this is what we are aiming for.”
- “The funny thing is, when I visited leaders of successful creative cultures, I didn’t meet many artists.”
- “Leaders are inherently biased presume that everyone in the group sees things as they do, when in fact they don’t.”
- “Every group skill can be sorted into one of two basic types: skills of proficiency and skills of creativity.”
What is one thing you learned from the quotes above which will help you improve your culture? Once again, click HERE to get your copy of The Culture Code: The Secrets Of Highly Successful Groups.
The Top 60 Leadership Quotes From 2021 Part 1 is my latest ebook. For many entering a post-pandemic environment, leadership looks completely different than the pre-pandemic world. People are more broken now. They are more uncertain. Fear and anxiousness are unwelcome constant companions. Cultures are more unhealthy. Relationships are more dysfunctional. Hope seems to be in short supply. Every day seems to bring a new hacking, natural disaster, or unexpected calamity.
Therefore, the fundamentals of leadership are more important than ever. The quotes in this book deal with the basics of leadership. If you want to be the best leader you can possibly be, click HERE or on the image provided to download this FREE resource. The lessons learned from last year, if applied, will sustain you for years to come.