Level Up Leadership

One of the easiest ways to tell if your organization is suffering from poor workplace culture is to take a look at your customer satisfaction. As Tim Kuppler points out, companies with the best customer service often have exceptional workplace culture, because they understand how to treat both customers and employees with dignity and respect. And the reverse is also true.

Kuppler gives the example of a bank that made him jump through all sorts of hoops in order to fix a problem that the bank itself had created. The bank employees who tried to help Kuppler through the problem were almost as frustrated as he was, because they were hindered in helping him by unnecessary protocols and unintuitive operations.

Other clear-cut signs of poor workplace culture include high employee turnover rates, poor productivity, poor customer retention, and a general feeling of negativity around the office.

But how can a business leader create the kind of lasting business culture change that addresses each of these problems? It’s not like you can flip a magic switch and simply decide to have a better culture.

The first step is recognizing that you have a problem. You may not even be able to identify exactly where the problem stems from, and that’s okay. The knowledge and that something is wrong and that you need to make changes to fix it is half the battle.

The next logical step for most organizations is bringing in an outside set of eyes. Turning to a consulting firm like Level Up Leadership can help you gain perspective on what’s going wrong within your organization and where you might be able to make positive steps toward change. A consultant can provide guidance by:

1. Performing team assessments – By getting a clear understanding of how teams are currently functioning, where their strengths are, and where there are problem areas, consultants can help you get a clear overhead view of how your organization is currently functioning.
2. Identifying underlying issues – Whereas you may be able to see problems clearly, it’s often much more difficult to identify the root causes of those problems. A consultant who has worked with many types of businesses will have the necessary perspective to help you identify systemic problems.
3. Coaching leaders – Changing workplace culture starts at the top. When managers and executives are able to take proactive steps to create positive changes in their own behaviors, those changes will trickle down throughout the organization.

Guiding whole teams and providing support throughout change implementations – The right culture consultant should go beyond identifying problems to help implement solutions. They should provide tools and encouragement for lasting positive change.