What makes a healthy team? Consistency in leadership, for starters. Under pressure, culture always trumps strategy. It doesn’t matter how talented your team is or how awesome your tools are. When it comes down to it, culture is what wins. In this post, we’ll dive into what a Lifestyle of Leadership is and how it can help you in your personal and professional relationships.
We create culture through language. We create language through the intentional meaning of words. The reason why the idea of organizational culture fails is that each leader uses their own vocabulary and language to try to lead. When leaders commit an organization to use the same words to describe their culture, things become a lot simpler. These words can identify your organizational values and make up your Lifestyle of Leadership, resulting in a real culture that your team flourishes in.
We’ve broken down TEAMTRI’s Lifestyle of Leadership for you to see an example of it in action.
What is a Lifestyle of Leadership?
A Lifestyle of Leadership is your set of values. These values help guide the way you conduct yourself throughout all avenues of your life. It affects the way you lead, how you respond to people, and what your purpose is. We as leaders have our own Lifestyle of Leadership composed of our personal values. However, the organizations we work with can also have their own set of values.
Let’s break this down.
What are Values?
[ˈvalyo͞o] verb. Important and lasting beliefs shared by the members of a culture about what is good or bad and desirable or undesirable. Values have major influence on person’s behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations.
Values are timeless guiding principles to guide each individual team member’s actions, decisions, and behaviors. We know that “culture trumps strategy under pressure” and values are the cornerstone of culture. As Roy Disney once said:
“It’s not hard to make decisions when you know what your values are.”
Our values define our “pre-decision” for how we address, confront, approach and take on the many pressures, people, and priorities we face daily. This approach makes up our Lifestyle of Leadership.
How Do You Behave and Act Out Your Values?
As an organization, your values need to be reflected by each team member, all the time, in everything you do–formally and informally. From recruitment and hiring to promotion and demotion, your values need to be in every decision. That’s why with every TEAMTRI Blog post we write, we tie the content back to one (or more) of the six TEAMTRI Values.
Encourage your team members to hold each other accountable with these values, regardless of position, rank, or title. Remember to also celebrate and encourage fellow team members for their consisting, caring, and often courageous ways they live out your values.
Why is a Lifestyle of Leadership Important?
According to the six years of research poured into Built to Last by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, every organization that has endured through recessions and depressions for decades were successful because they defined their core values in the early stages and built a culture of people around them. They build this culture through nurturing and celebrating their values. When you nurture your values, you increase the likelihood that consistent and positive behavior and choices will be made by your team in all aspects of their life. In other words, when you develop your Lifestyle of Leadership and truly embody it throughout how you carry yourself through work and life, you’re destined for sustainability and growth.
How to Calculate Your Lifestyle of Leadership
- Meet With Your Team
- Brainstorm Words & Phrases That Make You Unique
- Narrow Down Your List to 3-7 Values
- Convert Your Values to a Visual Tool
- Be a Cheerleader for Your Lifestyle of Leadership
Read how we came up with TEAMTRI’s Lifestyle of Leadership and our six values that drive our decision making.
Danielle Tolentino Tuason, MPA
Danielle is our Senior Vice President of Client Services at TEAMTRI. She is known for her positive energy and contagious smile! Her professional journey began as a student leader directly impacted by TEAMTRI, and then she joined the non-profit sector, specializing in leadership, team development, fund development, strategy, and innovation. Today, she guides and coaches our clients, teammates, and students in their own leadership journeys to help them achieve their dreams! Danielle is a creative at her core and strives to live by the philosophies of servant leadership in all of life’s circles of influence, whether at home with her family, partnering with teammates and clients around the world, and within her local community in Southern California.
