The Circle of Leadership

By Andrew Adeniyi

The Circle of Leadership: A Framework for Creating and Leveraging Culture is a hands-on approach towards understanding the power of culture and how leaders are responsible for harnessing it. In this book, you will learn how to positively influence organizational culture through stories from some of the most influential leaders in their

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781641376495

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THE CIRCLE OF LEADERSHIP

THE CIRCLE OF LEADERSHIP

A Framework for Creating & Leveraging Culture

Andrew Adeniyi

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2020 Andrew Adeniyi

All rights reserved.

THE CIRCLE OF LEADERSHIP

A Framework for Creating & Leveraging Culture

ISBN

978-1-64137-908-3 Paperback

978-1-64137-647-1 Kindle Ebook

978-1-64137-649-5 Ebook

Contents

Introduction: The Circle of Leadership

Chapter 1.

Cultivating Culture

Chapter 2.

Leveraging Culture (80/20 Rule)

Part 1.

Purpose

Chapter 3.

Finding Purpose (Mission Statements)

Chapter 4.

Vision and Values

Part 2.

People

Chapter 5.

Hiring

Chapter 6.

Diversity and Inclusion (D&I)

Chapter 7.

Retention (The Art of Appreciation)

Part 3.

Process

Chapter 8.

Training and Development

Chapter 9.

The Art of Delegation

Chapter 10.

Accountability (Extreme Ownership)

Conclusion: Full Circle

Acknowledgments

Appendix

The Circle of Leadership Framework

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Introduction: The Circle of Leadership

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

–Peter Drucker

***

Exceeding Expectations

I learned about the opportunity of a lifetime in the summer of 2017. I was a district manager for an international grocery chain and a top performer in their Central Indiana (CI) division. CI was widely considered a top-three division out of over twenty divisions in its US operations. It would be an understatement to say I was extremely ambitious and hungry for a larger role with more influence. During my first three-plus years with the organization, I had led several projects in addition to leading a district of stores to consistently high performance. My reputation for achieving results and influencing people allowed me to be considered a leader amongst my peers, which got me exactly what I was asking for. 

At the time, I was one of eight district managers selected across the country to assist in the renovation of existing stores, as well as building new stores in their struggling Washington, DC (DC) division. It was an honor and a privilege to accept this role and the increased level of responsibility that came with it. Although I was slightly concerned about what to expect during my transition to the DC division, I went into the situation with an open mind and hoped for the best. It did not take long for me to realize why the DC division I was temporarily transferred to was considered one of the worst divisions in the company.

Presidential Prep

As my weekly conversation with my leader from the DC division was coming to an end, I started to second guess if the president of the company was really coming to the division the following week. I had heard through the grapevine that he was coming, but I needed to hear it from my leader to confirm. Right before we got off the phone, my leader finally addressed what was on my mind and said, Hey, Andrew, you might have heard already, but the president of the company will be in the division next week.

Trying to act surprised, I quickly responded, Really? Do you know what stores he will be visiting? She then proceeded to tell me that he would be visiting a store in Northern Virginia that was covered by one of my peers. What she said next would change everything on my calendar for the next week.

Yes, she answered. Although he will not be in your market, we need you to cover for Abby’s stores since she will be on vacation. I quickly realized that it would be a long week. Preparing for a presidential visit was no small task, regardless of which division you were in. There was a universal expectation of ensuring product quality was up to standard, signage and cleanliness were as close to perfect as possible, and that the store was 100 percent up to date with planograms and layouts. However, the difference between the CI and DC divisions centered around the expectation of how that preparation was executed.

In CI, I was not expected to invest a significant amount of labor hours in preparing for a presidential visit. The goal was to get the store in excellent shape within the flow of normal operations. In DC, I was expected to invest as many hours as it took to get the store perfect even though that was an unrealistic expectation. A store could never be perfect regardless of how many hours you invested in it. I also disagreed with the approach of trying to get the store perfect because it was an unrealistic depiction of store operations. If I were president, I would want to know what conditions my customers dealt with on a daily basis instead of getting a false image of excellence. 

Unfortunately, it was not my place to decide on how to prepare my peer’s store for the visit. So, I took the orders I was given and executed them to the best of my ability. The visit went extremely well after I worked sixteen-hour days for almost a week straight to prepare and an overnight shift the day before the president arrived. Although it was a significant investment of my time as well as my employees’ time, the store looked great for the visit. However, I would learn an extremely stressful workweek was just the beginning.

Lack of Appreciation

The true problem with the situation was that my director never acknowledged the work my team and I put in to preparing the store for the visit. In fact, I never received a simple thank you for filling in for my vacation partner. This situation would have never occurred in the CI division. Not only would I have not been expected to work overnight to prepare or work as many hours as I did, but I can also guarantee my director and the vice president of my division would have given me recognition for my efforts.

As I tried not to judge my new division too quickly, I was constantly reminded that I was not in CI anymore. The caliber of leadership I experienced in the DC division led to poor employee engagement, low productivity, and higher turnover than I had experienced in the CI division. I tried to keep an open mind, but that continued to be a tall task, as poor management became the rule rather than the exception in DC. I witnessed several distinct differences between the CI and DC divisions. Here are some of my key observations in DC:

• Lack of trust amongst the team

• Lack of professionalism

• Little to no empathy

• Lack of empowerment

• Poor culture

• Minimal senior leadership engagement

After a few months into my project role in the DC division, I was able to pick up on all of those issues. Ultimately, the root cause of their poor performance stemmed from poor leadership and poor culture. In the CI division, it was the complete opposite. We took pride in being the best. We competed against ourselves. We set the standard and then tried to exceed it. In DC, they accepted lackluster performance. Before we can discuss how to cultivate culture, we need to figure out who should be held accountable for creating it. 

Cultivating Culture

Whose responsibility is it to create and reinforce culture? The answer is senior leadership. Leadership has the ability to influence behavior. When behavior is influenced consistently over time, culture starts to form. If it’s a good culture, employee engagement will most likely be high. Every organization has a culture; the question is whether it is an effective culture or not. 

The CI division had a leader who positively influenced the culture every day. The DC division had a leader who also influenced culture but in a negative way. He was a leader who led out of fear, which the worst leaders often do. He did not take time to personally connect with his team. You’d think that after transferring from across the country to assist his division, he would know basics about me, such as how long I had been in the division or what area of the division I was working in. This could not be further from the truth. 

Almost six months into my time in DC, I had a brief conversation with the vice president of the DC division. He had no clue where my market of stores were or how long I had been in his division. This was a huge turnoff for me and made me feel like he did not really care or value my contributions to his division. This type of behavior led to a lack of trust between him and the rest of the people in the division, me included. Lack of effective culture and leadership is the reason why people in the DC division were so complacent and did not strive for greatness. 

What kind of impact does leadership and culture have on performance? Great question. Although numbers may not tell the entire story, they certainly do not lie. I was shocked at what the numbers revealed.

Return on Culture (Numbers Don’t Lie)

Ninety-four percent of executives and 88 percent of employees believe a distinct workplace culture is important to business success.¹ However, despite the significant amount of research that shows there are culture issues in organizations across America, leaders and companies fail to make the right changes to improve. Lack of awareness and knowledge are not the majority of the reasons either. As you take a closer look, you will continue to find that there is a gap between what is known and what is actually done about the issue. 

According to Deloitte, Only 12 percent of executives believe their companies are driving the ‘right culture.’² So, what you have is a clear understanding that a problem exists but a lack of effort and know-how allocated toward driving the culture in the right direction. This is one of my motivating drivers for writing this book. Even in situations where effort is put forth, the intangibles like communication, culture, and purpose are usually not the benefactors of those initiatives. 

Leveraging intangibles such as culture is not only the right thing to do, it also makes perfect business sense to do so. When you look at peer sales numbers, you also find that Companies with strong cultures saw a four times increase in revenue growth.³ Continued focus on leading by example, hiring effectively, and aligning everyone toward a common mission can lead to an excellent work environment. The statistics show that very clearly. 

Over 80 percent of people believe that you can gain a competitive advantage through your workplace culture.⁴ And ultimately, it falls on leadership to enhance their organization’s culture. One of the issues with organizational culture is the leadership team may struggle to fully understand and articulate their organization’s culture. Fewer than one in three executives (28 percent) report that they understand their organization’s culture. They know culture is important but don’t understand it.⁵ We must hold leaders accountable. 

If your culture is ineffective and unattractive, look at the leader. Seventy percent of the variance between lousy, good, and great cultures can be found in the knowledge, skills, and talent of the team leader.⁶ Once leadership can conquer the challenging yet rewarding task of creating or enhancing culture, your team will eventually be happier and more engaged. 

Too many leaders try to increase productivity by focusing on training curriculum, bonuses that don’t positively influence long-term behavior, and other tangible items when simply making them happier will make them more productive and more engaged. Making your employees happy can increase their productivity by 12 percent.⁷ When I asked the CEO of Trek10, Shane Fimbel, what advice he would give to entrepreneurs and leaders, he said, Do whatever you think will make you happy. As the leader of a rapidly growing tech company based out of South Bend, Indiana, he realized If you go to a place where you’re happy, you’re going to do great work. 

With such a glaring issue facing organizations, it made me ask the question why? Why do we continue to see significant issues with leadership and culture? Why are so many employees not engaged at work? What I discovered would change the way I understood what I considered the tangibles and intangibles of business. It’s all in the details.

Intangible Leadership

I believe that if business leaders focused more on the intangibles rather than the tangible aspects of leadership, leaders would find themselves more effective.

Leaders who understand the value in focusing on the intangibles such as employee engagement, purpose, communication, and accountability will create organizational cultures that can serve as a competitive advantage. Unfortunately, Only 46 percent of companies report that they’re prepared to tackle the engagement challenge.⁸ Given the consistent mediocre satisfaction and engagement statistics that are released each year, this is problematic. And to make matters worse, Nearly one in five employees (18 percent) reported that their companies don’t formally measure employee engagement at all.⁹ So how big of a problem is employee engagement really when we consider all factors?

In order to tackle this Goliath of a problem that organizations across the United States are