Practical Leadership For Creating A Culture By Choice: Leading To Win A Bigger Game

By Jay B Newman

This Book is a composite of 52 articles on leadership I have written. These articles were designed to help business, government, educational, etc. leaders improve their leadership skills using very practical suggestions in numerous leadership areas, such as communications, goal setting, coaching team members, etc.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Direct amazon publishing
• Release date: Mar 6, 2024
• ISBN: 9781088286616

Book preview

PRACTICAL LEADERSHIP FOR CREATING A CULTURE          BY CHOICE

Dr. Jay B. Newman

A person wearing glasses and smiling Description automatically generated

Jay Newman is a founding partner of Culture by Choice™, a company that focuses on helping clients create the culture they desire by determining what exists now, who the people are that make up that existing culture, and then creating the coaching processes needed to move the company from where they are to where they want to be. Jay received his Doctorate in Education Leadership from Vanderbilt University in 1984. Jay spent over 35 years in public education teaching Biology and Chemistry and then moving into the administrative ranks. When he retired from education in 2006, he left having served his final 8 years as the County Superintendent of Schools in St. Joseph County Michigan. He returned to the superintendency in 2013-14 for a one-year interim position with the Colon Community Schools in Michigan.

As a consultant, Jay has worked with numerous companies to help them improve communication systems and organizational culture. The insight he has brought to clients has helped them make significant improvements in their internal relationships which in turn has proven to improve the financial bottom line of the company. Jay has worked with small companies of less than 20 members and larger companies with more than 1,000 members.

This book has taken 4 years to complete as the business of changing cultures has taken a very significant portion of Jay’s time. Each of the chapters (which are really a series of Main Topics) is created to provide a coaching point that readers can use to improve leadership skills in specific areas. A great deal has happened since this book was started so we encourage you to contact the author or his partners to find out more about how to transform your business culture.

Dedication and Thanks

I dedicate this book to my wife Barb. Being tethered to me throughout 51 years of marriage, teaching and serving as an administrator in 6 different school districts and serving as an adjunct professor at 2 different universities, her patience was, is, and will forever be, the most important encouragement I could ever have. A brilliant early childhood educator and mother of our three kids to boot, as well as the best grandmother (Nana) our 7 grandchildren could ever have. Although transitioning from public education to the world of consulting was not easy, your patience and understanding made it all possible.

I want to thank my business partners, Larry Hake, Kari Hatt, and Cheryl Lohner for their support and critical review of all my writings over the years. Your dedication to the improvement of Business Culture I all our client companies has been inspirational. I would also like to thank Zeke Lopez for his ever present and always on target knowledge of the DISC, Motivators, and Axiological Assessments. You have been with nus since the start, providing assessments, helping us to interpret, and giving guidance when the most difficult clients have needed a little additional care.

Finally, I want to the leaders of the organizations that hired our team to work with them. Al Recher from Five Start Foods, Greg Sidwell from G & J Marketing and Sales, and Brad Weir from Newport Industries, your faith in our ability to assist you while you created the Culture you Chose for your respective Companies was amazing. We are still present in these companies after more than a decade of work. You and the dozens of other companies we have worked with made these efforts all worthwhile. 

Synopsis

This book was a result of the thoughts I turned into short weekly articles for our local newspaper in Southwest Michigan. That newspaper no longer exists, but these articles have lived on. I was encouraged to expand on each idea and turn the leadership ideas into a book. Having spent 36 years as a public educator and adjunct college professor, I had many opportunities to teach and train professionals and young adults about the nuances of leadership. From High School team captains to student council leaders, to school administrators and school board members, I have had my share of great moments.

Each chapter takes on an issue in leadership that school administrators, business owners and CEOs, athletic coaches, and leaders in many other fields have faced and sought guidance for. This book can be read from Chapter 1 through Chapter 52, or you can simply look through the table of contents to find the topic that interests you most. You can skip around from topic to topic without needing additional information to understand what is being presented.

I hope you enjoy this book as much in your reading and use of it as I did in writing it. Writing has always been one of my true passions. I have a few more books in me and I hope to have those out in the near future. It has been said that we need to either Lead, follow, or get out of the way. I believe we all need to be leaders, if not of an organization, at least in our own lives. Please enjoy the book and if you desire to learn more, do not hesitate to contact me.

PRACTICAL LEADERSHIP FOR CREATING A CULTURE BY CHOICE™

By Jay B. Newman

Founding Partner Culture by Choice/WTBG™

www.culturebychoice.com

INTRODUCTION

This book is a composite of more than 50 Main Topics on leadership which I wrote between January 2011 and December of 2012.  Each Main Topic has been expanded upon so that the reader will have more detail about how to more easily apply the ideas shared in each Main Topic.  Each Main Topic is approximately 500 words in length. So, the ideas have been trimmed and condensed to fit into that format. I will not do much to change the content of each original Main Topic other than to edit them, so they make contextual sense, but my further explanations will be found in a preface and in a summation for each Main Topic. I hope you find this information useful and as always, if you ever have any questions, you are welcome to contact me through our webpage: www.culturebychoice.com.

My intention with this book is to provide the reader with a view into what we have discovered about leadership as it pertains to the culture of an organization.  The impact of an organization’s culture on the success cannot be overstated.  Our experience tells us that culture is the single most powerful predictor of success for any organization.  And our experience is supported by research conducted by numerous universities and business think tanks. 

At the core of every organization’s culture is the behavior of its people. A company can announce that they have a certain culture, but the true culture will be defined by what the people do. What people do will be determined by their values, beliefs, biases, and emotions. If a company wants its people to behave in way that is consistent with their stated culture, then the company must create the support systems that promote the desired behaviors.

Each person will have his or her own behavioral orientation. Just as a navigational compass tells us which way we are going; our behavioral compass tells us which way to behave; or more precisely our behavioral orientation. We can learn about our behavioral orientation through a series of assessments. At Culture By Choice™ we use three assessments which we combine into what we call our Core Advantage Report. These three assessments help identify a person’s orientation with respect to their: 1) values and beliefs, 2) preferred behavioral style, and 3) preferred sources of motivation. Before we launch into these Main Topics, let me introduce you to a few of these important pieces of research regarding organizational culture.

One study was conducted by Angelo Kinicki and his colleagues at the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University.  Professor Kinicki, along with researchers from Columbia University, took an in-depth look into the connection between Organizational Culture and Corporate Success.  At first, they could not find an obvious connection but eventually they discovered that the route of influence passed though the corporate climate.

"Kinicki is quick to point out there is no ‘right’ culture model. Though both SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) and GE (General Electric) boast successful cultures, their models differ greatly. In contrast to the slightly cushy culture of SAS the GE culture is tough. GE is a goal-oriented company that demands success from its employees -- that sometimes means long, hard hours at the office. Those who don't succeed are shown the door. The model works because GE's culture is consistent with its vision and goals. The key, according to Kinicki, ‘is to create an organizational culture that is consistent with an organization's vision and strategic goals.’

"What remains surprising to Kinicki is the number of companies that ignore culture completely. That's simply bad business, he said. Companies like Southwest, SAS, GE, Intel and others have proven that a winning culture can be a bottom-line business advantage. With happy employees, the study indicates, these companies can expect to enjoy better outcomes as well as trusting relationships.

If you do what you say and you're clear about what you want to be, and then create systems to support that -- hiring systems, reward systems -- you can have a very powerful influence on your success, Kinicki said. But some companies just can't seem to do that." (http://knowledge.wpcarey.asu.edu/Main Topic.cfm?Main Topicid=1075)

Now consider this information which comes from Dr. James Heskett, Professor Emeritus at the Harvard School of Business: The culture cycle begins with the establishment and communication of shared values and behaviors, and includes:

the careful selection of employees who are believers in these values and in establishing how we do things around here;

the development of realistic expectations in the minds of new employees and meeting them in ways that establish trust, engagement, and ownership, which are the foundations for the successful implementation of whatever policies and practices are necessary to execute a given strategy;

policies and practices that lead to a learning, innovative organization;

measurement of the results in terms of things such as employee retention and referrals, returns to labor, and relationships with customers (producing loyalty and customer ownership) as well as innovation and financial performance

Cultures develop with or without conscious effort. They generally reflect the beliefs and behaviors of the founder of the organization and are often not codified until some years later after the success of the start-up.

More founders would be advised to emulate Scott (Cook, co-founder of Intuit) in giving thought to the kinds of cultures they are trying to create. As I point out in the book (The Culture Cycle: How to Shape the Unseen Force that Transforms Performance, Financial Times Press, 2011) The task of nurturing and changing culture is an important responsibility of the CEO; it has to be led from the top. If you don't believe it, don't do it. Let the culture shape itself. It will represent just one more 'unknown' to deal with, albeit an important one."  (http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6818.html)

Richard M. Able of the Human Capital Institute has the following to say. "So just how do you detect organizational culture? And how can you tell if it is effective and productive? An organization’s culture is embodied in what managerial leadership sets as its priorities: what it attends to, measures, rewards and controls. Organizational culture can be seen in how leadership reacts to critical incidents. And it can be found in leadership’s role modeling and coaching actions.

"Experts say that between 80% and 90% of employee behavior is determined by the way leaders attend to these factors. Other important dimensions of a corporate culture include an organization’s:

criteria for employee recruitment, promotion, retirement and exit

formal and informal ways of socialization

recurrent systems and procedures

organizational design and structure

design of physical spaces

stories and myths about key people and events, and

formal statements, charters, creeds and codes of ethics.

Leaders’ actions, words, beliefs and behaviors have to resonate within three contexts, according to Arian: national culture, organizational culture and the individual employee’s background, values and beliefs. (http://www.imaa-institute.org/docs/m&a/towersperrin_09_the%20importance%20of%20leadership%20and%20culture%20to%20M&A%20success.pdf)

Perhaps one of the most salient works we have been reading lately is the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol S. Dweck, Ballantine Books, 2006. Dr. Dweck does an excellent job of describing two key mindsets that people adopt; growth mindsets or fixed mindsets.  The descriptions of these mindsets have helped us recognize that the healthiest organizational mindsets are growth mindsets and that fixed mindsets often limit the potential of an organization and its people. Some business leaders mistake goal focus for concretization of thinking.  One can be very mission driven and goal focused yet still have the openness of mind that will allow for continuous growth and development. We strongly encourage our readers to also read this book as it will shed important light on how we approach our roles in the organizations we hope to positively influence.

The preponderance of the existing research is clear; a Culture by Choice™ has a much higher probability of promoting corporate success than does a culture by default.  If, as a leader, you want to give your organization the greatest advantage possible, you will pay close attention to your organizational culture.  You will clearly define what you want that culture to be and then you will develop the strategies and tactics necessary to ensure that your culture is the culture you want.  Start creating your Culture by Choice™ today!

Chapter 1: Finding the Leader That’s Already in You:

PREFACE:

My discussion of values and beliefs in this first Main Topic all stem from the work I have done over the past several years in the field of Axiology.  Axiology is the study of values and the modern father of Axiology is Dr. Robert S. Hartman.  Dr. Hartman immigrated to the US in 1941.  He had been a professor at the University of Berlin but left that post in 1932 and moved to England in order to escape the Nazi persecution of people of the Jewish faith.

Dr. Hartman’s life is an amazing story and I would encourage everyone to do a little research into his life. He made a big enough impact on the world that he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973. But

https://www.hartmaninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/P_Hartman.jpg

the real focus of this book is leadership and Dr. Hartman’s contribution to my understanding of leadership theory stems from his work in the field of Axiology. That work was a product of his quest to understand how an otherwise decent, honorable people, like the Germans, could do what they did during the Holocaust.

"What Dr. Hartman discovered through his research is that we can examine the underlying core values and beliefs of every person through a simple set of questions and the application of a fundamental mathematical calculus. Because of his work one of his graduate students picked up the torch and carried the work forward.

"Wayne Carpenter was a student of Dr. Hartman’s at the University of Tennessee. Once graduated from UT and pursuing his Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University, he was drafted by the army and assigned the commission to design a decision simulator for commanders flying in Vietnam-based helicopters. To do this, he had to research all decision theories and models from Aristotle to the present. (Fortunately, he could read German and French). What he discovered was that the Value Science Theory being developed by his former Kant professor at UT was at the basis of all the decision theories. He realized then that Dr. Hartman had indeed formulated a universal theory. Wayne was excited by this realization. He decided then and there that once he was out of the army, he would devote his life to working with Hartman.

"Unfortunately, Hartman died unexpectedly a year before Wayne was discharged. But Wayne did not lose his resolve, even though he had to spend following few years building a financial foundation for his family. Soon, he had given up his conventional work and had devoted himself totally to extending Hartman’s work.

"Carpenter relied on many of Hartman’s unfinished papers and clinical notes. Wayne took these and carefully sifted all the possible programmable relationships from the notes. He reports that he had all four walls completely covered with equations. From this he identified the relationships that had not been made and proceeded to complete the logic and build a system of assessment such as the world has not seen. Wayne Carpenter is one of those rare geniuses who becomes one with his life’s passion. The extension of Hartman’s work has been that passion.

Wayne Carpenter is one who has spent his entire career, spanning over 30 years, devoted to developing a coherent, computerized measurement system of this work. In fact, many who now boast of being able to measure by means of the Hartman Value Profile or its derivatives owe their ability to do so, however halting it is, to Wayne’s trailblazing work. It must be said, however, that none have been able to achieve the depth and completeness of Wayne’s system, a not surprising fact, given the 20+ year head start Wayne has had.  (http://www.axiametrics.com/about/professor-wayne-carpenter/)

THE MAIN TOPIC:

Over the next several chapters, I’d like to share with my readers the book I am writing on leadership.  The book is titled Practical Leadership for Creating a Culture of Choice.  I hope you enjoy what I’ve written as much as I have enjoyed writing this.

We all engage in our daily activities based on what we value and believe.  Therefore, our most effective leadership actions will stem from those same values and beliefs.  But so much of the leadership literature tells us that we should be this kind of leader or that kind of leader.  What I say is; be who you are.  But that requires that you really know who you are.  Not just who you think you are but who you really, really are.

There was a teacher who would ask each of his students; People or Things?  What he meant by this was, in your career do you want to spend your time interacting with people or manipulating things; or as a few people said interacting with things or manipulating people.  We’ve come to realize that there is a third part to the question and that is ideas.  Looking at yourself, is it People, Things, or Ideas?  It’s crucial that you answer that question based on who you are, not what somebody says you ought to be.  If you like ideas more than people admit it and let’s move on.  If you like things more than people, so be it.  What you value most will affect your ability to lead and require you to lead from a different place.  If you really don’t like talking to people and would rather fix machines, you can still be a leader.  If you would rather investigate new information than fix things or interact with people, you can still be a leader. How you lead will be different from a leader who loves to interact with people, but you can still lead!

SUMMATION:

In the study of Axiology how we value people, things, and ideas is critically important.  Professor Carpenter has created what is known as the Hartman Values Profile to get to the essence of how a person values people, things, and ideas.  These values are expressed in our daily actions as the level of empathy we show towards people, our methodology for solving problems, and our ability to engage in systemic thinking.  But there is another side of the coin.  Those three factors all deal with how we, as people, interact with the world around us.  There is another set of factors; how we treat ourselves.

Most of you reading this book will be fully aware that there are instrinsics and extrinsics.  We are affected by the world around us and the world within us.  Dr. Hartman realized that our daily actions will be colored by both sets of factors.  We do not simply react to the world around us; we also do what we do because of what’s inside us.  How do we feel about ourselves and our ability to get things done?  Can we accept credit for the good work we do and blame for the mistakes we make? Or do we deflect blame for our mistakes?  Some people have trouble accepting credit for success and others want to accept credit for everything and are unwilling to share the credit.  Through the Hartman Value Profile, we can acquire a view into what drives a person’s ability to treat themselves with honesty and integrity. 

But it’s not just how we treat ourselves.  We are also impacted by our sense of our role in the world and quite specifically in our work life.  Do we see our role clearly or is it fuzzy?  Do we like our role or are we unhappy with our role?  And then there is our sense of the future.  How clearly do we see the future?  And, how optimistic or pessimistic are we?

All of this will affect how we lead.  It is my belief that we should all lead from our strength and never from a position of weakness.  To lead from our strength, we must know how we value people, things, and ideas plus we must be aware of how we treat ourselves, how we view our role in the world and how we view the future.  These factors will dictate to us how we should lead.  It would be a disaster for an idea person to try to lead people based on building relationships.  The idea person will be much more effective leading from her strengths—ideas about how the world can be a better place.  But, that is where we need to be cautious.  That is precisely what happened in Nazi Germany.  The ideas became more important than people.  Once we know whether we are people oriented, thing oriented, or idea oriented we must realize that the basis for all leadership is people.  We must always have human ethicists on our team to help us make sure that our ideas are not implemented to the detriment of the very people we serve as leaders.

Chapter 2: CORE VALUES AND BELIEFS:

PREFACE:

As was mentioned in the previous Chapter Values and Beliefs play a huge role in leadership. When most people talk about values and beliefs they talk in somewhat nebulous terms.  For our discussions we refer to two sources of values and each of these has 3 dimensions.  The sources are the world around us and the world within us.  The three dimensions deal with life, materiality, and our ability to know and understand the intricacies of the world or at least our own perception of it.

When we consider the world around us, our values with respect to life are generally translated into actions that directly affect people.  This is often interpreted as empathy or an ability to put yourself in the place of those you interact with.  Can you relate to how they feel, think, and dream or are you skeptical and mistrusting of others?  Your relationship to other people exists on a continuum from being extremely trusting and accepting of others (almost to a point of and perhaps all the way to the point of a susceptibility to being taken advantage of) to being completely skeptical of their motives and wanting to hold them all at arm’s length.  At the same time some people see people very clearly while others just don’t seem to understand why people think and behave the way they do.  And quite interestingly how clearly you see people is not necessarily related to whether you trust them or not.  There are many people who find other humans to be quite a mystery but trust them and there are people who see others with crystal clarity yet are very skeptical and untrusting.  Plus, everything in between also exists.

Considering the material world, we have a wide range of values as well.  There are people who hold material possessions in high esteem and there are others who have little use for the material world.  It is the discrepancy between how we regard things that seems to be the source of so many problems in our world.  Because of the strong feeling that many people have for things a feeling of possession comes into play. Competition for ownership can lead to conflict between people and groups of people and settling that conflict creates one aspect of problem solving that keeps many reasonably intelligent people very, very busy.  And then we have the ethical questions concerning ownership of life essentials such as food, water, clothing, shelter, safety, and health.  As is the case with empathy or how we relate to one another, people have varied beliefs with regards to the material world.  There are those people who seem to have absolutely no use for material things and those who treasure possessions more than all else and there are thousands of variations between the two extremes.

We also have varying levels of clarity with which we see the problems that emanate from our disagreements associated with the possession of the materials of life.  Some people will see the dimensions of such problems with crystal clarity while others are baffled by what the fuss is all about. Between that crystal clarity and complete confusion over what’s going on exists numerous levels of understanding regarding the problems we all face in this life.  An important point to note currently is a simple observation; the difference between regard for people and regard for things is not always so neat and tidy of a concept.  Food, for example, has an impact in both dimensions.  Food is a possession. I go to the grocery store and purchase food, and it becomes my food which I place in my refrigerator and pantry.  But that very concept of food creates a thought about life sustaining nutrition that all people need.  I may have incredible empathy and great concern for the millions of starving, malnourished people in the world but may not be willing to give up any of my food to help solve the problem.  At this point my empathy, as deep and abiding as it may be can be trumped by my personal concern for my own material possessions.

THE Main Topic: CORE VALUES AND BELIEFS

The first dimension of leadership I want to mention is values and beliefs. One of our clients runs a small manufacturing firm. Looking at his values structure and what he believes, we find a fundamental skepticism when he relates to people, and he is attracted to material possessions.  These values are further affected by a very innovative approach to how he gets things done.  This all plays out in the way Bob (not his real name) interacts with his employees and conducts his business.

Bob tends to buy toys and constantly question the motives of his employees.  He’ll hire new people and then so mistrust them that they often won’t come back to work.  We had to help Bob see who he really was and how that person was creating havoc in his company.  He didn’t get that when he told employees that the company didn’t have enough money to buy new equipment and then he shows up with a new boat being hauled by a new Cadillac those same employees couldn’t separate what he did in his private life from what happened in the business.

It’s not that Bob is good or bad.  It’s just what he values.  It does impact what goes on in his company. With intensive leadership coaching Bob now realizes who he is and how his values and beliefs affect what he does.  He’s realizing that his choices can enhance progress, limit growth, or send the company into a tailspin.  Learning about yourself and your values, you can begin to make decisions that are in the best interest of your organization because they are in the best interest of the people you depend on to make things work.

When considering what we value, it is important to understand that we value both the external and the internal.  Externally we value life with a primary focus on humanity.  But our actions are also affected by how much we value the physical and non-physical worlds.    How we carry out our daily functions will be affected by how much we value