Fostering the personal growth of the drivers of cultural change (IV)

Cultural change should start with the people who will be responsible for bringing this change to fruition.

Cultural change is a great opportunity for its drivers to consider personal improvement as the beginning of cultural change, and as a demonstration of their sense of duty. It is of great elegance to ask of others what one has previously demanded of oneself.

The improvement of habits is part of the inner game where the destiny of life is decided.  To win the inner game one must connect the content of five variables that also feed back on each other.

The variables are as follows:

• That on which the focus, gaze or attention is placed. The context is plural and it is not the same to focus on one thing or another.
• The subjective interpretation of what is being focused on. Respecting reality, one is free to interpret something in terms of failure or teaching, brake or impulse. The best interpretations are those that provide compelling reasons to continue in the struggle for personal progress and in the struggle to make valuable contributions to others.
• The emotional state, the feeling, the energy, which provokes the subjective interpretation.
• The standards of demand with which one chooses to operate in the different areas of life. Self-demand is correlated with the intensity and nature of emotions. Thus, high and positive energy predisposes one to set high standards. Negative and/or low intensity energies are usually correlated with low quality standards of behavior.
• The routines, the habits, that are generated around the standards of demand that one has decided to have.

The first approach, therefore, is to train the drivers of cultural change to make it a springboard for personal growth that enhances their leadership, influencing capacity and personal credibility.

The following ten tips can be useful in fostering the personal growth of culture change drivers:

1. Train and coach oneself in the inner game, and as a result revise the standards of self-demand linked to fostering mutual respect and trust.
2. Review personal purpose to give positive meaning to the work and the challenge of cultural change. The intention is to accumulate compelling reasons to do more of what is right and honest, and less of what is easy and selfish.
3. Increase self-demand in activities that provide physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual energy. To undertake challenging goals, it is necessary to renew the energy that wears out and to accumulate reserves.
4. Schedule pending conversations. Conversations are the best tool for improving relationships that have cooled or deteriorated. A good conversation involves listening and asking questions; therefore it is a great training of “soft” leadership skills. Giving and receiving feedback is a stimulus to improve one’s own and others’ talent.
5. Avoid cynicism. Cynicism occurs when there is a convergence of a lack of psychological security to express one’s own ideas, on the one hand, and deterioration in relationships, on the other. Cynicism is corrosive and does no one any good.
6. Healing emotional wounds, if any. Everything that binds to the past takes away the future. Resentment or frustration are usually the product of emotional wounds that have not been healed. From resentment it is impossible to build anything positive.
7. Incorporate new values to the way of thinking. Wisdom is the knowledge (the good values) that give flavor to life; to what is cooked in the head and in the heart. Spend time with books, videos and movies that teach values.
8. Anticipate and prepare for the next career cycle. Every seven years there is usually a clear opportunity for change. The ambition is to make the next cycle a more enriching period than the current one.
9. Learn to develop a transforming look. This consists of looking at others “seeing” how they could become, not how they are today. The expectations we have about others influence the expectations that person has about him/herself.
10. Contribute to the company having an exciting and mobilizing purpose. A company cannot limit itself to distributing tasks. A manager must contribute to the two B’s that drive behavior: believing and belonging.

All these suggestions can contribute to the personal growth of the drivers of cultural change, increasing the sense of duty and responsibility to contribute to making the air that is breathed in the company cleaner.

The exemplarity of the drivers of the cultural change must become a great source of inspiration for the components of the company, and a good reference of the type of change in the behaviors that are to be promoted in the cultural change for the good of the company.