Your culture, like your branding, has hard to understand ROI. It’s kind of like trying to assign ROI to your mother. It’s challenging to quantify how important she is, but you know for a fact she is important (and you wouldn’t dare argue otherwise). And your bank or credit union leadership training has a major impact on your culture’s ROI.
Regardless of its apparent fuzziness, your culture has a profound positive or negative impact on your organization. Those employees strongly connected to your culture are 4.3 times as likely to be engaged and 47% less likely to look for another job. Leaders set the tone for your culture, setting the example and putting people in roles (hopefully) best suited to them.
But too often, people are working in their areas of frustration rather than joy…disengaging them and burning them out. This causes three main cultural problems you need to address.
1. Lack of Productivity
Unsurprisingly, people are more productive when they do what they love and less productive when they do what they hate. Patrick Lencioni goes over this concept of productivity in his Working Genius model.
You can’t put a square peg in a round hole and expect it to work out fine. Sure, the team member will give it her best shot…but the frustrating task rapidly drains energy. Maximize everyone’s time by knowing what types of work light people up. Assign the right tasks to the right people and everyone will work more efficiently.
For example, one credit union leader said inventive tasks frustrated her. So – knowing her own frustrations and other people’s geniuses – she had a creative subordinate design a presentation. It took the subordinate only 15 minutes, saving the leader time and annoyance.
2. Lack of Passion
Someone trapped in areas of frustration takes the wind out of your culture’s sails. The constant energy drain leads to more than slowed productivity…it leads to stunted passion. The disgruntled team member applies anger about his workflow assignments to your organization’s brand.
Like air hissing from a punctured balloon, these negative feelings casually leak out to consumers. And (as you’d expect) getting bad-mouthed by an employee doesn’t do wonders for your reputation or bottom line.
Avoid this messy situation. While you can’t always avoid frustration, put people in their life-giving areas as much as possible to preserve passion.
3. Lack of Patience
A frustrated team member is already at the end of his or her rope and has little patience for organizational change. Your upcoming projects (such as core conversions, new training programs, etc.) may push this individual over the edge…unless you prepare with your bank or credit union leadership training.
Figure out what tasks give the employee energy. How can you bolster the staff member with these assignments before the big change? Where can you put the employee during the heavy lifting to minimize frustration?
Again, this won’t be perfect. You won’t get 100% satisfaction…but maybe you can get 70% or 80% of the way there.
Improving your culture in this way all starts with the Working Genius Productivity Assessment during bank or credit union leadership training. This methodology uncovers your team’s frustrations and geniuses so you can put people where they work best. Book a free consultation to schedule your session.
