I’ve become increasingly convinced that a leader’s voice is one of the most crucial characteristics to leverage when building an organization. Leaders build organizations in many ways and in many circumstances. However, regardless of whether a leader is building a new organization within a company, taking the reigns of an existing organization, or growing an organization that they’ve been leading for years, the shape that things take depends mostly on the leader’s voice.
Few things are more important to the workforce than hearing the leader’s voice. We use the term “organizational culture” to describe the set of beliefs and rules, both written and unwritten, that determine the way in which employees interact with one another and carry out the business of the organization. Culture, though, is created primarily by the constituency, the individuals who make up the whole. Culture is a collective construct, and the collective organically guide the evolution of the culture. Leader’s play a role in that evolution, but the collective can and will correct for aberrant, dysfunctional behavior. History is filled with examples of leaders who took the proverbial left turn and watched as the collective corrected the course. Some corrections take generations and some take weeks. The thing to remember is that leader’s are left to decay while culture marches on.
In contrast, an organization’s culture is heavily dependent on the leader. From a corporate perspective, the leader shapes the organizational set of beliefs, and the collective follows. The collective can influence, for sure, but the leader can perpetuate behaviors and situations that are aberrant and dysfunctional. The collective follows, regardless. There are, of course, examples of corporate rebellions and revolutions, but history is filled with examples of leaders who took the proverbial left turn and drove their organization into the ground. On the flip side, history is also filled with organizations that have collapsed once the charismatic, visionary leader has left the picture. The thing to remember is that leader’s in most organizations can move on, leaving the organization to decay in their wake.
Human cultures exist over time, evolving and transforming, merging and diverging, separating from and subliming into other cultures. Organizational cultures are tightly tied to their leaders. This is why the constituency must hear the voice of the leader. A leader influences through action and inaction. As Lao Tzu taught, inaction is, itself, action. A leader’s sphere of influence spreads in one of two ways: through direct interaction between the leader and those they lead or through myth and legend passed on from the eyewitness to the audience once and twice removed. In the absence of voice, the leader puts the perception of their intent into the realm of myths and legends. They put their story into the hands of others. Only through exercising their voice, by ensuring that they are heard as much as they can be, does a leader pull perception of their intent out of that nebulous realm of hearsay and into the brilliant light of truth.
Illuminate Possibilities 