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We Need More Leaders To Get On Board By Moving People With Hope And Dreams

As I was listening to Bruce Springsteen’s song “Land Of Hope and Dreams”, the following lyric caught my attention: Come on this train People get ready You don’t need no ticket
All you got to do is just get on board On board this train.

Rob Peters
Sep 8, 2018 · 4 min read

This got me thinking about what it means to lead and work at a thriving company today. Business leaders must get everyone on board if they want their company train to arrive at its destination.

A company of hope and dreams is about putting your people in control and letting your shared purpose and values drive higher levels of performance that are underpinned by high relationship capital trust. It’s about influencing and supporting a team of leaders and followers within your organization and across your entire ecosystem of customers, partners, and suppliers that will propel the organizational train forward through trust, commitment, innovation, and financial performance.

To create and sustain your competitiveness in a world of accelerating change requires your team to see the opportunities as well as threats coming up them and proactively respond. Customers will not wait for you to develop the perfect business strategy, operating model, and/or launch the perfect technology platform when they want to make a decision.

Shared Purpose

There are lots of other things to do: Build the culture, respect people, and listen to what they are saying. If you are senior management, get out of your office, find out what people are doing on the ground; be more visible, not formally, but to put your ear to the ground and to know what is going on; and be part of the ecosystem. In a community, if we all interlock arms in tough times by supporting and sacrificing for one another, we will have a better balance of profits and purpose.

Leaders inspire hope and committed action by creating workplace cultures of shared purpose. A for-profit business culture operating at a higher level of purpose concentrates decision-making that is strategic rather than tactical, positions specialists to be managers rather than technicians and enhance the professionalism and perceived value of the practice. Every purpose-based company has got to have purpose-based leaders. Purpose-based leaders are rock solid in practicing their core values. You can’t have a purpose-based company if you have a leader who’s dishonest or manipulates. The number one thing a leader must do is Do The Right Thing.

That sounds pretty banal. How do you know what the right thing is? Practice the Golden Rule. Purpose-based leaders treat people like they want to be treated. We could do away with all the organizational rules, and all of the litigations if we sat down and said purpose-based leaders follow the Golden Rule.

Your organizational culture must be smart, fast as a bullet train, and proactively act with good intent in the best interests of the customer/client and all your stakeholders. Your products/services must be at the right place at the right time in the customer’s decision-making journey. Part of the answer to distinguish your business culture is to:

  • Attract start performing customers & clients that will attract the attention and respect of other customers.
  • Earn the respect of credible thought leaders and brand ambassadors who will share your story and recommend you.
  • Attract the star performing employees who share their purpose and mastery with your organizational purpose to create amazing experiences not only with the customer & client, but also throughout your entire ecosystem of partners, and suppliers.

As you can see, today’s competitive battles are less about business entity versus business entity, and more about business ecosystem versus business ecosystem. This is a more peer-to-peer relationship that requires your business and your team to behave with shared purpose and values. Your stakeholders are watching your company train.

Conclusion

As more and more leaders influence and shape their business cultures to adopt higher standards of purpose, mastery, and relationship capital trust, standing still will no longer be an option for those organizational trains stuck at the station. There are more examples every day of businesses that flourish in their respective industries because of their do-the-right-thing cultures. There is no end game, just a continuous journey of distinction through purpose, mastery and relationship capital. The company trains are leaving their respective stations and moving down the track at a faster pace. Their fuel is trust and relationship capital. The competitive battles leveraging workplace cultures for sustainable advantage has only just begun…it is only the end of the beginning. You don’t need a ticket so all aboard the train of hope and dreams. It’s a journey of shared purpose.

www.StandardofTrust.com

Sources

Rob Peters

Written by

Relationship Capital | Gamification | Co-Creator of Peer SaaS Platform | HR Tech and Workplace Culture Strategist | CEO| Author of Standard of Trust Leadership

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