How emotions set a company’s culture

By WALE AKINYEMI

Many people want the results of a high performance culture, but are not ready to pay the price for it. You have to put in the work.

Similarly, you cannot get a high performance culture by hearing about it. In many organisations, people have heard about culture so much that no one wants to hear that word anymore. Why? Because all the times they heard it nothing changed! They have developed culture fatigue.

What makes a strategy work is the environment in which it will be executed.

When two people are selling the same product, at the same place and at the same price, what determines who makes the sale is the person selling it. That is where a person can differentiate himself or herself.

Perhaps a more effective way to demystify customer experience is to name it differently. Another word for customer experience is customer memories. What memories do people have when they interact with you and your business? This is what defines the experience.

Memories are important because they never travel alone. They are always accompanied by the emotions felt when the memory was created.

As a leader, it is important to note that emotions are contagious. Your organisation or department permeates the environment that you lead. People around you will take their cues from you. So your leadership must show up in your mind and emotions. The core of leadership is the leadership of self.

Respond, don’t react

After taking charge of your emotions you will be in a position to respond instead of reacting.

What is the difference? If some unwell person is responding well to medication, you would be relieved. If, however, you hear that the person is reacting to medication then there is a problem.

When a person wants to join the fire brigade and has gone through the training and preparation, the day that person starts working as a fire fighter they will be looking forward to a fire. This expectation is born out of preparation.

I once worked with an institution that had challenges in their shops that affected business. We asked them to recall their worst customer interaction. What came up was the story of a foreigner who came in and was exasperated because they did not understand each other, leading to rising tempers.

All we did to fix it was to help them shift from reaction to respond mode. When the customer finally showed up, the shop attendants were excited for they were now in control of the situation. Gone were frustration and anger.

Once you get your emotions under control, you have stepped into leadership. This has a way of directing the emotional direction of the company. Many people do not pay attention to this. They do not realise that the emotional state determines the financial state. When there is leadership that is emotionally in charge, they will be focused and will not be pushed around by every situation and circumstance.

Many people did not handle the Covid-19 pandemic well because they were reacting instead of responding. So they got into panic mode that led to panic decision making, which is not sustainable.

This is one of the reasons why it is good for leaders to have coaches. There is no champion without a coach. The importance of getting a coach is that you will find a place to express yourself.

Keeping your emotions under control is a fundamental pillar of great leadership. Once you step into that zone, you are on the way to a higher dimension of winning.

Wale Akinyemi is the convenor of the Street University (www.thestreetuniversity.com) and chief transformation officer, PowerTalks. [email protected]