You create company culture

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As a leader, your company is your vision. This means that you will choose how to run it, how people will dress, and the policies everyone will follow, but is your vision all business? What I mean is a business is made of people, not machines. A company will never be perfect, but the how a leader lays the groundwork will set the stage for the future.

Have you put thought into how you want your employees to feel while at work, or just how you want your customers to feel? There’s a difference because happy customers do not always mean happy employees. A leader has to decide what the culture of the company is going to be like. Is it that the customer is always right or are there circumstances where they are not? Is there an open line of communication between employers and employees or is there an element of intimidation? These are things you have to think about on the back end.

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A good place to start is thinking about how you want your employees to view you, not just your company. One of the keys to a good company culture is mutual trust. If an employee trusts that you will take care of them, there is no doubt that they will take care of your company in return. But how do you build trust? By making sure your employees feel like they can talk to you about problems at work. Make yourself available to your employees in some way or another.

Employees will also respect leaders who respect them. If an employee has a question, do you scoff at them? Do you ignore them or push them off on someone else? Or do you listen to what they have to say with open ears? Talking down to an employee is one of the fastest ways to lose respect.

Another way to ensure that you are doing as much as you can to create a positive company culture is creating a good team environment. Some team bonding is necessary. It can be hard to get employees engaged in these exercises, but that may be because the typical go-around-and-say-your-name kind of bonding is not very useful. Try setting up games in teams, which forces people out of their comfort zone and helps people get to know different employees. This can help create a sense of unity instead of supporting cliques and separation. A unified team is more likely to work cohesively and get things done quicker.

Bring down the mental barriers that can divide your team and put you up on a pedestal. If you are up too high in the clouds, you will not be able to see what is going on down in your company.