How Your Leadership Skills Will Determine Your Company Culture

Build a culture of teamwork.
In 2012, chef Niki Nakayama was living her dream,
preparing traditional Japanese kaiseki feasts at
her Los Angeles restaurant, n/naka. Then her sous
chef quit without notice. “I had been accustomed to
splitting tasks with him,” she says, but now
everything fell on her shoulders. She dove
in, preparing exquisite, labor-intensive meals of nine
or 13 courses -- but with less leadership available,
her minimal staff suffered.
What was going on? The problem may have been
culture. In traditional Japanese kitchens -- not unlike
some traditional American offices -- subordinates are
expected to watch and learn, rarely ask questions
and never debate the head chef’s ideas. “I am not a
great teacher,” Nakayama admits. That’s why the loss
of her sous chef was so acute: The staff had lost a
certain kind of leader, someone who could “speak
Niki,” bringing order to her creative chaos and
translating her instructions for everyone else.
Nakayama couldn’t fill the hole herself.
She came to a realization: Everyone should be aware
of their weaknesses and overcome them as a team.
Nakayama fixed her own problem by hiring Carole
Iida, a fellow chef whom she was dating at the time.
Where Nakayama was messy and spontaneous,
working off the top of her head, Iida was organized
and reliable, and could guide the staff. “She brought
in her organizational abilities, and we were able to
put everything together for other people to
understand,” Nakayama says.
As a result, the 2016 Zagat guide has awarded n/naka
the top spot for food among L.A. restaurants, a
dramatic rise from eighth place the year before. Now
Nakayama encourages all her workers to focus on
their strengths -- “to pull out that best part of
ourselves and just contribute that all the time,
without spending too much time trying to fix the
weaknesses that we have,” she says. “It’s far more
productive in a team environment. It’s knowing and
respecting each other’s strengths and weaknesses
that makes a great team.”
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Build a culture of rigor.
The Santa Fe Institute, an extremely well-regarded
nonprofit research center, sets a high bar for
scientific inquiry. The more than 250 researchers
affiliated with SFI are investigating the fundamentals
behind the world’s biggest problems -- cancer, fast-
spreading viruses, global economies, you name it.
And its president, accomplished scientist David
Krakauer, knows one thing for sure: When working
with all these great minds, he cannot always be the
smartest one in the room. He sometimes thinks of
himself “as a colonel leading an army of generals.”
So how does he lead them? “The authority of my
position is not worth shit,” he says. “When I’m talking
to someone who is more accomplished than I
am, my opinion is not the most compelling
argument. The most compelling argument is rigor.
You have to speak the language of rigor.”
Speak the language of rigor. That means supporting
every idea with observation, evidence and analysis --
 and maybe even conducting experiments to
determine the best course of action. It means
trusting a clear, quantitative approach that everyone
can understand. And it means not using language
that’s limiting. Here’s a phrase Krakauer hates: “That’s
not how we do things around here.” No. He is
adamant on this point: Anyone caught uttering that
phrase, he says, “should be put down.”
Like scientists, business leaders should wield
evidence as a tool of persuasion, Krakauer believes.
He quotes physicist Richard Feynman: “Science is the
belief in the ignorance of experts.” It’s a hard lesson
to learn, but a necessary one: Your gut instinct is not
sufficient. If you want to persuade top talent to follow
your lead, you’d better be able to back up your
arguments with more than your job title.
Build a culture of inquiry.
Contently, a tech startup that helps Fortune 500
companies and other brands do content marketing,
was founded by three guys in New York in 2010. That
trio has since grown to a staff of about 100. And
along the way, cofounder and chief creative officer
Shane Snow feared a disturbing change: The energy
driving that growth -- that scrappy, do-anything
attitude -- could easily cool. Employees might
become timid in large groups, afraid of earning the
ire of the majority. “Most people and most
companies reach a plateau at a certain point, and at
many points,” says Snow. “It’s crazy how quickly even
a disruptive, rebellious startup can get to the point
where they say, ‘That’s not the way things are done
here.’” (There it is, that phrase again.)
So Contently made sure not to let that happen.
For example, Snow limits meetings that involve
problem solving -- where employees really need to
speak up -- to three or four people. And challenges
keep Contently’s big team feeling scrappy. For
example, Snow often asks for “10X ideas” -- say, “How
can we improve customer happiness by 10 times?”
Employees are game, he says: They do want to keep
things fresh. A leader’s role is to create the right
opportunities.
Time for another forbidden phrase: “Don’t bring me
problems; bring me solutions.” Leaders use that
phrase because they think it inspires employees to
take initiative, says Adam Grant, a professor at the
University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and
author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the
World. But instead, it teaches employees not to speak
up about a need unless they have a proposal for
fixing it. “When you ask for solutions, you create a
culture of advocacy rather than a culture of inquiry,”
Grant says. “Most creativity, most innovation
happens when somebody points out a problem that’s
not yet been solved.”
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Snow wants to hear it all. He and his cofounders set
aside a few free hours every week so any employee
who wants to chat (in or, preferably, outside the
office) can do so. It’s an invitation to hear about those
problems that are in search of solutions. “When
someone brings in a perspective that hasn’t been
heard yet,” Grant says, “it often forces you to
reconsider your decision criteria, to bring in new
information -- and that ultimately is good for your
process.”
Build a culture of accountability.
Bridgewater Associates is the world’s largest hedge
fund, managing $154 billion in assets for sovereign
wealth funds, corporate and public pensions,
foundations and university endowments. Its founder,
Ray Dalio, is widely seen as a financial genius. And
yet, after a meeting with a potential client one day, an
employee several levels down on the org chart fired
off a blistering email to Dalio. He accused the boss of
being unprepared and disorganized, and gave him a
grade -- D-minus! -- for his behavior.
“I don’t know many organizations where you can
send an email like that to the billionaire founder and
keep your job,” says Grant, the Wharton professor
who shared the incident in his book, Originals. But
instead of lashing out, Grant says that Dalio asked
others who had participated in the meeting to assess
his performance. The email exchange was then
forwarded to the entire staff, effectively turning
Dalio’s misstep into a case study.
This is how Bridgewater’s culture works, according to
Grant: Everyone is accountable to everyone. The staff
is expected to routinely rate coworkers on a range of
77 qualities, including some -- like the willingness to
touch a nerve -- that might not be prized at other
companies. The firm’s 1,500 employees can even
assess their bosses, and the more incisive the
critique, the better. And all this data, including the
name of each person who left feedback, is available
to any employee.
It’s extreme. It wouldn’t work for most companies.
Thirty-five percent of new hires don’t make it past 18
months. But consider what Bridgewater is going for:
It wants employees to feel that hard work is
recognized, and that the company values
transparency. Find ways to bring those traits into
your workplace -- because when an employee feels
comfortable enough to challenge you, and you’re
able to turn that into a lesson in leadership, then
you’ve created a culture in which everyone can do
their best work.