What’s Your Cause?
The 5 C’s of a Conscious Company Culture: Cause
In last week’s newsletter, I introduced the 5 C’s of a Conscious Company Culture. We explored what culture is, why it’s important, and an overview of the five elements of strong cultures that help team members thrive. This week, we’ll look at the first of the 5 C’s: Cause.
Heather McGowan is a future-of-work strategist who examines workplace trends and helps her clients balance high performance with well-being. I find her work inspiring and in complete alignment with the mission of this newsletter: to help leaders create “a new mindset, transform our thinking, and let go of outdated paradigms of the past to embrace the new rules of work, today.”
Here’s how Heather defines culture: “Culture is defined by the conditions under which humans engage, thrive, and belong to an organization that makes them feel that they are in pursuit of something bigger than themselves.”
That last part of her definition is the first of the 5 C’s: Cause. To build a conscious culture, we need to help our staff feel they are in pursuit of something bigger than themselves; a cause that inspires them.
In Conscious Leadership, John Mackey states that the “first and foremost job of every conscious leader is to connect people to purpose.” In other words, we must help our people understand the purpose—or Cause—of their work and the organization’s mission.
You may wonder, how can I know if I’m doing a good job directing my team to our Cause? For each of the 5 C’s, there is a question you can use to rate yourself. For Cause, the question is, “Does your team know why they do what they do?”
You can do a quick gut check on this by rating on a scale of 1-10; 1 being not at all, 10 being absolutely. You could also quickly ask team members to offer their own rating of Cause. If you and your staff give a rating below 6, you can benefit from connecting your team to your Cause.
One simple way to start connecting your team to Cause is to consistently talk about your organization’s Mission, Vision, and Values. Almost every company has a vision, mission, and values statement. It’s designed to help staff understand what success looks like (vision), your company’s role in making that vision reality (mission), and how you will act as you accomplish that vision (values). Consulting company Deloitte provides an excellent summary of Vision, Mission, and Values:
Every day, you can help your team connect to Cause by emphasizing your vision, mission, and values. Author Daniel Coyle expands on this concept in his book, The Culture Code.
Coyle shares the story of a university that hired students to call alumni for donations. But the students were struggling to raise money by dialing for dollars. So they asked organizational psychologist and best-selling author Adam Grant for help. Grant examined what was going on and instituted a new practice. Every week, he brought in a student to speak to the group of students who were fundraising. The student speaker directly benefitted from the scholarship funds these fellow students were raising. They shared their story of how that scholarship changed their life.
Almost immediately, the student fundraisers saw a dramatic increase in the amounts they raised. The difference? They understood the Cause. They weren’t just raising money for their university. They were raising scholarships for a fellow student like Doug, who needed that money to go to medical school and give back to his community. Coyle summarizes what the university was able to convey by bringing in the student speakers: “This is why we work. Here is where you should put your energy.”
It's easy to get lost in the day-to-day busy-ness of work. We lose sight of why we do what we do. If you can give your team a compelling vision and tie it directly to their day-to-day work, it will inspire them and give even mundane tasks a sense of deeper purpose and direct them to a powerful Cause.
Work happy. Live happy. BE happy.
Meredith
The way we work and build teams is rapidly changing. Leaders often feel unprepared to navigate the transition. As a conscious leadership coach, consultant, and communicator, Meredith helps leaders and their teams create new ways of working and relating so they can prepare for the future by consciously co-creating it.
Contact her to develop your conscious leadership and transform your organization into the workplace of the future.
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