by Dr. Sam Adeyemi, author of “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership”
As a leader, you are the architect of the culture you hope to build within your team or organization and the SHIFTS you wish to see happen. Everything starts with the leaders in the organization. When it comes to culture, your organization will reflect on the outside precisely the values that its leadership embraces on the inside.
One of my organizations hosted a retreat for C-level leaders at The Oberoi in Marrakech, Morocco. My Global Manager, David Ayodele, arrived ahead of all our team members and the participants. Then he received a little surprise from The Oberoi’s culture of service excellence. He was attending a meeting with staff from the hotel when housekeeping cleaned his room. He returned to see that they had replaced his toothpaste with a new toothpaste of the same brand. They also left a typewritten note saying: “Dear Mr. Ayodele, we hope you are doing well. We observed that your toothpaste is about finished and we took the opportunity to place a new one for your convenience. Kindly let us know if there is anything we can improve during your stay. Warm regards, Your Housekeeper.” David was blown away by this show of care. They even took time to type and print the note!
I shared this experience with one of our clients. He mentioned that The Oberoi’s culture of service excellence is used in a case study for a management program he attended at Harvard Business School. This shows that The Oberoi’s culture of service excellence is not accidental. It is intentional and it is consistent across all their locations. Culture really focuses on the word Succeed in the model. Your actions lead to success and your actions are a huge part of your organization’s culture.
You can feel and experience an organization’s culture the minute you step into its space. It can be an office, a church, an arena, a ship, a banking facility, a hospital, and many other environments. Culture is not just about a mission statement or vision statement hanging on the wall in the entryway. It’s much more. It’s energy. It’s human kindness. It’s love.
Are you building a culture of love? This has nothing to do with romance. I think of love as a verb… actively caring for other human beings. This intrinsic care for others is why love works at work. It means putting people’s needs ahead of your own. People know and sense when they are authentically loved and cared for. There’s a ripple effect. Profits are critical, but humanity is absolutely more critical. When we have a loving culture, profits can soar, organizations can transcend almost anything, people leave greed behind and help their fellow brother and sister. When you build a culture of love, you help establish trust and accountability, along with measurable and positive outcomes. A loving culture fosters inclusion, not exclusion. And it never sweeps problems away. It addresses them head on, but with compassion and empathy.
*excerpted from “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership”
Dr. Sam Adeyemi is CEO of Sam Adeyemi, GLC, Inc. and founder and executive director of Daystar Leadership Academy (DLA). He is the author of “SHIFTS: 6 Steps to Transform Your Mindset and Elevate Your Leadership” (Wiley) and “Dear Leader: Your Flagship Guide to Successful Leadership.” He holds a Doctorate in Strategic Leadership from Virginia’s Regent University, and is a member of the International Leadership Association. Learn more at SamAdeyemi.com.
