Right now, everything you do or don’t do is guided by a set of underlying values. The same is true for your church. Culture-savvy leaders understand how to mold the invisible stuff of values to shape, like clay, the atmosphere, attitudes, actions, and automated responses of their teams.
What if we were to x-ray the intuitive movements of great values-based leaders? What would we see?
What if we were to make even more conscious our intentions towards culture-shaping leadership? What core practices would come to the surface?
Here are seven:
#1 Articulation
The first step of culture shaping is to identify, name, and define. That’s what it means to be human- bringing meaning through how we label and distinguish within the created world and within the world we want to create. You can’t mold in the real world what you don’t hold in the mental world. So what are you holding? What are your top 3 or 4 culture-shaping aspirations?
#2 Imitation
You teach what you know, but you reproduce what you are. Your life is broadcasting and multiplying a values set. How is that values set being consciously transferred by you, even though the receiver may not know it?
#3 Mechanism
If you lead a team or an organization, you have the authority to create a shared experience or roll out a new process. Think of a mechanism as an event or process that clarifies, restores, aligns, or attunes your people with an existing shared value. Think of this as a wake-up call that shakes up business as usual.
