How to consciously change organizational culture

Changing an organisations culture is not a small feat even for the most seasoned leaders. Culture encompasses so many things that range from values and processes to attitudes and actions, and each element should fit together to reinforce the company’s mission and push forward toward its vision. But how can a leader consciously change this culture? Seattle-based business consultant Emile Haddad has these tips and advice.

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Understand your current culture: You don’t know what you’re changing if you don’t understand your current culture. Do this by becoming an impartial observer of this culture in action, seeing how people interact with each other, resolve conflicts, and work toward satisfying customers. Conduct interviews, surveys, and other forms of assessment that will reflect what this culture looks like.

Align culture with strategy and processes: Ensure that your mission, vision, and values are all consistent with practices and processes in human resources and people management, including hiring, compensation, rewards and recognition, and talent promotion.

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Make the culture consistent with your brand: Culture must also be aligned with both employees and the marketplace, meaning HR should work hand in hand with marketing in communicating uniform messages.

Define roles and responsibilities: Know what company executives and managers should be doing to drive the culture change, serve as enablers of self-organizers teams, and maximize the capabilities of the existing staff. Review the organizational structure, too, to align with the desired change.

Keep everyone informed: Effectively communicate all employees about the organizational culture change process, telling them what is expected of them and soliciting feedback on these expectations, reminds Emile Haddad. This way, you ensure commitment and success despite the intimidating nature of cultural changes.

Seattle-based Emile Haddad is the principal consultant at Catalyst Business Coaching and Consulting, LLC. Through the years, he has helped clients come up with business management models that promote top-notch professionalism and excellence. Read more on this page.

The Edge: Why Go For Innovative Leadership?

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Innovative leaders are those who craft and shape their members into the best version of themselves. They combine good behaviors with the belief that a great idea can come from anywhere, even scratch. They contribute to their community by looking for the best ways to do things.

Leaders who are innovative also connect, observe, question, and experiment. Such habits aid in their personal way of processing novel ideas and creating solutions to challenges.

What truly makes innovative leaders different from others?

Innovative leaders connect with people and their surroundings. They see themselves developing connections with fields and situations that are not directly related to what they do. They connect with other people by sharing different disciplines and ideas that will lead to positive solutions.

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Innovative leaders are great observers. Their observations help them discern options, connections, and opportunities. They see how things work, and what does not work. They look at how others resolve challenges, and apply these techniques as needed.

Innovative leaders learn from their mistakes. They are willing to pursue experiences and opportunities to test their ideas. For them, mistakes are part of their big success. They do not dread failure, because they know that they will learn a lot with it.

Emile Haddad is a Seattle-based business consultant. Learn more about innovative leadership by visiting this blog.

Emile Haddad and Unraveling the Leader

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Leaders can become so in a variety of ways, but pinpointing exactly how to train an effective leader is not as simple as one might think. Naturally good leaders in the business sector can take on a variety of shapes and forms, but how they got there is hardly ever exactly the same. Some could have climbed the ranks over the years, while others may have hit their stride early and simply outshined the competition by perfectly landing their own unique niche. Whatever the case may be, finding the tools and resources to take those traits and instill them in others is not easy.

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Professional Business Coach and Consultant Emile Haddad is an authoritative expert on business planning and development, and writes that“I find the most challenging aspect of training up the leadership ranks in an organization lies in the work around emotional intelligence.” According to Mr. Haddad, “emotional intelligence tends to be much harder to teach on an individual level and embed within teams.” Why is this so difficult? Mr. Haddad ties it to three words: “honest self-observation.”

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Mr. Haddad points out that all of us have a difficult time looking outside of ourselves and how we wish to view our actions and the results of those actions. When we perform a task at work we want it to be conveyed in our own eyes as the correct and proper way. Having the ability to be subjective and critical, however, is not something we will likely embrace with enthusiasm. And yet this is one of those practices that can help us to better learn of our flaws and address them proactively, instead of looking the other way or pretending they are non-existent.

Coming to terms with our imperfections and figuring out ways to better improve upon them instead of sweeping them under the carpet is a step forward in becoming our own leader. By implementing such measures, we can become stronger and more confident and thus better torch-bearers in the future. To learn more about Emile Haddad and some of his other observations on effectively training the leaders of tomorrow, visit his website.

Authentic engagement: The first task of genuine leadership

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Honest. Courageous. Resilient. Real. These are some of the things employees look for in a leader with authenticity. As Forbes contributor Margie Warrell pointed out, “people crave authenticity,” which is why the most inspiring and influential leaders are recognized not "because of what they do but because of who they are."

This is something that Emile Haddad, a Seattle, Washington-based business mentor, agrees with. A genuine leader requires more than the usual set of management skills. Genuine leadership calls for authentic engagement which requires "a sense of presence to one’s environment."

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However, the path toward authentic engagement is not an easy road to take. Leaders need to be vulnerable in order to "get real," something that is not innate for most people as it goes against self-preservation. Leaders need to embrace their individuality without alienating those around them. They must learn to listen not only to their own ideas but to those they work with as well.

All leaders “have the capacity to inspire and empower others,” wrote George, et al. in the article Discovering Your Authentic Leadership published in the Harvard Business Review. However, they must be willing to devote time to personal growth and development to be genuine leaders. Unlocking the power of authenticity may be a tough task to accomplish for some, but those who are able to do so will foster a working environment where innovation, transparency, and enthusiasm thrive.

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Are you an emotionally intelligent leader?

What makes a good leader? A recent survey notes that most managers of high-performing businesses do not only have operational smarts, but also have emotional smarts.

Indeed, an emotionally intelligent leader has the ability to influence others and build a highly functioning culture. Technical skills aside, the primary job of leaders is to influence and impact the people around them in a positive way, driving them to meet business goals. What differentiate an effective leader from a mediocre one are the skills inherent in their emotional intelligence, and as business coaches note, emotional intelligence is explicitly connected to how well a leader’s inner observer is developed.

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Emotionally skillful leaders can increase their success in influencing people in positive and productive ways. Leaders who understand the value of the people they work with and work intelligently to create a positive impact will build a contagiously positive culture where success results are the norm, not the exception.

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Leadership is definitely beyond IQ. As executives of successful corporations can attest, emotional intelligence and putting people first are keys to a well-run, values-centered company.

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Leadership matters. An emotionally intelligent leadership matters more.



Emile Haddad, a Seattle, Washington-based business coach, believes that emotional intelligence is a key to good leadership. Subscribe to this Facebook page for more leadership advice.

The transactional leader and his healthy sense of curiosity

One of the most challenging aspects in training business leaders centers on the work of emotional intelligence, which calls for developing a leader’s inner observer. And this requires two fundamental attitudes: curiosity and inquiry. Although not necessarily foreign concepts to most leaders, the challenge lies in practicing them consciously and consistently.

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A pressure-filled, fast-paced environment may result to some leaders quickly leaping to assumptions and conclusions that they have not carefully examined. However, this pitfall can be circumvented if leaders adopt an attitude of curiosity about their own assumptions and conclusions, and choose to do the same with others. This requires leaders to take a mental and emotional stance that will keep their own position flexible and open to be influenced by others’ input. Such a stance is achieved through a practice of inquiry, wherein a leader is curious about his inner and outer circumstances, driving him to inquire about his and others’ ideas, assumptions, and conclusions.

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And over time, an attitude of inquiry tends to build a larger capacity for curiosity, which allows for a stronger inner observer and a deeper propensity for emotional intelligence. Leaders become more “tuned-in” to their environment, team, employees, and the culture of the organization—the skills that will become the foundation of a transactional leader.

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Read more about transactional leaders here. For additional tips on how to be an effective leader, subscribe to this Facebook page for business coach Emile Haddad of Seattle, Washington.