The Humbling Journey of Culture Building

Kingdom At Work

[The information referenced in this blog is extracted from March’s Kingdom at Work Webinar on the topic “The Humbling Journey of Culture Building,” presented by Betenbough Companies Marketing Manager, Jeff Johnston. You can watch the full webinar here.]

Ivan Illich once said “If you want to change the society, then you have to tell an alternative story.”

Typical “work culture” tells us stories like, “Show up early and stay late,” or “Leave your problems at home.”

Kingdom businesses, however, tell alternative stories. Let’s look at a few.

Work Culture: Show up early and stay late.

When we affirm this behavior, we communicate to our team that work is the highest priority. When work becomes the most important thing, it leads to frustration, burnout, a shortage of passion, and a lack of effort.

Alternative Story: Maintain work-life balance.

Model the importance of rest and rejuvenation. When seasons require longer hours, give your employees that time back. The results will be more joy, increased dedication, greater efficiency, and healthier team members.

Work Culture: Look out for yourself.

This prideful attitude leads us to put ourselves first, wanting to be the person who has all the answers. The results? Self-righteousness, bitterness, disunity, selfishness, and inefficiency.

Alternative Story: Give everything away.

When you learn something, share it with others. Cross train. Have multiple people who know how to do tasks. The results? Collaboration, greater effectiveness, better ideas, deeper trust, and more unity.

Work Culture: Put your head down and do your job.

In this culture, leaders don’t invite questions, they only pass on “need to know” information, and they come up with their own solutions then delegate the tasks. This yields confusion, a lack of passion, stunted growth, and limited creativity.

Alternative Story: Give your team the “why.”

Share the vision. Provide an opportunity for questions. Employees take ownership of their work when they understand the purpose of it. You’ll produce passion, effectiveness, buy-in, creativity, and unity.

Work Culture: Leave your problems at home.

The resulting bottled-up stress will bleed into work. Quality will suffer and deadlines will be missed. This environment breeds fear and frustration.

Alternative Story: Care for the whole person.

Listen to your team members’ personal lives and share your own, even the messy stuff. You’ll grow relationships, unity, trust, joy, and camaraderie.

We encourage you to ask God to reveal where in your work culture you need to tell the alternative story.

To learn more leadership insights, register for our next webinar here.

April 2, 2024

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