Christian Nyvang Qvick, Chief Consultant at LEAD - Enter next level. He is an author, speaker and management consultant, in this context he has published an article on 'New Leadership' at Mandagmorgen, where he teaches you how to influence the behavior of others:
Are you asking your employees to act as 'frontrunners' or to 'be more innovative'? Are you asking for 'team players' or just 'more collaboration'? Whether you choose one approach or the other is not insignificant when it comes to influencing your employees' actions. A good example of this can be found in the old, popular satirical series 'Team Easy On'.
"Our values are collaboration, innovation, professionalism and generosity". You often see words like these on organizational websites without further elaboration. Organizational values are therefore often the number one victim of bullying in the schoolyard of organizational development, reviled for being self-evident buzzwords, rhetorical platitudes and abstract truisms that fail to influence behavior.
And let's be honest: If the values are not unfolded in more than four overarching value words, then it becomes possible to fill in everything and nothing under the meaning of the value words in practice - and the critics are right. In such cases, the values don't become overarching ideals that can be meaningfully discussed and help guide employee behavior in everyday life, but rather just airy-fairy platitudes.
Behavioral flowers or behavioral weeds?
My contention is that values-based leadership has huge potential when you want to promote a certain culture and related behaviours in your organization - if you unfold, discuss and enforce the values in the right way. In particular, values can be a powerful tool to use when you experience an inappropriate culture and related behaviours in your organization...
