In this episode, I am joined by Mohammad Anwar, the President and CEO of Softway. He’s authored a Wall Street Journal best-selling book called Love as a Business Strategy, and he’s going to talk to us about how to implement this transformational idea all around building a culture of resilience, belonging and success.
Listeners will leave this episode feeling hopeful and ready to at least begin thinking about making some changes in their business and culture after listening to Mohammad.
Here are some takeaways he shared:
1. Culture is nothing but a culmination of how we treat one another.
Culture isn’t about perks, benefits, values, and vision statements. It’s how we experience each other. It’s not rebranding or changing the benefits package, but it’s simply those little interactions that make culture.
How do we experience one another at a workplace, remotely or in person? And it’s those little moments of interactions that define culture.
When you think about transforming culture, you have to transform behaviors. You cannot change the culture of an organization by doing a rebrand or by instituting more benefits and comps alone.
2. Changing culture starts with individual self-awareness.
People can see through inauthenticity, so you have to be authentic and honest when attempting to become more self-aware.
And you can accomplish that through introspection, looking within and gathering feedback from people around you to validate or invalidate how people are experiencing you.
Once you can put the introspective and feedback pieces together, you will start to understand the gaps. And when you have that data, the next step is to commit to the change you want and need.
3. Small acts make a big difference.
By incorporating small acts of kindness such as writing thank you notes, you can make a big difference in your organization. Without self-awareness, you can’t even get started.
You need everyone in the organization to rally around the leader and help take the company in the direction you need, but you can’t do that alone. You can’t do that by yourself.
You need the support of your team and you have to take them with you on the journey. But you must set the tone. You must start walking the walk before you talk the talk and ask others to join you.
You don’t have to make a big announcement that you’re changing the way you operate. Just start with those small daily interactions and people will begin to experience you differently.
Mohammad is giving away a few copies of his new book, Love as a Business Strategy, to accompany this episode. Connect with and message Mohammad on LinkedIn for your chance to grab your free copy today!