How To Build And Lead Positive Micro-Cultures At Your Business

Culture binds the many elements that make up an organization. From people and systems to values and norms, culture is the elusive but vital glue that helps disparate parts of an organization cohere.

However, having influence over all aspects of an organizational culture is extremely challenging. As a result, it's essential that leaders understand how to build micro-cultures within their larger organizations.

Positive And Negative Workplace Micro-Cultures

Not all micro-cultures are positive. Indeed, when we think about micro-cultures in the workplace, the first things that usually come to mind are micro-cultures based on exclusion (e.g., the "old boy networks" that still hold outsized power in many organizations). However, micro-cultures can also be incredibly positive and work against entrenched or established workplace norms that are embedded in our broader culture.

As a leader, your sphere of influence offers an opportunity to shape the environment in which your employees work. This is why highly effective managers and leaders focus their attention and energy on building micro-cultures in which individuals and teams can thrive.

Here, it is important to remember that where there are negative micro-cultures at work, there are likely also positive ones. As a leader, don’t simply focus on changing negative micro-cultures. It is equally important to ask yourself how you can amplify the positive mindsets and behaviors that already reside in your organization’s healthy micro-cultures.

Four Steps To Influencing Micro-Cultures As A Leader

Leaders often feel disconnected from the micro-cultures in their organization. The following are four proactive ways that leaders can enter and influence these micro-cultures.

1. Connect.

The only way to influence your organization’s micro-cultures is to spend at least some time in the weeds. While there is a danger in spending too much time on the ground, working closer to the ground can offer leaders important insights into the inner workings of their organization. It can also help them build relationships with individuals and groups who hold the potential to influence the broader organization.

2. Communicate.

Whether the goal is to break up a clique that is harming your workplace culture or to amplify a micro-culture that could potentially have a positive impact on the larger workplace culture, it is important to develop lines of communication not only within your work unit but beyond.

Being intentional about building open, transparent and honest communication with your team and external stakeholders is an investment in relationship-building. Trusting relationships are at the core of successful leadership, and ongoing communication can serve as a critical building block in this process.

3. Focus on your sphere of influence.

In today’s work climate, many people are suffering from the sheer volume of work, which can feel overwhelming. Under such circumstances, it is even more important to focus your energy on people and issues within your sphere of influence.

Too often, we expend an excessive amount of energy on problems and concerns over which we have no control. While we might do so with good intentions, it can lead to "spinning our wheels" and diminishing our finite time and energy. Especially as a leader, it is important to clarify the boundaries within which you can build a successful micro-culture and deliver results. Once you've accomplished this, leverage resources to also help your team focus their attention on goals where they are most likely to have an impact.

4. Strategically divest or invest.

The most important way leaders can influence their organization's micro-cultures is by making decisions about where to divest and invest. Interacting with micro-cultures across your organization can be an effective way to discover where resources and power reside and how both are being leveraged. In turn, this knowledge can be leveraged to make more strategic decisions about where to divest and invest (e.g., in hiring or resource allocation) moving forward.

The Ripple Effect

Although focusing on micro-cultures may appear to have a limited impact, it can have a ripple effect on your entire organizational culture. If, for example, your organization is overly influenced by a small but powerful group of longtime employees, influencing this group could be an opportunity to not only break up a potentially harmful dynamic but also encourage the group’s members to share their power with other employees (e.g., as mentors).

The bottom line is that as a leader, you can’t be everywhere all the time, but you can influence at least a few of your organization’s micro-cultures. Done right, you can use these interventions to have a positive and pervasive impact across the organization.