The ‘Shadow of a Leader’ and building an inclusive culture
By Corliss Garner, Chief DE&I Officer, SVP
The role of a leader, both at work and at home, requires modeling the behavior and living desired values you wish to see from others. We call this the Shadow of a Leader. Effective leaders are aware of the shadows they cast and understand the importance of their actions aligning with their messages, and that it is a major component of defining company culture.
Creating a culture that is positive and inclusive prepares your team members for successful company outcomes. Investing in top talent and taking intentional action to drive engagement creates an environment where people feel valued and excited to bring their best to work for their colleagues, clients and surrounding communities. This winning combination is the ‘not-so-secret’ sauce to doing good for stakeholders and your business.
To build an effective and inclusive culture, you need three things to start:
- Visible commitment from the executive leadership
- Expertise and support from strong partners
- A consistent communication plan to cascade messaging.
These actions and others have guided Old National in defining and reinforcing our culture on the heels of a recent transformational merger. With defining moments like a large merger in a company’s lifecycle, the work to build or integrate culture is just as important as the business operations.
Let’s take a deeper look into those steps.
Commitment from executive leadership
The CEO and executive leadership team cast the ultimate shadow on an organization. The behavior and norms permitted by leaders are promoted throughout the organization. It’s critically important for the top leaders to model success.
In addition to top leaders, seeking out cheerleaders throughout the organization to activate that commitment creates momentum. Intentionality is key, and it starts from the top, while identifying and leveraging your team members that boost your messaging.
Expertise and support from strong partners
When picking a partner(s) to help your organization build or restructure your culture, you want to find someone with experience that aligns with your organization’s journey. At Old National, we chose a partner that aligned with our values and created a common language across our organization to drive our mission, vision and values.
Through a series of learning and reflection exercises, starting with our top leaders, we were able to cascade the culture we desired throughout our organization. This training was interactive and paired real-world scenarios with the concepts.
A consistent communication plan to cascade messaging
After the close of our merger in 2022, the work began with our strategic partner and our executive leadership team. Following the first round of off-site retreats, learning and exercises, leaders then cascaded culture messaging down to their direct reports. Communicating via cascading messaging aligns well with the Shadow of a Leader concept. It builds trust that the messaging and actions are coming from the top and continue to trickle down, building accountability along the way.
It’s important to note that building a culture takes time and continues to evolve. Our efforts are continuing, now almost two years later, and clear messaging and an inclusive culture benefit everyone.
The payoff
Those in banking likely have gone through a merger or acquisition sometime in their career and know all too well how important this work is. Even if you’re not in banking, these three steps translate to any culture building effort. Challenge your leaders to take a step back and consider the three action items and how they can apply to your company. At Old National, these actions items have accelerated the connectivity of the merged organizations, bolstered a more inclusive culture and positioned our company to be a stronger business for our clients and the communities we serve.
