Managing Leadership^®

We are all familiar with the sensation that we can sometimes seem to be different people in different circumstances. Certainly, our behavior changes according to various social environments: meeting someone for the first time, talking with old friends, attending a wedding, or a funeral.

What may seem less noticeable is that this also happens in a more general way in consistently organized settings, such as at work. People who have changed jobs, or who do contract work or consulting may have noticed this; sometimes even visitors sense it.

When you move from one organization to another, you find the way you deport yourself altering subtly, or even dramatically, but often unconsciously. You interact more or less formally, you dress differently, you perceive the same environmental or operational cues in new ways, and they produce changed responses.

It’s in the air. You can’t pin it down, but it’s quite inconceivable that you should act the way you did before, or differently than you do now. Moreover, you realize you can no more change it than you can change yourself – even though you seem to have done precisely that when you slotted in to the new corporate culture.

And if you think about it, you realize there is little choice but to accommodate yourself to the new group customs and mores. Mavericks are distracting and unproductive; they tend to be disciplined or cut from the herd. If you can’t adapt, then you’ll move along until you find a culture to which you are better suited. That’s how it works: you either fit in or keep looking until you find a good fit.

No one can ignore or defy such powerful dynamics. Certainly, a new employee can’t, nor even management. But neither can “leaders.” They can kid themselves about it, but those who pretend they have immunity from, or are the singular source of, a corporation’s culture tend to be brought down by it.

Such cultures are not beyond our influence, but neither are they the product of our will. Their origin is more complex, as is their operation and our interaction within them. We will continue the discussion by looking, tomorrow, at this latter aspect – see you then!

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Today’s tips: Speaking of complex interactions, please see the current installment of Michael Wade’s regular column for U.S. News and World Report, in which he posits polar opposites in management style, and invites you to consider a preference that you may previously have considered to be counterintuitive. Michael is a justly-busy management consultant, and the author of the must-read Execupundit.com. When I see his posts appear in my RSS reader, I don’t click on the individual piece – I click on the main page, just to be sure I don’t miss anything. Visit his site, and you will almost certainly come to do the same.

And speaking of the chameleonic components of corporate culture, please see this review of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the latest in a regular series offered in The Economist from Tim Hindle’s excellent guide to management ideas. As you review the levels of needs, consider which partake in, or contribute to the composition of, corporate culture. In particular, please be sure to note the concluding observation about Maslow’s own approach to the veracity of his own ideas.

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Technorati Tags: organization, change, corporate culture, culture, management, leader, influence, Michael Wade, U.S. News and World Report, consultant, Maslow, Hierarchy of Needs, Economist, Tim Hindle