Is your executive team driving a healthy culture?

As a CEO, how do you ensure your executive team isn't just hitting their numbers, but is also actively living and defending a healthy culture?

In my recent 5 Growth Minute Tips, “Is Your Executive Team Aligned?”, “Is your executive team executing efficiently?”, and “Are your leaders high-performing?”, we discussed the critical business practices for getting your team on the same page, executing without drama and delivering results. We’ve covered everything from the One Page Strategic Plan to Job Scorecards and Quarterly Coaching Reviews.

But even with the best plan and the most disciplined execution, your growth can still stall if your culture is misaligned.

I often hear CEOs refer to culture as "soft" or "fluffy." But there is a very "hard" cost to a misaligned culture: a "Growth Tax" that slows down decision-making and creates unproductive conflict. When leaders don't share the same values, friction increases, energy is drained, and your A-Players - those who produce great results and do fit your culture - will eventually leave for a healthier environment.

To grow profitably, predictably, and sustainably, your executive team must move from treating culture as a slogan to treating it as a disciplined system.

There are four proven practices to ensure your executive team drives a healthy culture:

1. Define core values with specific behaviors
2. Share core value "stories" in leadership meetings
3. Coach for cultural alignment
4. Use Topgrading to replace low culture fit leaders

Let’s discuss each one.

1. Define Core Values with Specific Behaviors 
A core value is only real if the executive team is willing to "hurt" for it. This means you would fire someone who repeatedly violates it, or walk away from a profitable client who doesn't align with it. But to make these values actionable, you must define the "verbs": the specific behaviors expected for each value. This makes the culture tangible and observable, allowing managers to monitor and take action when violations occur.

2. Share Core Value Stories in Leadership Meetings
To keep values from gathering dust, your executive team must take ownership of them. Start your weekly or monthly meetings by identifying and sharing stories of employees living the core values. When leaders have to publicly praise these behaviors to their peers, it creates healthy pressure for them to model those same behaviors themselves. It keeps the culture top-of-mind and signals that it is the most important item on the agenda.

3. Coach for Cultural Alignment 
The standard you walk past is the standard you accept. If a leader hits their KPIs but violates your core values, the CEO cannot look away. Doing so discredits the entire culture-building effort. Use the Job Scorecard and Quarterly Coaching Review to provide an objective framework for these conversations. By rating the leader on specific behavioral standards, you move the discussion from a subjective "feeling" to a clear gap-analysis that the leader can act upon.

4. Use Topgrading to Replace Low Culture Fit Leaders
If a leader is unable to make the shift after coaching, they must be replaced. While it may feel like a loss of results in the short term, removing a cultural misfit actually frees the rest of the team and organization to perform at a higher level. To ensure you don't repeat the mistake, use the Topgrading hiring process. While average hiring processes only result in an A-Player hire 25% of the time, diligently applying Topgrading increases those odds to 80% or 90% by forcing candidates to be honest about their past performance and true behaviors.

Your executive team driving a healthy culture is the connective tissue that supports executive alignment and efficient execution. Without it, your high-performing leaders will eventually burn out or move on. By defining behaviors, sharing stories, coaching to the scorecard, and hiring for fit, you ensure your culture becomes a competitive advantage rather than a growth tax.

If you want to get your executive team driving a healthy culture, let’s talk. Email me or contact me on my website. Or look for my next 5 Minute Growth Tip where I’ll cover how the book Metronomics, by Shannon Byrne Susko, goes deeper on these four best practices.

Watch / Listen to the Video

If you are a prairie CEO who wants to grow a thriving company, team and life more quickly, more easily and with less stress and headache, please contact me here.