Define Your Culture on Purpose and Attract the Right People to the Right Seats

Culture happens on your team right now.

Whether you create it on purpose or let it accumulate, the culture works from somewhere. The question is whether the culture you lead is the one you dream about.

Most people leaders inherit culture rather than create it. The promotion arrived with a raise and a team. It forgot to include people leadership training. The culture then accumulates from unexamined habits, inherited behaviors, and decisions you either made in a hurry or quietly avoided.

Gallup reports that 79% of employees are disengaged at work. Those are your people. The ones who look to you for clarity in the chaos, direction in the difficulty, and purpose in the pressure.

You create the culture they work from.

The D in D.R.E.A.M. is for Define Your Culture on Purpose. The R in D.R.E.A.M. is for Right People, Right Seats.

You Happen to Your Culture

Dr. Will Sparks transformed how a people leader shows up with one line on the Work Positive Podcast: “Culture isn’t just something that happens to you. You happen to it.”

Every team operates on two levels at once. The formal, visible level where tasks get assigned and deadlines get met. The shadow level where the real emotional dynamics play out. The shadow lacks definition only as long as you let it.

Jon McGavin leads 1,700 associates across 49 departments at Grand Lakes Orlando. His team’s turnover rate sits at 9% in an industry where 75% is the norm. Jon told me on the Work Positive Podcast, “People don’t go to work to do a bad job. Usually we as leaders, we’re the ones who get in their way.”

As performance suffers, look first at the people leader rather than the talent pool, Gen Z, or the economy. Look in the mirror.

Attraction Rather Than Recruitment

Once you define your culture, the right people show up to fill your right seats.

Ashley Rudolph helped a client fill a senior communications role. The client listed every responsibility, deliverable, and superhuman requirement. Ashley stopped him with one question she shared with me on the Work Positive Podcast. “Why should the perfect candidate be excited about working here?”

He froze.

No one ever asked him that question. Most people leaders forget to ask it at all.

Jennifer McClure spent more than two decades in executive search. The distinction between attraction and recruitment defined her career. Recruitment sells the sizzle. Attraction plates the steak. Jennifer told me, “Being a great place to work that people talk about in the community is always going to be your best source for getting people into your company.”

Word of mouth is the oldest and most powerful attraction strategy on earth. The people leaders who consistently attract top talent create a culture their current people talk about at the Little League game, at church, and across the fence with their neighbors.

Your Define and Right People Do One Thing (DOT) Challenge

This week, ask one team member, “What is one thing I can improve in leading our team?”

• Actively listen.

• Take notes.

• Trust the silence.

Before your next hire, write down three reasons why the perfect candidate would be excited to join your team. Use those exact words in your first conversation with every candidate.

Work Positive Bottom Line

Define your culture on purpose. Attract the right people to the right seats. Do One Thing today.

This post is from Dr. Joey Faucette's best-seller, D.R.E.A.M. Teams @ Work: Cultivate the Work Positive Teams You Dream About.

Keywords: work culture, dream team, people leadership, culture architect, talent attraction, hiring, employee engagement, Work Positive Culture