Corporate Culture Starts with Camaraderie

You know what irony is? It’s watching an organization that promotes corporate culture exhibit a terrible corporate culture. I wish this were a rarity, but I see it all the time.

Where does culture come from? It comes from the top, of course.

What does it take to establish a great culture? A great leader, of course.

What does a great leader have to do to establish a great culture? This is the right question.

Great leaders who instill a great corporate culture do so with camaraderie. Camaraderie has a great many implications that matter within corporate culture. A comrade isn’t just a colleague or friend – it’s an equal. A comrade is someone you can depend on. A comrade is someone who – through shared experiences – becomes an integral part of your own achievements.

Great leaders use camaraderie to settle disputes, set examples, and develop teachable moments with an empathetic touch of equality and fairness. Which leads us to the opposite of camaraderie, which unfortunately I don’t have a snappy word to describe. But I know what it looks like. It looks like parents choosing favorite kids, when bosses choose sides in an office dispute instead of being the arbitrator. It looks like a group of adults who act like teenagers, when an example of accountability is not properly set. It looks like a zebra free-for-all at the Serengeti watering hole, when there is no one to ration resources for employees who don’t see the benefits of teamwork.

Are you a boss that has picked sides? Hid from conflict, rather than properly arbitrating? Swept bad behavior under the rug, instead of openly and honestly addressing it with all parties affected in attendance?

If that's you, know that it’s never too late to mend your ways. If you can become a true comrade – a dependable resource who develops fairness and equality in every workplace interaction – you too can develop a stellar corporate culture. Sounds like a fair trade to me.

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