Leadership and Corporate Culture: Building a Partnership Culture in an Enterprise

Corporate culture is built on partnership. To understand this, it's easiest to look at what leadership is.

What's a leader without anyone following? Can you really call that person a leader? The truth is, everyone in your organization is a partner in a certain sense. They're all with you as you pursue your unique vision of success.

The Difference Between Partnership and Equality

Now, obviously, not everybody in a major enterprise is an equal partner. On the same note, outside parties, such as contractors, investors and policymakers are certainly not the same as internal stakeholders. Everyone has their own roles, responsibilities, styles and individual goals.

Not everyone is the same. This type of diversity is complex, but you can use it to propel your organization forward in ways you never could without partners.

As a leader of a company building a culture of partnership, you're creating an atmosphere where the overall, organizational vision overrides these minor, individual differences. You're creating a set of livable guidelines for people to do the right thing for their partners.

Aligning Partners with a Single Unified Vision

There's only one type of vision that can bring people with such diverse goals and priorities together. You must think big.

Imagine the perfect world — the world your organization is going to create. Now, distill that world down to a single sentence. 

It's not impossible, but the fact is — this is one of the most challenging steps in any leadership journey. I believe most great leaders work on their vision whenever they have the opportunity. They refine it, develop it, and showcase it every chance they get.

Leadership and Golf

I often compare leadership to golf, and refining a vision is like working on your swing. Both are in constant use and require constant practice. You're never going to wake up one day and decide your drive is "good enough." In the same way, you're probably always going to be working on new ways to share and improve your vision of success.

Partnership in corporate leadership is also like a partnership in golf. Even if you're playing a hole in the most collaborative way possible, there's often still a sense of competition between individual players.

Everyone can play in their own way. They bring their own skills, their own clubs, and their own backgrounds. But, in golf and in a culture of partnership, everyone is playing the same game.

Building Partnership Cultures That Last

In a corporation with a strong partnership culture, all stakeholders understand they are working towards the same overall vision. Just laying out the foundation of that type of culture is relatively easy — the real work is in maintaining it.

Just like refining a vision, living a culture requires consistent, sustained practice from you as a leader. When you embody your culture of partnership — especially when it means making tough decisions — everyone inside and outside of your organization should see your commitment to partnership.

How are you working towards your organization’s outstanding world?