Create an emotional bond
Vincent frequently says he wants his employees to “live and
breathe” the Swift Energy culture, and they won’t do that if
management doesn’t set the example.
Every time you interact with peers and subordinates, it’s an
opportunity to build up or break down your culture.
“Living and breathing a culture really means that in all your
interactions with your peers you’re practicing these values,” he
says. “Leadership can establish values in a company, but you
can’t enforce that. How you make that work is not through an
enforcement mechanism, but it’s living and breathing it.
“For example, if trust is important to you as a core value,
you’re always telling the truth and making sure that your
behavior reflects your words. The thing I always tell people is
to go with the behavior, not the words, because people can say
lots of things but their behavior tells you what they’re really
thinking. You want to promote transparency.
“Another part of it is calling each other out when we’re not practicing those values. I’ve made it clear to people that if I’m not
practicing our core values, you tell me and let me know. If I’m
not practicing the values and they didn’t call me out, I’d quite
frankly be disappointed in them.”
Enabling employees to take charge of their part of the company is an element in creating what Vincent calls “emotional
ownership.” He says it’s a form of ownership that is entirely
separate from monetary ownership and, in some ways, more
important to the long-term health of your company.
“Ownership is a hard thing to do, but if you have ownership
from the heart and not from the wallet, you’re going to have a higher-performing company,” Vincent
says. “Every single one of our employees
is a shareholder, so we think that’s
important. But creating emotional ownership is the greater challenge, and you
have to do that through the culture of
the company.
“It would be easy to start a company,
hire the people and give them all equity
so that they’re all shareholders. But they
wouldn’t, at least in the beginning, feel
like they’re real owners of the company.
It takes time to cement that (emotional
ownership) in place so that people are
living it and breathing it. But you need
constant reinforcement. It has to be
clearly practiced from the top down, and
you have to communicate it all the time
so that people believe it’s real.”
