Building a Culture that Thrives

Jansel Akyol, Director, Talent Development, RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust (REI.UN: TSE)

When I started my career in my early 20s, I had a strong feeling that I would change the world. You know that raw feeling you have as a young fresh graduate, yes, I had that. This desire quickly turned into a journey where I observed, tested, and learned about cultures and organizations along the way.

In my 20+ year career, I have worked in two countries and across many different sectors. My journey showed me that despite differences in background, ethnicity and language, we are united on what we need to thrive in a work environment. Not rocket science, really. However, not an easy thing to do. Ultimately, it comes down to how you select, develop and empower your people managers.

Select your people managers very wisely – your people managers make or break your culture, well, basically, everything in a workplace. Their words, actions, and guidance (or the lack thereof) affect your people, teams, performance, and, ultimately, your long-term goals. Spend a significant amount of time and effort on how you select and promote your people managers. Ensure you select the individuals who care about people above anything else. Ensure those individuals have strong morals, empathy, and interpersonal and leadership skills. There is, simply, no other workaround to your long-term success.

Act on people managers who aren’t up to the task – one mistake I’ve observed over and over is ignoring managers that aren’t good people leaders, or wishing the issue will resolve itself in time. It won’t. It never has and never will. Evaluate the situation, provide feedback and ensure they receive the development that they need.

Build a leadership development program that hits the nail and is not a “nice to have” – we’ve all been there where we are tasked to attend leadership training that while a pleasant experience, doesn’t generate actionable change. We tick the box by being there and forget about 70% of what was discussed the next day.

“As humans, we all desire connection, and people usually stay when they are cared for, developed, and empowered”

To build a strong development plan, we first need to define our cultural elements (values), leadership behaviors (competencies), and the developmental gaps that our leaders have today. As for learning approaches, experiential learning solutions where you enable learners to go through experiences, such as mentoring and coaching, are very effective as these solutions are typically individualized and targeted. Role-plays and scenarios are other approaches to provide participants with a learning environment where they can test their skills and get individual feedback to create behavioral change.

Empower your people leaders – once you have a strong people management team, ensure your organizational processes, systems and way of doing things are not a road blocker. Cut down the bureaucracy, control approaches, and simply let your leaders fly as they inspire and lead their teams. Open all communication channels where their input flows in all directions. Empower them with the tools and approaches where they can connect with their people and have caring conversations touching employees’ souls, health and wellness. Enable them in a way that they can build true relationships and get to know their people on a personal level. As humans, we all desire connection, and people usually stay when they are cared for, developed, and empowered.

Yes, perhaps, I haven’t changed the world (yet!), but I feel very fortunate to have built a career where I’ve been able to create environments where people feel more content, more developed and more empowered. And that is a true blessing.