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Do you ever wonder what the future of culture in business looks like? In today's episode, I'm going to dive deep into what I believe are some of the key pillars of what's the culture of the future.

And so let's dive in first foremost and talk about the concept of competition. Competition, first of all, does not exist. it's as real as you make it. It's like fear. There’s this great interview with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Jobs is talking about how in the beginning they were trying to figure out how to compete with Microsoft and they were failing miserably until they realized that their job is not to compete with Microsoft. It is to do their own thing.

Second of all, you could take all that bandwidth, time, and energy that you're putting into the fear of competition and what you need to do to be better than the competitor; and put all of that energy and funnel it into how can we be better.

So what does that do culture-wise? It creates an ecosystem where people are predominantly focused on creativity rather than scarcity. Scarcity is the other guy that might wipe us out. And then you have a culture of playing the game out of the fear of losing, rather than the desire to win or even better, purely playing the game out of the desire to play the game just simply because you love the game. Let's face it. Sometimes in business, you're going to lose. And so the first concept that you really got to get today is there is no competition. And if your company does believe in competition, you're playing the wrong game. It's time to change the game.

The next piece of the puzzle is trust. There are a lot of layers to that. The first piece of the puzzle is they must trust the leadership, not each other. A leader is always the Genesis. The more responsibility a leader takes, the better it is.

If you look at something in your company and say, “That's not working,” then if you're taking responsibility, you have the courage and the ability to turn that finger on yourself and say, “I'm not working.” Your company is just a reflection of you, and so if they don't trust each other, probably what that means is they don't trust you. And maybe if you want to go deep, what that means is you don't trust yourself. If everything is a reflection on life, everything externally that you experience is a reflection of what is happening internally.

We always learn from behavior. This is synonymous with companies. They talk about culture, they talk about trust, they talk about mission statements and vision. They're very good at talking about it. But very seldom do they really deliver.

Does the behavior illustrate what they believe? And so when it comes to trust, the first question is, do you trust yourself? Or how much do you trust yourself? If the answer is “I don't trust myself,” or if the answer is “Not very much,” that might be a good place to start.

One of the greatest things you can do is create a leadership style that prioritizes your own self-expression. And so, this always comes back to choice. It always comes back to what you want. Because if you have a strong ability to express yourself, then you're going to give that same permission to your employees.

Your employees are going to spend the majority of their time at work. And so that environment absolutely must be a place where they can feel like they can be themselves.

This is something I talk a lot on the show about because the two things that employees want the most on the planet are not money. It's acknowledgment. The number one thing that all human beings want is to be acknowledged.

From there, the next thing that all employees want is opportunities to grow. That doesn't even necessarily mean up the ladder. It just means to grow as an individual.

Those are the major pillars I wanted to go over in today's episode as far as creating the culture of the future. What you can do now is not only become aware of some of these things but begin to implement them; so that when the future gets here, you are on the edge of leadership.

Ideally so that, your leadership takes you to the next level as an individual and your company at the same time.

If you are a visionary leader who wants to quantum leap your impact and leave a legacy of achieving the impossible, I am here and the world is waiting. Email me at shannon@shannongraham.com