3 Mistakes Leaders Make That Destroy Company Culture

Because they are professional services businesses, advisory firms are created and developed through the personalities of their individual leaders. Within the walls of a firm, that means that how you build your company culture becomes paramount to your ability to grow and succeed.

When trying to build a productive and efficient culture, how leaders think is critical to creating the company cultures they desire. In my two decades of consulting with advisors, I have found three critical mistakes in thinking that repeat themselves.

When a leader makes any of these mistakes, they harm their culture and restrict their firm’s ability to grow. Most of the mistakes in developing cultures are subtle and are related to how a leader thinks about their own success, their own firm and then ultimately leads to interacting with their teams.

Here are the mistakes and how to get past them:

1. Living in the Future

Although many leaders naturally have visionary skills, too many think that allows them to see what the future will hold, feel they can control it, or both.

This is even more problematic in advisor leaders who are natural planners. They are constantly looking at goals and numbers to see the future for their clients. It’s part of the job.

When you constantly focus on the future, however, you lose perspective on what’s happening today in your own firm. It also takes time away from building your culture.

While visionary skill is a great ability, the best advisor leaders know how to apply it and when to pull it back. Knowing what’s happening around you now helps you understand what the future will hold.

2. Never Having Enough

When focusing only on the future, you never have enough. That attitude creates a high-stress environment, because leaders who constantly think about more will never have enough of what they need to make things happen today.