Attitude Team Building

Did you see Adam Bryant's interview with Container Store CEO Kip Tindell in Friday's New York Times? Early on Bryant asked Tindell about his most important leadership lessons to create a thriving and productive workplace culture. Here's what Tindell said:

The way we create a place where people do want to come to work is primarily through two key points. One of our foundation principles is that leadership and communication are the same thing. Communication is leadership. So we believe in just relentlessly trying to communicate everything to every single employee at all times, and we’re very open. We share everything. We believe in complete transparency. There’s never a reason, we believe, to keep the information from an employee, except for individual salaries.

There's a lot to absorb in the leader's answer when it comes to communications team building. But it boils down to creating a culture of ownership and accountability that is based on mutual trust – workers' trust in the leadership to engage them and provide a nice place to work, and leaders' and managers' trust that a payoff of employee engagement is increased commitment, including offering more ideas to improve processes and ultimately customer satisfaction (and sales).

It is this foundation of trust that has allowed the Container Store to reach true midsize status, with over 4,000 employees, while expanding from 38 locations when I blogged about them in 2007 to 48 today (yes, during this recession).

Related: One of our most popular posts is this one that's also about transparency.