Building Bridges: An Organisational Culture for Success
This article was originally published in Portuguese in Líder Magazine, in the spring 2025 issue.
The online version was later published on the magazine’s website. The original article can be consulted here link.
A common purpose, a shared vision and dreams allow us to face change more agilely and effectively, and transform leaders, teams and organisations. They create a connection between minds and hearts that enhances communication, collaboration, commitment and teamwork.
Organisational identity provides a sense of community and inclusion and reinforces a set of norms and values that build bridges and contribute to a feeling of belonging.
In one of the organisations we worked with, values such as transparency, autonomy and trust, defined as essential by their leader, were incorporated into their leadership practices and behaviours. This transformed the culture and made the organisation more efficient and better prepared for the future.
Transparency was incorporated to promote clearer communication and proper management of expectations. The structuring of processes and the delegation of tasks reinforced the value of autonomy. Trust, as a way of looking at others, was expanded and integrated into leadership practices to create psychological safety and develop relationships and collaboration.
Authors such as Amy Edmondson and Timothy Clark, and studies in companies such as Google—project Aristotle—, show that psychological safety is the basis of the most effective teams. Based on the perception of inclusion and security, team commitment increases, collaborators develop their curiosity and enhance innovation, and productivity and performance become sustainable.
Amy Edmondson explains that psychological safety helps people take the interpersonal risks necessary to achieve excellence in a rapidly changing, interdependent world.
in the book The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety, Timothy Clark identifies the following dimensions of psychological safety: safety to feel included, safety to learn, safety to contribute, and safety to question.
Leaders, using emotional, conversational and collaborative intelligence tools, coordinate diverse and inclusive work environments. In this way, they enhance relationships and continuous learning and contribute to the whole being more than the sum of the parts.
Relationships are the context that allows us to successfully face change, and sharing helps to strengthen them. As Richard Boyatzis points out in the book The Science of Change, a shared vision drives hope; In shared compassion we experience solidarity, and through shared energy we vibrate at the same frequency as others.
Through systemic team coaching we work on relationships and connections between people, teams and external stakeholders, building bridges towards a successful organisational culture in contexts of uncertainty and complexity.
Authors: Fátima Ribeiro and Susana Azevedo