In marketing, they say, “Position or be Positioned,” – either choose how you want others to perceive you, or they will choose for themselves. The same goes for your company’s culture. Whether or not you are intentional about choosing a culture, your company has a culture.
If you are a team leader, you might not be able to determine your entire company’s culture, but you can significantly influence the culture of your team. In fact, research tells us that the team leader alone has a seventy percent impact on what’s called “workplace climate” – what it feels like to work in your shop.
Culture can be complicated, touchy-feely, and difficult to nail down. It’s a feeling, a sense, or a vibe. It’s what the Professor Sumantra Ghosal calls “The smell of the place.” So, how do you create a strong culture, especially when you’re already running hard? A great first step is to simplify the process.
After years of working with organizations and teams to define their culture, I have distilled the culture-building process into three core concepts that I call the “Killer B’s” – Beliefs, Brand & Behaviors. Simply by agreeing on and practicing these three concepts, you will take your team culture to another level.
Beliefs
Regardless of their skills, styles, and perspectives, what binds a team together is their beliefs. It’s their shared operating system. Have you ever noticed, for example, that it’s easier to work with people who think the way that you think and value what you value? That doesn’t mean that they agree with you on everything, but rather that the way they see things is very similar. In other words, individuals can have diversity of skills and thought, and still rally around a shared set of beliefs. The author Simon Sinek, for example, refers to your “why” – to save the planet, to inspire others, to eradicate poverty. When people have a shared “why”, they are more likely to focus on shared goals because they have a shared inspiration, which stems from a core set of shared beliefs. One team I worked with, for example, was wrestling with the balance between speed and quality, so they rallied around these core beliefs: Assume Positive Intent, Fail Successfully, and Support Group Decisions. This helped them get out of “paralysis by analysis”, make decisions faster, and get more done.
Brand
Insofar as Beliefs bind a team, Brand aligns your team and others around shared expectations. Why do organizations have “brand guidelines”? Because they want their customers and clients to have a consistent perception of them. One can expect Rolex, for example, to always show up as a “luxury” watch brand. Accordingly, they advertise at tennis tournaments, but not at Corn Hole tournaments. (you can, however, buy a Rolex at Walmart. Go figure.)
Likewise, you want your team members to show up consistently, so you need guidelines to shape expectations. Whether they like it or not, your team (and every person in it) has a brand. You might as well be intentional about creating your team brand. One team I worked with chose three words for their Brand: Encourage, Real, and Action. Not only is it clever and easy to remember, but it also offers guidelines for how to behave – encourage each other, be real, and don’t get stuck in analysis, but rather, take action.
To be certain, you can control your Brand, but you can’t control your reputation. Your Brand is what you put out; your reputation is what you get back. One acid test of whether a team is living its best culture is when your reputation and your Brand are aligned.
Behaviors
When the trough gets smaller, the pigs get meaner. It’s in conflict, not in good times, that we learn someone’s true character. And, while adversity might develop character, I find that adversity reveals character. How we behave under pressure then is the cornerstone of a strong culture. There are two aspects of behavior that ultimately determine a team’s culture – what is rewarded and how “breakdowns” are handled.
At our core, we are all simple critters. We gravitate toward pleasure and rewards, and we try to avoid pain and punishment. Well, most of us do. In a team context, “pleasure” is typically experienced as the dopamine hit we get from being rewarded.
Compensation is the most obvious place to see how this reward system works. People tend to do what’s necessary to earn more money or other rewards. If you have, for example, an “eat-what-you-kill” model of compensation, where everyone keeps what they earn, then you will likely create competition. If, on the other hand, the team is rewarded for team results, then you likely get more collaboration. I’m not suggesting that one is better than the other; it depends on the industry and other factors. I am suggesting that it is more effective to be intentional about what you reward, so that you create the culture that you want. Football teams foster competition whereas non-profits foster collaboration. They both work.
The flip side of rewards is what I call “breakdowns.” These are not always “punishments” or “conflict,” but they can be. When the proverbial @#$%&* hits the fan, how do you respond? When there is passionate debate, how do you handle differences of opinion? When someone makes a mistake, how do you treat them? These are all examples of “breakdowns”. How you handle them speaks volumes about your culture.
The cultures that manage breakdowns well have two things in common: a growth mindset and psychological safety. Here’s an example of both in action: There’s an urban myth about an IBM employee who lost $1 million on a deal. When he was called into his boss’s office, he said, “I suppose that you wanted to see me to fire me. I don’t blame you.” His boss responded, “Fire you? Why would I do that? I just made a $1 million investment in you!” That attitude of “I’ve got your back” coupled with “let’s learn from our mistakes” is a powerful one-two punch that creates a killer culture.
Conclusion
Beliefs, Brand, and Behaviors – three easy steps to create a killer culture. You can start by building a base of shared Beliefs, then align on your Brand, and finally live your Behaviors. Not only will you see that people get really energized by this process, but you’ll also notice greater focus, alignment, and engagement in your team or organization.
