Why team culture?
Why is this important? Surely there are more pressing concerns – budgets, service delivery, reporting?
Your culture underpins them all. It impacts the sustainability of your work; your ability to attract and retain your people; and ultimately your ability to deliver the impact you want to see in the world. Your culture contributes to your ability to grapple with the challenges of hybrid working, AI and young people’s experience of workplaces. If you are in Scotland like me, it contributes to your ability to meet the 5 dimensions of the Fair Work Convention.
What is ‘culture’ anyway?
Team culture can feel like a vague idea. Or it can feel like ‘it’s everything, so where do I start?’
Put simply, your team culture is made up of all the day-to-day choices and behaviours of each person in your team. How we show up. How we speak to one another. How we listen.
Leading a team, you set the tone. What a great opportunity to create something positive!
In my experience – 20 years of being in teams, leading them, supporting them and working alongside leaders – the words I most often use about culture are ‘growing’ and ‘nurturing’. Because I like green spaces? Yes. But more importantly because my experience has shown me that culture in organisations and teams requires intention and care not just initially, but over time.
Growing and nurturing your team culture is intentional…
A great team culture doesn’t happen by itself. The good news is that it is easier to get started than you might think!
Ask yourself and ask your team “when we are working at our best, how do we treat one another?” or “what do your most appreciate about working in this team?”
That sets a positive tone and focuses attention on what already works and what people already appreciate.
Having identified those behaviours, you have the beginnings of a team conversation about how to ensure they are seen, heard and felt consistently. You might look at how you run meetings. You could look at how you give feedback, do one-to-ones and performance reviews. You might look at how you make decisions, set up projects or share learning.
…And collaborative
What do your people think? Feel? What is important to them? How does this align with your organisation’s values? What do your people understand your values to mean?
How you choose to explore these questions will send strong signals about your culture. Exploring them in a collaborative way, with a process that allows colleagues to co-create, invites commitment to one another on a very human level.
Let’s say you have a value like ‘collaborate’. You might say ‘be collaborative’ or ‘we work collaboratively’. What is expected? As a team, you might define things like ‘I seek the views of colleagues and stakeholders’ or ‘I ensure I understand the existing context and stakeholders when I’m starting a new project.’
Co-creating these specifics, as well as naming any specific ‘behaviours we don’t want to see’ is a powerful way of demonstrating that everyone has a stake and a role in growing and nurturing the culture of the team.
…And a long-term project
When supporting leaders over time on nurturing culture, these are the three conversations I’ve most often had.
- Your culture thrives (or not) through day-to-day choices made by everyone. What choices are your people making? Do colleagues talk to one another or about one another? Build on contributions in meetings or knock them down? Trust one another to work out solutions?
- Your culture is a living thing. What do you notice about how your culture is evolving? What happens as colleagues move on, and new ones arrive? What signals do they pick up? Overtly? Implicitly? What do they understand your culture to be? How is your culture changing over time? Is that what you want?
- Your culture is felt at all times! Make sure it is what you want your people to be experiencing. How does your culture live (or not) at different points in your colleagues’ experience of working in your organisation – recruitment, on-boarding, away days, team meetings, 1:1s, performance reviews, exit interviews?
Find out more about the support I offer
I love this work; I find it fascinating! Mostly I love making it practical for teams.
I will be offering free 45-minute webinars in September and October.
If you are looking for support on growing and nurturing your team or organisation’s culture, get in touch for an informal conversation at hello@laura-cockram.co.uk
