Episode 264 Transcript:

Ramona Shaw: [00:00:00] this is episode 264 on the topic of building a strong team culture, even when your company culture isn’t all that great.

Here are the two questions. This podcast answers. One, how do you successfully transition into your first official leadership role? And two, how do you keep climbing that leadership ladder and continuously get promoted, 

although the competition and the expectations get bigger. This show with The Manager Track podcast will provide the answers. I’m your host, Ramona Shaw. 

I’m on a mission to create workplaces where work is seen as a source of contribution, connection and personal fulfillment. And this transition starts with developing a new generation of leaders who know how to lead. So everyone wins and gross. In the show, you’ll learn how to think, communicate and act as a confident and competent leader. 

You know, you can be.

Ramona Shaw: Welcome to this episode of The Manage Track podcast. Today I’d like to talk about something that I know many of you struggle with, [00:01:00] and that is the question of what do you do when you wanna create a really good team culture?

You love your team, you love your leadership role and you are committed to creating a positive work environment. You really wanna be that kind of leader that does it right, but then you notice not just through your own observation and you being part of the organization.

But also how your employees are treated, that the broader organizational culture is not really helping or not really aligned with what you are trying to do on the team.

And if you’ve been in a situation where you were trying to do something right for the team, but the broader organization’s been misaligned and you realize how difficult that feels to be in that sandwich, and also feeling like you don’t have all the control that you need to make a big change here, then you know what I’m talking about and how tricky this can be so from leaders, I often then hear them say, you know, the company talks about values and [00:02:00] culture, but then day to day it tells

a different story on how they behave. Or maybe the leadership team is disconnected from what’s actually happening on the ground. So they talk big about psychological safety or flexibility or inclusivity or healthy work environments, but. On the ground, what’s tolerated in the organization, what’s even rewarded in the organization is very different.

And you notice that disconnect. Another thing that often comes up is when organizations go through some chaotic periods or transformations or change that seem to be explained away by.

Well, this is the change we need to do. It’s gonna have a little bit of a ripple in effect. We’re gonna have some layoffs, some orca, restructurings and so forth. It’s gonna change. But once you’ve experienced that for like six months or so and you realize like actually. This change is either not [00:03:00] ending or it ends and is followed right after, subsequently by another transformation, another upheaval.

We have layoffs. Then we get over that. Then we have a strategic change. We get over that. Then there’s another restructuring. We get over that. Then the boss gets fired and it just never ends. But what I really wanna talk about today is the fact that you do have some power some control and some influence to create a bit of a culture bubble.

Which in essence means a bit of a pocket that’s different from the broader organizational culture that you create within your team.

So that your team is better set up to withstand the challenges of the organizational environment and the changes overall that are happening more broadly or just the culture itself that you feel is not really helping to make this easy on the people that work here.

And to emphasize the importance of culture here and why as a team lead, you don’t just wanna sort of give up that agency and the influence that you [00:04:00] have over culture. It’s backed up by research as well, according to research by MIT Sloan, toxic company culture is 10.4 times more likely to drive attrition than compensation. So culture matters more than compensation when people leave. So this is the unwanted attrition

And then at the same time when we look at Gallup, that reports that managers account for at least 70% of the variance in engagement.

So think about those two studies. You have the power to change your team’s experience, your direct reports experiences, regardless of what’s happening in the broader, broader organization. So yes, both of those factors play a role. But your impact on your direct reports is really significant, and that is something I wanna emphasize and address in this episode today.

So I’m gonna share some actionable strategies for you to create that culture bubble even when the [00:05:00] company around you isn’t providing the support you need. Okay, so we’ll talk about building psychological safety, establishing trust, creating clarity, and fostering that sense of meaning and purpose within, within your team, making sure that you reward the right things and.

Don’t tolerate the wrong things. I’m also gonna share some practical team exercises that you can use to start defining the culture you want to create together as a team.

Lets start by talking high level.

While culture is a bit of a, like this invisible untangible idea, it really matters. So when we look at research. Nearly one third of new employees that leave it in their first 90 days leave because of the reality of the culture that doesn’t match what they expected. So what they thought the company culture is like is not what they experienced during the first 90 days.

Now this sometimes is performance related, right? Which is why this is only a third, but a third is still quite significant. That really highlights something important.

[00:06:00] Employees experience culture fairly early on, and they often know whether that’s a good culture, one that they fit in and wanna be part of or not. Now what we need to bear in mind is if you are working in a very large organization, there’s likely not going to be sort of one single culture that defines the entire organization.

There’s often microcultures that start to emerge. In different departments and in teams, and these microcultures can be fairly different from one another. If you think about Amazon, Amazon web Services has a very different culture than the Amazon warehouses do.

And so. When we talk about Amazon’s culture, we’re talking about sort of this, the umbrella. But then as you go in and you experience the different components or you know, subdivisions or departments, you are gonna experience it differently. Same with the team, which is why we wanna talk about this. You can actually [00:07:00] create this culture bubble or to give you a more concrete example, an organization I worked with had a team that consistently had high. Engagement scores and low turnover, although this was being in a division that was struggling overall and had trust issues, and so when we looked closer, it wasn’t magic there.

There was not some random reason why this team was different. It was that their manager had deliberately created a team experience that a shielded them from sort of the larger dysfunctions of the organization. But also very deliberately invested in creating a different environment, in building trust and safety and so forth.

So while this particular manager was really focusing in on what are the cultural issues in your organization and how do I a shield, but also then cultivate sort of the opposite to that, very deliberately, there’s not necessarily. A one [00:08:00] standard set of like a culture blueprint that we say this is best practice and this is what everyone should do.

Yes, there are frameworks, but the beauty of culture is that it’s often organic and we wanna build it and we wanna cultivate it so that it feels true to the mission, the vision, the purpose of the organization, the kind of people that it attracts. And there’s not one set of.

Cultural values, that’s better than the other. But what we do wanna quickly touch on is what makes a strong team culture versus a weak team culture? So based both on research, in my own experience working with managers, there are several key elements that consistently show up in high performing teams.

You’ve heard me say this idea of the psychological safety, and sometimes it gets, it gets a little fluffy and a big word, and we don’t quite know what this means. But in essence, it was coined by Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson, and it refers to the shared belief that the team is a safe place [00:09:00] for interpersonal risk taking.

In other words, and more plainly speaking, can people speak up without fear? And that is a big component of a culture. If you fear that you giving feedback, you disagreeing with someone, including your boss, you mentioning a problem, admitting a failure is going to backfire and there’s gonna be retribution and consequences that you don’t want and aren’t unhelpful, then that’s gonna change how you feel on that team.

So while sort of this idea of psychological safety seems like a bit of a fluffy word, it really boils down to how do people experience being on here? And we can quickly see that when is errors aren’t surfaced, when disagreements aren’t taking place, when there’s no constructive dialogue about dissent, when people fear retribution and won’t give feedback, we’re simply not gonna be as nearly as good as we could be.

[00:10:00] Same with being embarrassed. If you say something and people are gonna make comments or look at you in a way that makes you feel embarrassed, it’s all not helping. In fact 

to emphasize this, Google’s project, Aristotle study found that psychological safety, what we just talked about, was the number one factor in effective teams, in fact, more important than individual talent. Team composition or anything else. So when team members feel safe to speak up, you get better decision making, more innovation, and fewer mistakes, and hopefully fewer costly mistakes.

The second element in strong cultures that is often shared is trust and dependability. And that may really means that team members need to be able to trust each other, their intentions and their reliability. They need to know that if someone says that they’ll do something, that they’re actually gonna do it.

And [00:11:00] they need to trust that their manager has their back. If we worry that someone’s gonna throw us under the bus, that the manager is gonna make us look bad if a coworker is not gonna do what they say they’re going to do. Teams are gonna have to have back leaders or teams are gonna have to have backup plans and there won’t be able to really do good work because we aren’t individuals doing single work.

Everything has a dependency. They won’t show up fully, they won’t invest themselves fully, and it changes the way people interact with each other. So trust is really the glue in a team. And if there’s a lack of trust, that glue isn’t there and that changes. The sort of the, the dynamics of team members. We also need structure and clarity.

This is about goals, roles, how decisions get made. This is particularly important in organizations where the broader culture might be a bit chaotic and there’s a lot of change or organizational change [00:12:00] that is happening. So when you can create on your team a whole lot of clarity. You can shield your team from this kind of confusion.

And again, this isn’t work that you individually need to do. In fact, it’s not you between a direct report and that’s how you’re gonna create this clarity on the team. This is very much a team effort. The entire team coming together, so everyone has clarity about their role and yours, but also about other people’s roles and responsibilities and how it all should work together.

So it’s a team effort. Fourth point here is some kind of meaning and purpose. People need to understand why their work matters and when organizations at large fail to provide a compelling purpose or explain why a team even exists.

It’s not necessarily the organization that failed there, it’s then meant the manager’s job to step in and to connect the day-to-day work to meaningful outcomes. [00:13:00] It could be, Hey, let’s bring in how we’ve supported an internal or an external customer through a challenge or a problem, or how we solved something, or how we were innovative.

The fifth and last item that we often see shared across these strong team cultures is inclusion and respect, so that every team member feels seen and valued for their own contributions.

And this isn’t like a diversity metric in itself. This is really creating an environment where people can bring themselves to work and are seen for that. That there’s this identity that they see that they can contribute to the larger team.

And as a result of that, they actually enjoy working together. ’cause they get to know each other and they develop their own traditions and routines or inside chokes and then before we move on from this topic, I know I said this was the last one.

I’m gonna add a bonus one. And this is sort of that growth mindset, this idea that we’re constantly learning. [00:14:00] Teams with strong cultures often treat mistakes, gaps, weaknesses. As opportunities to improve rather than occasions to blame. And when we really take sort of that personal, the ego out of the equation, we look at how can we continuously optimize?

How can we see what we can do better? How can we learn from mistakes? How can we learn when something is going wrong with the technology, with the process, or even with behaviors? And we don’t take that as like, oh, you’re not good enough, or You don’t belong here. No, we’re bringing this these things up because we say we all wanna achieve a higher performance and we need to do that together.

And that requires this kind of honesty and this growth mindset that we need to bring to the table individually and as a team. So when these elements work together, they create a virtuous cycle. It leads to better [00:15:00] communication. It builds trust, which then encourages more risk taking and innovation, which leads to better results, which then reinforces the culture and on it goes.

So that is a big aspect. Now, as you can see, just looking at the different components that which just talked about, a lot of that is something that you can control, that you set the tone on, even if the organization at large doesn’t reward that or doesn’t really cultivate these kind of values.

So speaking of that, let’s talk a little bit more about how you as a manager can deliberately cultivate these elements of a strong team culture.

As a caring and driven manager. I know you want to strengthen your leadership skills, advance your career and lead a high performing engaged team. And in order to do that as a leader, you need to lead with a system, not by shooting from your hips or reacting to everyone else around you. To do so you need to first learn what should go into your [00:16:00] leadership system. And second develop your own. 

But here’s the good news. I created a concise, actionable, and yet comprehensive course on one component of the leadership system. And this is about how to successfully run one-on-one meetings. With your direct reports, it includes over 67 minutes of tactical leadership training, plus a set of resources to make this as easy and immediately applicable for you as possible. 

You can get your hands on this course, which I want every single manager to have for a nominal 19 dollars@ramonashaw.com forward slash one one. That’s two times the number one. You can check the show notes for the details or head on over to Ramona shaw.com forward slash 

one, one, and get started right away. 

Ramona Shaw: So to talk a little bit more about that, I’m gonna share specific actions and behaviors that will help you create that kind of culture bubble we just talked about. So the first one is to model vulnerability and openness. This is not about sharing all the things that you don’t know and your [00:17:00] doubts and all your emotions. No, this is about walking the talk. As a leader, if you want your team to be open about mistakes and challenges, you need to go first.

So a admit when you don’t know something. B, talk about times when you’ve struggled or failed, and if you are unsure how to do this without sort of losing credibility, talk about struggles in the past. Hey, I’ve been there before. Here’s what happened and here’s what I learned and how I got out on the other side.

Or, Hey, I might be missing something here, but here, here my is my initial thinking. What’s your perspective? Or choose to own and say like, Hey, I made a mistake on this and here’s what I learned and I apologize. That is demonstrating that sense of safety and openness that we’re looking for. When you do this, it signals to your team that it’s okay for them to be vulnerable to.

And this flips the traditional power dynamics of [00:18:00] like controlling command and actually builds trust and a strong culture. Also when someone speaks up with a concern or a dissenting view, instead of shutting them down or saying, we don’t wanna talk about that, thank them for it.

And don’t shoot the messenger. You can also actively solicit input. Especially from team members who may not often speak up in team meetings, you can say, Hey, we haven’t heard from you yet. What’s your perspective on this?

Or, Hey, you know, I haven’t heard your perspective yet and I’d love to hear it, but before, can you play the devil’s advocate? Like, What could be wrong with our assumption here? Or what could fail in this project plan? Make it clear that you’re not looking for agreement, but that you’re genuinely want to be challenged to see and hear different viewpoints, and to have that constructive dialogue.

It does often not come [00:19:00] by default or by winging it. The people and the teams that cultivate this, it’s. I wanna say 99% of the time, it is a very intentional effort to build that kind of psychological safety and dissent and that openness on a team. If you try it out, now you end this podcast and you’re like, oh, I like this idea.

Let me go give it a shot. It’s not gonna change overnight because it needs kind of, people need to see, oh, there are no consequences. They need to see this a few times. You’re gonna ask someone to disagree with you in a public forum, in a team meeting, let’s say, and then they’re gonna disagree and the people are like, okay, let me now see what the leader does in response to that.

And if they realize you actually reward this kind of behavior, they may still be a little skeptical, but they see you do this a few times and suddenly it clicks. And you can notice how people will show up differently

be really mindful and disciplined with this because one negative reaction where at some point you then shut someone down. You did great in [00:20:00] three team meetings and the fourth one, you’re not. It will send a signal like you never know. Don’t trust it. Don’t put yourself out there.

Another one that you can immediately start to apply is to emphasize learning instead of blaming. So when something goes wrong and we all know things go wrong, things will go wrong today and tomorrow and, and so on. Focus on understanding what happened rather than finding someone to blame.

And always include the question somewhere in this process. What can we learn from this? How might we prevent this in the future? And then I mentioned this earlier, but it’s worth adding here. You can normalize talking about mistakes by sharing your own near misses and setbacks and what you’ve learned from them. This, again, emphasizes this growth mindset that you want to create on your team, and then allows members to proactively seek feedback and experience with new ideas because they’re not afraid of [00:21:00] failure.

Now the next one here. Set clear expectations and align on purpose. In a chaotic organization, clarity is like the oxygen. So work with your team to define what a success looks like.

Be really explicit about roles and responsibilities and decision making processes. Don’t assume. Everyone knows it, and even if you feel like, no, we’re pretty good with it, revisit it. You can create a team chart that outlines priorities and how you’ll work together. We’ll link in the episode below to more resources on team charters.

Okay? So check that out if that’s of interest. But all of that goes into this bucket of creating stronger clarity. And with that, also connect those day-to-day tasks to the larger purpose. Ask people, why does your role exist? Why is it important, and how do you think it connects to the larger purpose of our department or the organization?[00:22:00] 

Who is it impacting? Who benefits from your role, from your position? And if they look at you sort of tears in the headlights or with an, I don’t know, then you know you have to do some work here. It’s your job to make sure that they understand why is the company paying their salary? Why is this role existing?

What’s the benefit of it? That’s really important for them to know and for you to be on the same page. I’ve also been in situations where. We talked about this and I realized, oh wow, we have a very different understanding what I think this role isn’t like the bigger purpose of this role was not what they thought their purpose was of the role.

They got really tactical in their response, and I had like this. Way more visionary idea of purpose, and then we were able to bridge them together. Wasn’t one was wrong versus the other. I just thought about the role very differently. Connecting them is what allowed us to build more clarity and actually really made them feel more empowered [00:23:00] to own a bigger scope of responsibilities and to engage with stakeholders in a bigger way because they realize, oh my pur, the purpose of this role is way bigger than I thought.

And then when the pressure is on, or in stressful times, it can be very helpful to revisit the purpose to motivate and engage the team again, even when things get stressful or heart, another point that I noted down that is a tactical thing that you can do to build a culture bubble is to be really consistent and fair. Trust is built not just through credibility and competence like many people think it’s built through consistency, fairness, integrity, dependability, reliability, and all of that.

So if you establish cultural values for the team or a team charter, it’s really important that you uphold them even when things are inconvenient, just because the top performer did something that goes against the values, [00:24:00] but they’re really good at their job, doesn’t mean you can let them get away with misaligned behaviors.

You have to address it even with your top performers and you’re gonna have to talk about it and make sure that the team knows. That you are addressing it, that that is not gonna be tolerated on the team and for sure it’s not gonna be rewarded. And on that note of dependability, and I know this can be a, a real struggle.

I’ve been there myself and I see it over and over, but it makes a big difference when you deliver on your promises. Even small ones like, Hey, I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Get back to them tomorrow, like make a note. And I get it.

We’re not necessarily shooting for a hundred percent, but we’re shooting for a lot, a fairly high number, closer to a hundred percent. When you make a commitment, uphold it. Hold yourself accountable to the same standards as everyone else. If you want them to respond to your emails within two hours, [00:25:00] you either respond to emails within two hours as well, or if you don’t, you have to explain to the team why that standard doesn’t apply to you.

You have to say like, Hey. I really appreciate your quick response. Here’s why that matters to me and I wanna be really good at responding to you as well. And the reason why that’s sometimes not possible is because I’m in back to back meetings and my presence and sort of a hundred percent attention to those meetings really matters.

So if I don’t respond to you within the two hours, it’s because I’m in back to backs and I just didn’t get to it. And then, you know, that same ex excuse a reason should also apply to your team. Something we have to be very explicit about

okay, what else? Oh, team cohesion. So team cohesion and collaboration doesn’t just come from working really well together on tasks and task execution. It comes from interpersonal relationships and that is not limited to work. So if you sort of split yourself in half, there’s like [00:26:00] the personal you and then there’s the private you.

You are missing out on opportunities to. Actually connect with human beings. Not everyone else has sort of split two personalities, and then they’re only activating their work personality. Most people, they are coming to work and they are interested in learning about others as a holistic being, and they bring that to the table too.

And so connecting with them personally. You know, taking note and really listening to what their hobbies are, what their family situation is like, what’s going on with, with what’s overall going on with life for their kids. Where are they going on vacation? If they’re willing to share, right?

If they’re not willing to share. Then you can’t force that. But if they are showing up as their full self and they are sharing those things, acknowledge that ’cause that’s how they are going to bond with you. And that allows for stronger team cohesion overall. Same with team meetings and if you’re remote or [00:27:00] in a virtual set up, then bringing the team together or even doing virtual team experiences and sessions can be very helpful with that.

So remember, colleagues who feel a personal connection will go the extra mile for each other when things get tough, and then last but not least, and somewhat related, make sure people are actually seen and heard.

So take the time to understand. People strength their ideas, their personal goals, their career goals. Listen actively and take note. Have a notepad right to, to remember those things and show some kind of concern for their wellbeing and interest in that. Even small gestures like checking in in one-on-ones.

Hey, how are you doing? How are you managing your workload? That really builds the sense of loyalty and trust. I was on a call yesterday with a manager who said, Hey, I try to get my work done within the first five hours of the day so that I can [00:28:00] spend the rest of the day calling up my team, checking in on them.

And that creates a really strong team culture. That’s how that particular manager is doing it. That’s not the only way to do it, but that’s their approach. They’ve seen success with doing that, and the team knows it. And so that bond then becomes really strong over time.

especially by the way, if your team is struggling or there’s new dynamics going on, on team or there’s some interpersonal conflict, spending some time on really checking in with people

it’s one of the best things that you can do to turn around a struggling team.

I hope this was helpful and very tactical and things that you can start doing today.

But I also wanna briefly talk about how to navigate challenges because creating a strong team culture isn’t always smooth sailing. The biggest challenge that team cultures face is a high pressure environment. the second challenge is sort of a newer one that is managing a remote or a hybrid work environment. Let’s talk about high pressure first.

So, high pressure environments really [00:29:00] touch the strength of your team culture when let’s say deadlines are tight, stakes are high, there is often a temptation to resort to sort of this command and control tactic. Just get it done. We don’t have time for anything else. I don’t have time to check in with you.

I don’t care how you’re doing and what’s going on in your life. We just need to get it done. But this is exactly when a positive culture is most crucial. It’s in these high pressure situations where that psychological safety becomes even more important, where your ability to check in with people actually increases their resilience because people tend to stay silent and defer to authority under distress.

Which then leads to those preventable errors to slip through because they just defer to the manager. And like you tell me and you find yourself like, oh, now I’m suddenly in this command and control role and I’m gonna lean into it ’cause it’s high pressure. So in such situations as a manager, you actually need to double [00:30:00] down on explicitly inviting people to speak up.

Hey, we are in a high pressure situation or a high stake situation. I really need everyone’s eyes on a potential. If you see something wrong or have concur concerns, please speak up immediately. No matter what, call me, email me. I will always make time for it, even if my calendar looks busy.

This is really important, but you have to actually say that because otherwise people will defer to execution mode. Now every so often we have to be in execution mode, but that should be time limited and sort of like short term, if this execution, high pressure mode lasts days, weeks, or even months that’s when we’re moving into the issues where you actually revert culture that you’ve built. Prior to that. Another thing that can come up in those high pressure situations is to have emotional reactions, right? You are probably stressed, you feel sort of the burden on it, and it’s easy to blame [00:31:00] others or other teams to get angry when things get wrong.

But then that shuts down this very communication and problem solving that you need and that you’ve been probably been trying to build up. So instead manage your emotions. Go into these conversations in a measured, composed way, you can say, Hey, we’re behind schedule.

You can fully acknowledge what’s going on, or, this is really concerning to me, or This is really good, difficult for me, or for us as a whole. Let’s figure out how to recover. Let’s figure out what we need to do here. And then the whole thing about lessons learned and what, for the future that you know that can wait until after the crisis.

And then lastly, in those high stakes situation, another thing that’s really important is to make sure to buffer your team from distractions and mixed messages from above.

Teams really appreciate a manager who runs interference for them. It reinforces that you have their back. [00:32:00] And so pay attention to any of those mixed signals or any of those distractions that might flow into your team

and really step in to defend the team there.

Now a quick word on that second challenge of building a culture and people aren’t physically together, and the fact that that requires extra attention and often a bit of creativity, right? You wanna establish trust but not micromanage ’cause you can’t see them.

You wanna have a trusted environment, but you also wanna make sure that you check in, that you track that you’re not blind. To really judge the team members based on their outcomes and their contributions, not by monitoring their online status or how many hours they’re locked in or how quickly are they responding.

Really resist the urge to be sort of controlling that way in order to make sure everything runs smoothly. Outcomes and contributions is what matters most, and that starts by really agreeing on and aligning on [00:33:00] expectations and deadlines, and then giving people the autonomy.

To meet them in however they want to. So this old school monitoring is often hurting trust ’cause people don’t feel like you trust them when you check on them. So yes, clarity upfront, regular check-in to make sure that you’re not being blindsided or that stuff isn’t falling apart and you have no idea, but not the monitoring where there’s no reason to monitor.

Another thing that’s really important in those remote or hybrid setups is to over communicate and diversify your communication channels. So use a mix of team meetings, one-on-ones and collaboration tools to bring across your message. And we’ve talked about this here before, and it goes back to this idea of a team charter setting, norms for responsiveness, expectations on it. Information sharing, decision making, documenting how we show up in meetings, cameras [00:34:00] on, cameras off. All of that should be defined upfront and be transparent , especially if you’re growing a team and you bring in new people.

Don’t have them sort of learn this through trial and error and figure that on their own, be really clear and ideally collaborate as a team together in establishing those things.

Okay, now let’s talk about some practical exercises that you can start using with your team right away define and strengthen your team culture together. So these are designed for you to have a conversation with your team so that it’s not just you dictating, but it’s really, a collaborative process that also fosters a sense of ownership.

Of your team called you by the entire team. So the first exercise is to have your team collectively answer four key questions. The first question is, what gets rewarded and valued in our team? This question reveals what behaviors and outcomes your team [00:35:00] truly prioritizes. Is it innovation, reliability, customer focus?

Or whatever it may be. The discussion might really uncover misalignments between what you say you value and what actually gets recognized and rewarded. Um, second question, what’s being tolerated on our team? This question surfaces behaviors or situations that may be undermining your culture but have become normalized.

It might be chronic lateness to meetings, interrupting each other, missing deadlines. Or avoiding difficult conversations or giving feedback. So naming these issues is the first step in addressing them. That was the second question. Third question, what gets punished? This reveals the sort of unwritten rules and potential fear factors in your team.

Are people afraid to admit mistakes, to ask for help, to challenge the status quo? [00:36:00] And all that helps you then understand the perceived risks that can, um, impact the sense of safety on the team. And then the fourth question is, what are our rituals, our team rituals? Rituals are repeated practices that reinforce your culture. Consciously or unconsciously, things like how you start meetings, how you celebrate accomplishments or birthdays, how people are being onboarded and so forth.

Identify your current rituals, helps you see which ones are strengthening your desired culture and which might need to change or which might be missing, like what kind of rituals could you incorporate to further align with the desired culture, aspirational culture you’re trying to create? So after discussing these questions, you can work together to define the team culture that you want to create.

What values are most important to your team? What behaviors will we commit to? How will [00:37:00] you hold each other accountable as a team? So the four questions are really the starting point for you to be more specific around the culture by first building awareness of what it currently is, getting clear on what kind of culture you want to create, and then how to bridge the gap.

So document these agreements and then revisit them on a regular basis. ’cause culture isn’t sort of a set and forget thing. It really needs this ongoing attention and reinforcement. Now, another simple but effective exercise that we like to do is to create what we call at our cova. We call this a primer.

It’s also known as a user guide, a user manual, or a read Me, in those documents, each team member shares their preferences, their strengths, their growth areas how they like to be communicated, to what motivates them, how they like to receive feedback and so forth.

What happens is it builds mutual understanding and respect for different working [00:38:00] styles, and that can be very helpful in creating a team culture, you can also try to use retrospectives as a way to check in on how the team is stewing in regards to that culture bubble. Retrospectives are often done after completing a project or at a regular interval. You can do this every quarter, and in that session you ask what went well, what could have gone better, and what should we do differently next time?

What it does is it highlights potential gaps. It also helps you celebrate things that have worked well. And then, it emphasizes the importance of improvement in learning, which is one of those aspects that define strong cultures as we talked about earlier. So these are three practical exercises that you can do with your team.

Now. I know we’ve covered a lot. So let me quickly, summarize the key takeaways first, remember that as a manager, you have tremendous influence over your team’s culture. Regardless of [00:39:00] what’s happening in the broader organization, you can create a culture bubble that shields your team from external culture challenges or dysfunctions even.

Second, a strong team culture is built on psychological safety, trust, clarity, purpose, inclusion, cohesion, and continuous learning. Those are sort of the, the initial building blocks you might have, additional elements that you act for your specific. Team culture. But the point here is to become aware of them, to create the aspirational culture set and then reinforce these different aspects to create a virtuous cycle.

Now, the third takeaway that I hope you remember from this episode, is that culture is shaped through consistent leadership behaviors, modeling, vulnerability, encouraging speaking up. Emphasizing learning over blame, providing clarity, being fair and consistent. Fostering conversations [00:40:00] and collaboration, making people feel valued and really intentionally creating that culture.

It doesn’t happen by accident. And lastly, culture becomes even more important during challenging times, like high pressure situations or remote work. But if you do have the right approach, and if you did put in the upfront work when things were going well, not in the midst of a stressful situation, you start to figure out, okay, what kind of culture, should we build?

You wanna create that culture proactively so that in high stress situation, when your culture gets tested, you’re way further ahead and set up to navigate those challenges better because your team has a bond that you’ve all created, not as a solo project, you by yourself, but as a team together through honest conversations, shared agreements and regular practices and, rituals so this isn’t a one week project, but there are a [00:41:00] lot of things that we talked about today that you can go out and implement right away.

And when you do, the payoff will be noticeable. You’ll have higher engagement, better performance, lower turnover in the team that people actually love to be part of. If you like, help with that, or if you are looking for a facilitate the. Organizes a team building session or a team event or one of those exercises we talked about.

Then reach out to contact out archova.org. It’s often easier for an external person to come in who’s not part of the team to facilitate these conversations. So it’s actually the team working on it together. Then the leader trying to do this. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with coworkers, with friends and other people who would benefit from learning how to create strong team cultures

regardless of what the organization is doing, all these shares are much appreciated. That’s how we reach more people, more managers who are looking for this additional guidance once a [00:42:00] week to think about, and reflect on a topic that will enhance and improve their leadership over time.

Thanks so much for being here. We’ll be back with another episode of The Manager Track podcast next week. Bye for.

If you enjoy this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader. People love to work with. This includes a free master class on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out@archova.org/ masterclass. 

The second resource is my best-selling book, the confident and competent new manager, how to quickly rise to success in your first leadership role. Check it out at our archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there. 

You can find all those links

In the show notes.