I have worked with many great teams in my career. Regional teams, national teams, European teams, Asian teams, global teams. I have been to team building events, I have been to town halls, I have been on weekend trips with the whole company. I have listened to CEOs share their vision and the company’s values. I attended leadership skills training and leadership programmes. I witnessed and participated in many attempts to build a great team, but I always felt that something was missing. So what does it take to build a great team culture?
Falling backwards into the open arms of your team members can certainly create a sense of trust – especially in that moment. But what else does it tell me about them? Team building activities are fun and build trust. They help people to get to know each other in a different way. How much of that trust is transferred back to the workplace? How much does it help me to know that my colleague is good at reading maps and getting us all home safely when she is easily offended by small things in the office? I trust her and know she is a good sport, but how do I address her sensitivity? How different it would be if we had worked on our values and self-awareness instead? Then the conversation about interpersonal differences could take place on a different level and become a discussion about values, expectations and attitudes. We could talk about why we see the world from a different perspective.
Awareness of the importance of cultural differences may be widespread, but ways of dealing with them constructively seem more limited. Building a great team culture is only possible if you take cultural differences into account and allow the team to create its own culture.
What does it take to build a great team culture?
- You look for the desired qualities in people,
- You get the basics right and
- You provide the infrastructure to honour and promote the team culture.
1. What are the desired qualities in people?
I think they are curiosity and self-awareness. Curiosity and self-awareness are key characteristics of great team builders and team members. Curiosity is outward looking, self-awareness is inward looking.
Curiosity is such a powerful quality in individuals and teams because it helps us to approach issues in a non-judgmental way, to think more deeply and rationally about decisions, and to build trusting and collaborative relationships with our colleagues. Curiosity leads us to generate alternatives, makes us less biased when seeking information and less likely to stereotype people by making broad judgements.
Our level of self-awareness describes how clearly we see our own values, passions and aspirations in relation to our environment, our reactions and our impact on others. But self-awareness also describes our understanding of how other people see us in terms of the above. The more you know about how others see you, the better you will be able to show empathy and take the perspective of others.
Curiosity and self-awareness are strong qualities in people to build a great team culture.
2. Get the basics right
In “Getting the basics right” I would like to draw your attention to values and cultural dimensions. Knowing and understanding the team members’ core values and their personal cultural dimensions are two key ingredients to start the process of developing a team culture.
You can only create a team culture based on shared values. The more self-awareness each member has and the more curiosity they show about getting to know one another, the easier it will be to surface these values. Ask everyone what is important to them. And then start digging. Dig deeper to find out what your team members mean when they say “trust” or “fairness” or “integrity”. Then ask the others what they mean when they hear the same words. One of the most common mistakes is to assume that we have a common and clear understanding of the terms we use. Discussing our different perspectives can be the start of an ongoing exchange to constantly check how aligned we are as a team.
While most people find it easy to identify their core values and discuss their relevance to their professional lives, many more are unaware of the cultural dimensions and the extent to which they shape our value systems. Geert Hofsteede has researched the dimensions of national cultures and how they define the way we work, communicate and honour values. These dimensions describe, for example, how we deal with hierarchy or how we recognise individual achievement. They describe how we are motivated and how we take or avoid risks. These dimensions describe whether we are long-term or short-term oriented, whether we seek gratification or are self-controlled. All of this affects how we work together and how we see the world.
When people are given the opportunity to physically position themselves on a scale or grid of these dimensions, the differences become obvious and tangible. The aim of the exercise is for the team to define the values they want to honour and promote, and how they want to promote them. This discussion can lay the groundwork for the third part of the process: providing the infrastructure.
3. Providing the infrastructure to honour and promote the team culture
Although this part sounds the easiest, it is often the most difficult. Why is that? Because we are lazy. Once we have defined the great team culture we want to build, we are so proud of what we have achieved. We pat each other on the back and think about how lucky we are to work in such a great team. Building a great team culture is an ongoing effort. We have to give people the space and time to work on it. It is not enough to call a meeting every two months to check in with everyone.
Discussing our differences should become a normal part of our conversations. When we review a project, we discuss what went well and what we could have done better. Why don’t we include what we learned by changing our perspective or by taking more (or less) risk? Why don’t we mention that our different approach to power distance sometimes made it difficult to discuss issues openly within the team?
Or take the end of a meeting when we ask if there are any more questions or concerns. It could also be a time to ask the team to reflect on the communication during the meeting. Was it very direct or more indirect? What did people notice or like about the way they communicated as a team?
Whatever you decide to do, the most important thing is to bring the discussion about team culture to a meta-level. Do it regularly and get people into the habit of talking about it. That way, when difficulties arise and tensions build, people will be better prepared to deal with them without getting emotional or personal. A great team culture provides a safe space for everyone to speak up and explore what unites us. A great team culture encourages curiosity. It allows us to be interested in each other’s ideas, rather than just focusing on our own perspective.