Cultivate Your Culture: How to Create a Common Purpose
Reading time: 15 minutes
What you’ll learn
The difficult nature of team culture in e-sports
Creating team purpose in an individualistic culture
Measuring team culture subjectively
In the third episode of Cultivate Your Culture, Landon Gorbenko talked e-sports with host Zoran Stojkovic. Landon holds a master’s degree in performance psychology, is the director of performance at PowerUp Academy and GScience, and hosts his own podcast No Tilt Mind. He is focused on the world of e-sports and building the esports ecosystem.
A Toxic Culture
E-sports are competitions using multiplayer video games, played by amateur and professional gamers. Landon finds that the team culture of e-sports is different than in traditional sports and a little harder to tap into. First, each game tends to have its own culture already, which can be toxic due to the aggressive and rage-like gameplay that accompanies it. The second aspect of this unique team culture is the lack of a collective space. Traditional athletes are honing their craft on a team or in the environment of other athletes, but e-sport athletes typically progress in isolation from others. They don’t have official teammates and are focused primarily on their own skill building. This means when they do make it pro, they may find themselves with little to no teamwork skills, such as conflict resolution or collective responsibility. To tackle this issue, Landon thinks the two most important aspects of team culture to examine are the team’s purpose and how they interact with one another.
Pulling Together
Because e-sport athletes are more individualistic, Landon has observed that it can be difficult to get them to buy into the concept of team culture and share a common goal. They made it professionally by working on their skills alone and may be more prone to push for their own goals and strategies, as opposed to having one collective purpose. When everyone is going off in their own direction, it will be hard for them to perform as one unit. Landon believes creating a purpose is the best way to start unifying the team. Have the teammates communicate about that the expectation for themselves is and embed that within the organization. Ask them what success looks like to them and have them know that being part of the team means living up to these expectations they’ve set for themselves, then revisit these expectations. Both Zoran and Landon find there’s rarely enough follow through on the purposes set by the team, and that these should be preached enough for team members to be sick of hearing about them. When something is taught over and over again, it becomes the default for the team to fall back on. This ensures that when the team is being challenged, they don’t start to break down and shift blame onto each other, but rather pull together as a unit with the thought of their shared purpose.
The second aspect of team culture that Landon speaks about is how the teammates are relating to each other. This includes how they deal with conflict, communicate, and identify their strengths and weaknesses. His advice is to identify what holds the team together and create principles of culture around that. Speak with new teammates and find out how you can support them and find out how the team members relate to each other, whether that’s through sitting down and sharing a meal during a meeting or sharing memes on the internet. Team pride is also enhanced when the team members are closer and trust each other. When team pride is strong, it’s easier to hold members accountable to the shared purpose, such as calling out team members when they screw up.
Not Everything Applies
Landon and Zoran also spoke about how developing culture isn’t done through a textbook. While objective measures exist to measure things like team unity, both agree that sometimes it’s a subjective feeling, such as entering the athletes’ space and witnessing banter. Landon finds that when it comes to measuring team culture, it’s easier to measure the individual values that make it up. For example, loyalty can be measured through the turnover rate of the organization, and cohesiveness can be seen in how often the athletes spend time with each other outside of practice. Ultimately, it’s hard to apply an objective measure on an individual, and while we have the scientific knowledge, it doesn’t always translate to practical use. For that reason, we should not discount subjective feelings about the team culture.
Landon ends the podcast with his final piece of advice, and that is to create an environment of trust. It’s important that athletes feel safe enough within their team to express discontent or misunderstanding and give feedback to both their coaches and to their teammates. Learning how to take feedback in a non-personal way and using it to better yourself will make a stronger team. Landon says that by not being open you are rejecting the possibility of growth.
Making it Happen
We’re sure you’re tired of hearing about it but creating a team purpose that can be rehashed into the player’s minds will pay off in a strong, unified team. Learn more about how to create this HERE
Find out what makes your team click as individuals. If you’re struggling to get team members to get along, read more about team cohesion HERE
While scientific data is great to use, remember that team culture is not found in a textbook. Learn to read personal signals and create an environment of vulnerability where you can take feedback from your athletes.
About the Author
Willa Hladun believes that every individual has the tools within them to excel at their craft. She wants to help others achieve their potential through mental training and understanding that the mind can be your biggest obstacle when starting a new path or reaching new heights. She has a BA in Psychology from the University of Victoria.
