Cultivate Your Culture: How To Cultivate Change

5 min read

What you’ll learn

• Why team culture varies between teams

• How to start auditing your team

• Accepting change as inevitable

On the 8th episode of Cultivate Your Culture, Zoran and Lauren Tashman speak in-depth about identifying, creating, and fixing team culture. Lauren is a private performance coach with Line Performance LLC, a master coach for Valor Performance, and a cohost of The Path Distilled podcast.

Our Shared Identity

Lauren broadly defines team culture as the identity of the team, meaning who they are as individuals and as a collective. The attitudes, perceptions, and expectations of the teammates feed into their behaviours, goals, and norms, and will dictate how they respond to challenges. Lauren stresses that it’s not only what they say they represent, but what they do that creates the team culture, because who we are and what we do is not always aligned.

The environment a team exists in is a vital aspect to how culture forms, and the environment is created through human social dynamics. Like many guests before her, Lauren agrees that emphasizing strong relationships and establishing communication is the foundation of team culture.

Use it, or Lose it

 Every team has a culture, even if it is not intentionally created. Lauren has seen teams perform well initially without a strong culture, but cracks exist when connection between teammates is lacking, and these cracks will expand when the team is put under pressure. Without an optimal culture, success is typically short lived. Using an intentional approach to creating team culture is a huge factor in setting up the team for long term success as they become robust when facing challenges or failures. The sense of “we” and fulfilling the need for belonging will bring the team together in a more authentic way, and this will translate in the long term with regards to performance.  

Lauren finds an issue with a lack of consistency when it comes to cultivating team culture. It is not a one-time meeting where you establish your core values and then trust that everyone will adhere to them. Rather, your core values need to become the foundation to how your team works towards their goals. The importance comes with the application. Lauren spoke about how companies wanting to improve their culture will see a major tech company implement things like open space offices or ping pong tables and copy them without considering the “why” behind those strategies. What is useful for one team may not be useful for yours, so when applying changes be intentional and consider the needs of your team, and don’t expect a quick fix. Lauren uses the example of the contingency model of leadership, which states that you can either prioritize results or relationships. In her own words, “creating an optimal culture is prioritizing both, but understanding that relationships need to be in service of creating optimal performance individually and collectively.” Team relationships are more than just getting along and having fun, but more importantly there is a dynamic that supports the team that is intentional and consistent.

Addressing your team culture begins with an assessment or evaluation. Lauren says getting the perspectives of the teammates on where they think they’re at with regards to team culture is essential, as every member will have a different vantage point that they see the team from. She advocates for starting with the leadership group, as they are the role models for operating under the core values, and then move down the hierarchy to observe the alignment of values and behaviors. This is why bringing in outside culture curators is useful, as it’s hard to objectively look at your own team. Having an external presence allows the team to see itself from the outside.

Culture is Not Static

Lauren emphasizes that culture will change with the team. In her own experience, there is a cyclical nature to teams and their needs change greatly over time. A team is fighting its own tendency for complacency, and after every good performance, the team morphs to achieve its next goal. Lauren finds the biggest toxic behaviours on teams are negativity or pessimism about culture change. These become barriers to moving forward, as people who are resistant are typically happy with the way the culture currently is or aren’t aware of what needs to change. Teammates who aren’t actively engaged in the conversation should be addressed, because even being passive about the change is not contributing. Having a safe psychological space for teammates to have conversations with leaders to execute change is integral, and having these conversations is the most concrete way to bring neutral or uninterested people into action.

When it comes to measuring team culture, Lauren states that constant check ins need to be happening and using after action reviews to address failures and successes with regards to how the team’s values were actualized.

Making it Happen

Learn how to make the most of your team meetings. Find different ways to engage your team and encourage open contribution. Get their opinions, perspectives, and observe how they interact with each other.

Learn how to foster value-based teams here, and how to have fierce conversations with your team members to instigate change here.

Lauren suggests reading The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, Paul J. Zack’s Trust Factor, and Blackbox Thinking by Matthew Syed.