Cultivate Your Culture: How to Shape a Winning Environment

7 min read

What you’ll learn

• Putting yourself at the centre of your team’s culture

• Addressing toxic behaviour in a non-judgemental way

• The importance of observational skills in cultivating a culture

Zoran and Nadine Dubina sat down for the 9th episode of Cultivate your Culture to discuss what makes a healthy team environment for culture to grow. Nadine is the former associate director of Coach Development for the US Olympic and Paralympic teams and has worked to create development courses, workshops, presentations, and frameworks for becoming a star coach who transforms athletes.

Culture Doesn’t Lie

Nadine likens culture to a three-legged stool, the legs being the collective thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are happening on a team. The power of culture comes when all three legs are even. When we neglect even one, the stool will become uneven and will break. Within the collective culture, there will be individuals who don’t always think, feel, or behave the same way, but when together the individuals create the culture that will impact how the team moves towards their goals.

Nadine says that we may talk about culture in the way of what we want it to be, but it is what your team culture is at the moment that does not lie. Culture is the standard we set, and while we may believe that the bar is high, every time we let it slip that bar is moved and a new standard is set. In this way, our culture doesn’t lie, even if we are lying about what we believe our culture is.

In a similar way to Monique Kavelaars in episode 5, Nadine compares culture to the water in a fish tank. To the fish, water is a part of their natural habitat that they experience every day, and this water is synonymous with culture. Culture exists with us and is not a separate entity. We may not choose to cultivate it, but it is always there, and some teams don’t notice their culture until its toxicity has turned it murky.

Starting With Why

 Culture is complicated, because human beings are complicated. Nadine finds that understanding team culture starts with understanding yourself. Ask yourself first: what do you value and what kind of environment do you want to create? By taking some deliberate introspection to find your why, you can begin to align to your purpose and your values, and then bring others into that same alignment. This allows you to become a model for your team. In Nadine’s words: “When I’m in alignment, you have permission to be in alignment, and then we can create collective alignment through conversation”.  

Nadine admits that this self-reflection is not easy, but it’s the hard steps and consistent monitoring that create real behaviour change in your team.

Careless Whispers

Nadine says what separates good teams from great teams is their willingness to be both vulnerable and courageous. Teams who are willing to put in the work to expose who they are, own up to their mistakes, and hold each other accountable are the ones who will be able to present and live in what they’re doing. Typically, the stronger teams are those who are process oriented, in that they care less about the outcome and more about the work that goes on behind the scenes. Nadine finds that the best coaches are those with laser focus on what is most important to the mission and goals of the team, and what behaviours on the team threaten the balance of the culture stool. To do this, develop your observation skills. Nadine says she listens to the whisperings when the coach is absent. What is being said when everyone goes quiet when someone enters the room? What toxic bacteria is infiltrating the fish tank? This includes gossip, backstabbing, and lack of communication altogether. Be observant of the talk and of the behaviours being exhibited, and question if they are misaligned with the core values.

To deal with these toxic behaviours, Nadine says you have to become opening to non-judgemental listening. Confront behaviours that are misaligned but ask questions that help to shift your perspective to learn where this behaviour is coming from. Behaviour is taught, and poor behaviour is dealt with by having authentic conversations. These conversations require you to go into complex human feelings, and this emotional side, Nadine believes, is greatly neglected in sports. Emotions are often considered an obstacle to performance, but emotion is needed in order to relate to your athletes as people.

Zoning Culture

Nadine admits that measuring culture can be a struggle, as numerical and data driven pieces don’t typically work for such a fluctuating system. Instead, Nadine takes a learning approach with coaches and looks at the skills they are exhibiting. She uses zones for where coaches’ skills are at and where they want to be, with upper and lower limits, and focuses on how to get coaches from never looking at culture to culture monitoring becoming an ingrained behaviour.

Cultivating culture to Nadine means you are living what you are teaching. Being a coach doesn’t mean you have to be all knowing, but rather you can show that you’re in a journey together with your teammates, and you will be held accountable to the same standard that they are. As a coach, consider what cultivating your culture can do not just for your athletes, but for yourself, because it starts with you.

Making it Happen

Find your own core values. The first step to understanding your team is understanding yourself. You can learn more about this in CYC'‘s first episode.

Learn how to have fierce conversations to address toxic behaviour and push your team to the next level.  

Nadine recommends The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle (A CYC favourite), Legacy by James Kerr to see the team culture behind New Zealand’s All Blacks, and Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead book and podcast.