When It's Time to Work on Your Team Culture?
Sep 20, 2024
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When It's Time to Work on Your Team Culture?
A team is not a group of people who work together.
A team is a group of people who trust each other.
© Simon Sinek
If you’re wondering whether it’s time to work on your team culture, the answer is simple: yes. And the longer answer? Always yes. Companies typically fall into two groups - those who think they should work on their company culture and those who are working on it.
In this article, we’ll explore why team culture is essential and what factors influence it. Moving forward, we’ll also dive into practical ideas and techniques for improving your team’s culture.
When Your Team is in Trouble
These are the common signs that your team culture might be in trouble:
High turnover rates: when people don’t stay long at your company, it’s often a sign of underlying issues with job satisfaction and employee engagement. This can point to a toxic work environment or dissatisfaction with leadership and company policies.
Lack of collaboration and communication: when workplace communication breaks down across teams, it leads to misunderstandings, errors and reduced efficiency all over the company.
Low morale and motivation: when your team members feel drained and uninspired by their work, it leads to the productivity dip and a negative impact on team spirit.
Resistance to change: when all attempts for improvements fail due to the reluctance to change anything, it’s a sign that the company culture may not encourage resilience, adaptability or growth.
Frequent conflicts: when the atmosphere is hostile, it can erode trust making team cooperation really hard.
Truly, all these statements indicate that your team culture requires effort. However, the best thing you can do for your team is not to wait for these signs to appear but to start building the workplace culture from the moment your company starts its existence.
Why a Strong Team Culture Matters
Many don’t realize that workplace culture is one of the most critical elements driving a company’s processes and progress. Think of team culture as the foundation of a house. If the foundation is strong, the structure stands firm, no matter how much pressure it faces. But if there are cracks, the house will start to crumble, no matter how beautiful or expensive it looks from the outside. A company can have the best products or strategies, but without a solid culture, it will eventually fall apart.
Here are the key benefits of having a strong team culture:
Improved employee engagement: research by Deloitte found that organizations with strong cultures have a 40% higher employee engagement rate. So when leaders clearly communicate the company’s vision, employees understand the importance of their roles. This encourages them to unite with their teammates and enhances overall engagement and collaboration.
Increased productivity and performance: when employees feel their work has meaning, they’re more likely to invest time and energy into it.
Better retention rates: people love the emotional and physical comfort. So when the environment is friendly and the atmosphere facilitates personal and professional growth, employees don’t want to seek this elsewhere.
Enhanced creativity and innovation: when the company culture aligns with employees’ values, they feel comfortable and secure. This allows them to focus their energy on generating new ideas.
Positive impact on overall company culture: people always want to come back to the place where they feel appreciated and work toward shared goals and aspirations.
Action Plan for Your Cultural Upgrade
Whether you’re starting from scratch or fixing an existing culture, you need a solid plan. Below is a high-level outline to get you started. The detailed techniques will be covered in future articles, but for now, let’s focus on the key steps for cultural transformation:
Assess the current culture: understanding the current state is crucial to identify the areas to change. What to assess:
internal and external collaboration
relationship between team members
overall atmosphere in the team
employee engagement in the life of the company
shared values
Define the desired outcome: after having an understanding of what’s missing in the current culture, create a vision of your ideal company culture. After defining what would be improved for yourself, articulate your vision to the leadership team so everyone is on board with the changes. The vision must have clear goals. For example:
improving collaboration across the company
introducing shared values that align with company goals
enhancing accountability
Identify the gaps in the current and desired cultures: once you’ve defined your vision, analyze what’s missing from the current culture. These gaps will help you craft targeted strategies to reach your cultural goals.
Create a plan: “Always have a plan” - it’s like my motto for life. I truly believe that a clear plan helps avoid lots of issues in every sphere of our lives. The plan should be a detailed outline of what should be done, when, by whom and how long it will take. It should align with the business strategy and include the way how the progress is tracked.
Make people feel involved: change shouldn’t come from just you and your bestie. Everyone needs to take part. When people feel ownership, resistance drops and trust grows. You don’t always need to share the big end goal; what matters is making expectations clear and showing how changes benefit both the team and the company.
Be a role model: people need to be lead by an example that will set the tone to the rest of the team. Your commitment to the cultural change should be contagious so other leaders could pick it up and spread the change across their teams and, thus, across the whole company.
Stay flexible: consider your plan as a guide, not something set in stone. Be open to adjusting it based on feedback and challenges, but stay committed to the overall goal.
Celebrate successes: acknowledge the positive changes and credit your team for their efforts. In this way your team will feel even more motivated to continue embracing the new culture. And that’s what we want, right?
Looking Ahead
In future articles, we’ll dive into practical techniques for improving company culture. I’ll share some of the approaches that have worked for me personally, based not only on my ideas but on what I’ve learned from working with great teams and leaders. Stay tuned for actionable tips to help your team thrive!
