Shaping team culture offers a powerful, bottom-up approach to transforming organisational culture. By fostering trust, engagement, and collaboration at the team level, organisations can drive meaningful change one step at a time.
Most culture transformation efforts fail because leaders try to mechanistically change everything at once. Complexity, bureaucracy, and politics get in the way, slowing down the effort. People get frustrated way before they can see any positive results.
What if, instead of a top-down approach, you try to improve your culture from the inside out?
The culture of your organisation is the sum of all subcultures and shaping team culture is easier than organisational culture. Teams can focus on behaviours they can control. The smaller the group, the greater the sense of belonging we feel. The closer the culture is to the work, the more relevant and powerful it becomes. Focusing on team culture can boost the overarching company culture and bring meaningful change from within, one team at a time.
Focusing on team culture allows for testing new ideas on a smaller scale before wider implementation, reducing risk and providing faster insights.
For example, a team could try a new way of practicing feedback or peer-to-peer accountability, gain insights, and refine it before a company-wide rollout.
The Benefits of Shaping Team Culture
Increases Trust: trust is the biggest differentiator between high and low-performing teams. Enjoying working with coworkers and having strong relationships are vital to building a strong team culture. Being part of “a team you can trust” significantly increases engagement by eight times.
Increases Engagement: research shows that feeling part of a team increases engagement. Those who work mainly within a team are more than twice as likely to be fully engaged.
Enhances Collaboration and Innovation: Subcultures provide a safe space for experimentation – to test new ways of working that could potentially be scaled across the organization. By embracing and nurturing subcultures, your organization can improve its overarching culture and performance. Uncovering best practices within teams can lead to significant improvements across the organization.
Creates a Sense of Belonging: Small groups are the most important social formation because they create deep connections. Team size directly correlates with collaboration. When a team grows beyond 20 members, collaboration naturally decreases. Subcultures provide a strong sense of identity and belonging. They have their own way of doing things but still play ball with others. They align with the broader organizational direction and are open to collaboration.
Facilitates Faster Decision-Making: Decentralizing decision-making to the team level increases ownership and speed. When teams own their decisions, they move faster and have a stronger sense of ownership – they act like owners, not just employees. Shifting decision-making rights closer to those directly involved in the work increases ownership. With freedom comes accountability. Team members are more invested and proactive in finding solutions when they are responsible for both the solution and the results.
Team Culture Cannot Be at the Expense of Cross-Team Collaboration
While encouraging team sub-culture is crucial, it should not come at the expense of cross-team collaboration. Silos emerge when a specific team or department intentionally avoids collaborating with others. It could be driven by several reasons – from arrogant leaders to competing priorities or inconsistent behaviours. Silos happen when two teams see each other as competitors, not allies.
Subcultures provide a strong sense of identity and belonging.
They have their own way of doing things but still play ball with others. They align with the broader organizational direction and are open to collaboration.
How to Foster Collaboration Among Teams with Different Needs
Inter-team trust is a critical criterion for effective collaboration. For trust to be built between teams, both need to build behaviours and attitudes that demonstrate:
Integrity or doing the right thing: ensure that ethical standards and integrity are upheld across all teams to build trust with these teams.
Respect: acting in the best interest of the collaborators, rather than self-interest.
Commitment or being clear about their objectives, willing to hold each other accountable and talking pride in meeting expectations.
Authenticity: keeping it real and being willing to acknowledge unknows, uncertainties and failures.
Credibility: expertise that demonstrates capability and competence.
Dependability: knowing that they have each other’s backs and can be relied on to what they say they will do.
Transparency: being open to new ideas, feedback and willingly sharing information and insights.
Candor: being willing to confront and challenge honestly and in ways that build rather than break relationships.
Inclusion: being invited to each other’s tables and having a voice there. Being included in their thinking minimises the possibility of setting teams up for failure.
By focusing on these strategies, organisations can foster a culture of collaboration while still nurturing the unique subcultures within each team.
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