Culture is defined as the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group. Team culture encompasses values and behaviours that “contribute to the unique social and psychological environment of a team. Culture is what we say, what we do and what we value.
By the most basic definition, a team culture is made up of the values, beliefs, attitudes and behaviours shared by a team. It’s how people work together towards a common goal and how they treat each other. These attributes could be positive or negative.
Think of your culture as the set of underlying rules and beliefs, usually unrecognized, that determine how everyone in your practice interacts with each other and with patients. Culture is the way an organization “does business.” New team members gradually absorb the practice’s culture without being taught, usually without even noticing.
Why does culture matter?
Culture is the beliefs, values, and behaviors that a group has adopted over time as a way to survive and succeed. We all know subconsciously that culture matters because we experience its effects on performance every day.
Cultural Fit
Cultural fit is the ability for an employee to comfortably work in an environment that is in line with their own beliefs, values, and needs.
When you’re a cultural fit you’re more likely to enjoy your workplace. Be happier, commit long term, and be more productive and more engaged. This benefits you and the company.
When forming a team for a good cultural fit it’s important to be aware of your own cognitive biases. It’s human nature to gravitate towards like-minded people with the same personality or beliefs as your own.
Good Culture
Culture is created by people, not the objects placed around them. Putting a ping pong table on the floor of a corporate office made up of people with individualist or sexist attitudes will not automatically create a good culture. Culture takes time to build. It’s not tangible.
A good culture is one in which team members collaborate, share knowledge, communicate and most importantly support one another. When people feel supported and know that someone has their back they’re able to do great things. It’s like having a safety net that allows you to ask questions, have confidence, speak up and take on challenges. Not only does this benefit the company, but it benefits your own personal growth.
In organisations (or even in a society) where culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy, precise rules and processes. It leads to a permission seeking based culture. When a culture is strong, trust exists and people will do the right thing. Thus creating an autonomous environment or Strong culture = Trust = Autonomy + Efficiency.
If you break a good culture, you break the well-oiled machine that creates your products. This broken culture can be reflected in the product being built. Disjointed, broken and miss guided.
Toxic Cultures
The culture of a company begins from the values, behaviours and decisions of an organisation’s leader. If leaders are acting inappropriately and let unacceptable actions slide without discipline, this begins to normalise such behaviours as management levels trickle down.
This is why Uber’s company culture has been questioned. Recently, allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination have emerged. Many of the allegations directly involving leaders in top management positions. The CEO has since stepped down.
The perception of support and safety has been compromised for its employees.
Let’s say you were experiencing discrimination or sexual harassment at work. If the highest person in the company is behaving in the same such manner would you feel safe to speak up? Would your call for help be valued and heard? Probably not. This creates a culture of fear.
Alternatively, in a good culture, if someone feels uncomfortable they’re able to speak up because they know their company and peers will support them. In a situation where the culture is toxic, hiring in this way may further proliferate those undesirable traits. Especially if it’s coming from the top of the organisation, downwards.
Types of Team Culture
Corrosive Culture – A Corrosive Culture is highly toxic and is characterized by a lot of conflict, negativity, frustration, cliques, gossiping, distrust, and selfishness.
From a results standpoint, people become apathetic or even resistant toward team goals because they lose respect for their coaches and/or teammates.
Country Club Culture – The Country Club Culture is one of entitlement, appearances, and leisure. The priority in this culture is to look good and to have a good time rather than to win championships.
Congenial Culture – A Congenial Culture is one where the focus is primarily on getting along and preserving harmonious relationships. The group becomes more of a support group and social club rather than a high-performance team focused on achieving winning results.
Comfortable Culture – A Comfortable Culture is one where results and relationships are of moderate importance. The team sets reasonable standards and is interested in doing well but not if it pushes them out of their comfort zone.
Competitive Culture – In Competitive Cultures, there is a strong focus on results and moderate to minimal focus on relationships.
Cut-Throat Culture – In a Cut-throat Culture results reign supreme. Talent and performance are the sole criteria of success in this merciless and unforgiving culture, whereas character and people skills are often neglected.
Constructive Culture – A Constructive Culture has a solid level of focus on results and a satisfying focus on relationships. Team members are committed to being successful and are usually willing to put in the hard work necessary to achieve at the higher levels. From a relationship
Championship Culture – A Championship Culture places a premium on both results and relationships. From a results standpoint, Championship Cultures have a strong sense of mission and purpose.
Create an environment that supports continual learning – Continuous learning and identification of opportunities for improvement will help the team grow and evolve together, thereby strengthening the team culture.
Team Rituals
Rituals are as old as mankind. Rituals are vehicles of emotion, and leadership mostly takes place in our hearts: we follow those who make us feel safe, worthy and belonging to something bigger than ourselves. Rituals concentrate our attention on certain emotions, adding each individual contribution together to create a shared sensation of significance, which seems to magically multiply exponentially sometimes: “Whoa!! Did you feel that?”
Rituals harness our feelings, emotions and sensations to create a sense of community without which we cannot solve the challenges we face today. The Dalai Lama tweeted “since climate change and global economy now affect us all, we have to develop a sense of the oneness of humanity”. A ritual only works if everybody involved agrees to take it seriously, performing each task and symbolic gesture with reverence.
Leadership and Rituals – All organizations have rituals — from the mundane everyday routines (coffee breaks, tea time) to major, less frequent events like annual meetings and retirement parties.
Ritual acts on team performance
- It creates a shared identity. Successful sports coaches typically use rituals to build social bonds between team members.
- It brings team members’ external networks into the family. Good leaders know that team performance can be strongly affected by external parties.
- It stimulates the emotions and reduces anxiety. It expresses the team’s pride in their heritage and teammates.
- It reinforces desired behaviors.
In all the high performing companies, leaders make extensive use of ritual. If performance is struggling at your company, maybe a bit more ritual can deliver that sense of shared identity, stakeholder commitment, emotional energy, and productive behavior that you’re looking for.
Theory of Team Motivation
Probably the most important part of management is the manager’s responsibility for motivating the people for whom he or she is responsible. Certainly the most challenging management responsibility is how to both sustain and increase internal motivation in the work group.
Effective managers have confidence in their subordinates and trust them to a greater degree than do less effective leaders. Few motivational theories are discussed
Abraham Maslow – Maslow’s theory is that individuals are motivated to lower-order needs until these are relatively satisfied, and then higher-order needs must be met to sustain satisfaction.
- Self-actualization needs – Maximum achievement for self-fulfillment
- Esteem needs – Respect, prestige, recognition, personal mastery
- Social needs – Love, affection, relationships
- Safety needs – Security, protection, and stability
- Physiological needs – Basic human needs; food, water, housing
Douglas McGregor – Douglas McGregor introduced new theories, Theory X and Theory Y. McGregor contended that traditional management practices were rooted in certain basic negative assumptions about people (Theory X)
- Are fundamentally lazy, work as little as possible
- Avoid responsibility, lack integrity
- Are not very bright, are indifferent to organizational needs
- Prefer to be directed by others
- Avoid making decisions, are not interested in achievement
Theory Y contains the following important points –
- Physical effort in work is as natural as play.
- The threat of punishment is not the only means to achieve objectives.
- Man can exercise self-direction and self-control.
- Commitment is a function of the rewards.
- Humans can accept and seek responsibility.
- Imagination, ingenuity, and creativity are widely, not narrowly, distributed.
- Only a fraction of the intellectual potential of workers is utilized.
McGregor listed forms of motivation that would be effective for various basic human needs.
| Human Needs | Forms of Motivation |
| Physical needs (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) This translates into a job paying minimum wages. | Provide an opportunity to increase wages through good work. |
| Safety needs. A need to maintain employment even at a subsistence level. | Appeal to job security. Quality products satisfy the customer’s needs making jobs secure. |
| Social needs. The desire to be accepted as a member of a group. | Appeal to employees to not let members of their work group down. |
| Ego needs. The need for respect both internal and external. | Appeal to an employee’s pride through awards and recognition. |
| Self-fulfillment. Self-actualization through expression and creativity. | Give the employees the training and encouragement to propose creative ideas and implement them. |
Frederick W. Herzberg – Herzberg proposed that motivation can be divided into two factors, which have been referred to by a variety of names, as
- Dis-satisfiers and Satisfiers
- Maintenance factors and Motivators
- Hygiene factors and Motivators
- Extrinsic factors and Intrinsic factors
The dis-satisfiers or hygiene factors do not provide strong motivation, but do cause dissatisfaction if they are not present. On the other hand, satisfiers, motivators, or intrinsic factors do provide strong motivation and satisfaction when they are present.
Alderfer’s ERG Theory – Clayton Alderfer, a clinical psychologist, spent many years studying human motivation. In 1969, Alderfer proposed that Maslow’s needs hierarchy can be collapsed into three categories – Existence, Relatedness, and Growth – which he abbreviated the ERG Theory.
McClelland’s Acquired Needs Theory – McClelland’s Acquired Needs Theory, published in 1961 by psychologist David McClelland, holds that people’s needs reflect their life experiences. McClelland identified three needs areas that have an effect on the motivation of both individuals and organizations:
- An individual with a high need for achievement seeks to excel. These people prefer projects with an even chance of success, without excessive risk.
- Individuals with a high need for affiliation need good relationships with other people and need to feel accepted by others. They function well in a team.
- An individual’s need for power can be one of two types – personal or institutional. Those who need personal power want to direct others.
Work design refers to the arrangement of tasks and the amount of flexibility that workers have, as well as the existence of support systems.
