Archive for the ‘One-Team’ Category

5 essentials to build a team culture

I could really not let this whole month go by without a reference to the World Cup.   My sister-in-law tells me that what you need as a woman in business is to develop two very good sentences on every sporting topic.  To introduce this blog I offer you mine on soccer.

As I watch different teams play, and read the commentaries in the newspapers which I get delivered each day to my Kindle, I remember the impact on performance that the culture of a team can have.  France and Germany come to mind, for those of you watching the soccer.  A lot of my attention is taken with working on the culture of larger organizations, but of course a team leader can create their own unique culture within their team.  The team sits within the environment of a wider culture, and today the English newspapers have moved on to writing about the different cultures in the national football federations of England, and of Germany, who beat them soundly.  They don’t use the word culture, but those readers familiar with the framework for building culture covered in my book will be able to spot the references to behaviors, symbols and systems.  But, with the right leadership, individual teams can operate above and beyond the culture within which they sit.

So back to teams.  What are the five essentials to build the culture you want in your team?

  1. Set standards together and agree to be held to them.  Standards need to be objective and observable.  They can relate to behavior and to actions.  ‘No interruptions’ is a standard.  So is ‘Start and end all meetings on time’.  ‘Be supportive to each other’ is not.
  2. Point out examples when the standards are exceeded, and call it when they are breached.  If people are not good at doing this, offer training.  This is a learnable skill.
  3. Line up the agendas of your meetings with the purpose of the team, which is the value the team adds as a team, over and above the value they add as individuals.  If the primary purpose of the team is to share best practice, don’t spend most of the time reviewing last month’s performance results.
  4. Select, promote and restructure team members with the team in mind.  The culture of the team matters if it is delivering a value in excess of that which the individuals could add if you managed them one on one.  A new team member whose behavior is out of line with the developing team culture can diminish the performance of the overall team.
  5. Clear the air.  Schedule time to resolve differences or unspoken resentments.  Get help from outside the team if you need it.  Internal Organizational Development people or external facilitators.  This has symbolic as well as immediate impact.  It shows that you value relationships as much as task.

If I had a third intelligent sentence to say on soccer, I would end this blog with a comment about the standards that I think England should have adopted.  But I will have to leave that to you to work out.

The future of leadership

How much more comfortable do most leaders feel doing the task side of their role, in preference to the human and cultural one?  So often I watch leaders spending a huge amount of time focussed on the slides they are going to present in a meeting, rather then reflecting on the key personal message they want to deliver.  Task is so much within comfort zone for most people.  (Clue about comfort zone – when you are outside of comfort zone, you can feel it in your gut.  Yes, it is physically uncomfortable.  If you are not feeling that too often, maybe you are more in your comfort zone than you might imagine).

When I consider why many leaders spend so little time on culture, I conclude that it sits outside their comfort zone for two reasons.  First, most leaders do not know how to systematically go about building the culture they want.  And not knowing makes everyone uncomfortable.  Second, changing culture means changing yourself, and that’s not the most comfortable arena either.

So it is always very encouraging for me to hear a CEO of a super successful company acknowledge culture as the most important role of the leader.  Here is a Newsweek interview with John Chambers, CEO of Cisco.  Its long, but some highlights

  • Minute 2.30 he speaks about how he has changed his view on the importance of culture
  • Minute 16.20 he gives a great example of how to walk your talk, and reinforce the behaviors you want in others.
  • The whole interview  is peppered with other examples of the levers – behaviors, symbols, systems -  he pulls to change culture.

Chambers has taken one-team/collaboration and obsessive customer focus, as his critical cultural drivers. He has done 137 acquisitions, and been very clear that the Cisco culture will be the culture of the new acquisition.  And he has built revenues from $2bn to $36bn in 15 years.

My conclusion about the future of leadership.  Culture will become seen as a critical leadership role.  The skill of culture management will become more widespread (our company intends to help this process).  And leaders who can sit comfortably outside of comfort zone, and work with their own behavior and that of others, will be the ones who succeed.

Culture in a virtual team

Today a client asked me to help him think through how to build culture in a virtual environment.  The business unit he leads is spread across the world, and employees physically sit inside the country organization.  Communication is through email and phone calls, and meetings occur at most twice a year.  Many leaders face this challenge, including those who are leading a functional group (HR, Finance, Marketing) who sit in a local organization but should also have affinity with the larger functional team.  Working arrangements may mean that some team members may work from home, or spend much of their life at client sites.

Culture is so strongly influenced by identity, in the sense that individuals will want to fit in to the group they feel identified with.  Peers are an important influence on behavior, and in a structure like this individuals may be unclear who they really count as their peers.  Leading a virtual teams is like living without one of your five senses.  One element of human communciation, rapport building and influence – the face to face encounter – is missing from the equation.

And, as with those who do not have use of their eyes, or their ears, the other senses have to adapt and become much stronger to compensate.  What does that mean in practical terms.  Here are three simple ideas I have found help with leading virtual teams and building a common culture.

  • Meeting etiquette and format matters a great deal because it serves to bring people closer.  A ritual of having everyone say a few words at the start engages everyone (the ‘check in’).  Starting and ending strictly on time (we’ve all been left hanging listening to music on conference calls where the leader is late).  Asking people direct questions by name.  Having an agenda.  Being very clear on the purpose of each call.  I think of these as the equivalent of speaking very clearly to someone who is deaf.  Virtuality makes the nuance less effective.  Everything has to be more deliberate.
  • Be human on email.  Have you ever tried to read the emails you send out loud?  If they don’t sound like you when you talk normally, you are missing an opportunity to engage with your virtual team.  When email becomes the main form of human contact, it has to expand to show more of who you are.
  • Connect on Facebook.  People’s Facebook entries show the person behind the name.  For virtual teams, Facebook can become the equivalent to going out for a drink together.

Virtual teams who build strong cultures dedicate time to accentuating the mechanisms they do have available to them to build shared values, norms and connection.  Do you have ideas to share based on what has worked for you?