Crafting Your Team Culture
Five monkeys were kept in a cage with a ladder and some bananas that were placed at top of the ladder. Whenever one of the monkeys would climb the ladder to get the bananas, all the monkeys were sprayed with ice cold water. Soon, the monkeys began to police themselves, and would prevent any other monkey from climbing the ladder. Eventually, the cold water was turned off, but the monkeys kept policing themselves. Then, one monkey was removed, and another monkey put in its place. The new monkey was not aware of the “forbidden” bananas, so when he tried to climb the ladder to retrieve the bananas, the other monkeys would stop him. Soon, the new monkey started policing the other monkeys too. Eventually, one by one all the monkeys were replaced in the group, but the monkeys kept policing themselves, even though the original monkeys were no longer present and the reason for policing themselves no longer existed.
This story illustrates how culture works. And it’s just as true with people, as evidenced by a recent social experiment on herd mentality captured here.
Walk with me, work with me, watch how I do it. The power of the pack is immense. As a coach, culture will either be your greatest friend or your biggest enemy. Over the next three months, we will take a closer look at culture and its impact on teams. Specifically, we will spend the next two posts defining it and exploring why it matters. After establishing a common understanding, we will share ten practical steps to more intentionally craft the culture of your team.
Culture is an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that typically emerge for practical purposes but often persist for very different reasons. Culture is central to the way we view, experience, and engage with all aspects of our lives and the world around us. It is both through non‐material ways, like ideas, beliefs, values, and norms, and through material ways, such as clothing, signs, symbols, and architecture that together shape a people’s way of life.
Culture gets its power through social pressure. If you break a law, you risk going to jail. This is a deterrent. If you break an unwritten rule within your tribe, you risk being ostracized — this is the power behind culture. Many choose to break the law and take their chances rather than break an unwritten rule and be shunned by their peers. Social pressure gives culture its power.
Culture involves cumulative influence. For instance, a national culture will have some influence over a regional culture and a regional culture will have some influence over a local culture. Similarly, an organizational culture influences the groups within the organization and specific group cultures will influence a team culture. Cumulative influence, therefore, explains that as we get closer to the team, there is an additive effect on how each culture impacts behavior. This same principle applies to individual performers.
For example, if we are seeking to understand how culture has shaped the life of a baseball player, we could make some general inferences about how culture influenced the upbringing of a player born and raised in the United States compared to athletes from Cuba or Japan. Knowing that he was raised in the Southeast would give us additional information about his world view, living in Alabama even more so. Knowing that he comes from a small town in Alabama adds additional context that would distinguish him from an athlete raised in Birmingham. The point to be made is that culture carries meaning at many different levels and there is a cumulative influence as we move from remote (United States) to close proximity (single parent low income home in Prattville, AL). It is for this reason that we are examining culture from the organizational level because it carries the greatest influence over a team. Clearly there are other cultural influences that shape team performance, but focusing on organizational culture creates clarity and reduces confusion.
Organizational culture is made up of latent values that manifest themselves as artifacts (e.g., norms, systems, symbols, language, beliefs, behavior, interactions, etc.) whereby people attach meaning to those artifacts. To be clear, latent values are not the same as an organization’s stated values. Stated values are cultural artifacts which could, in fact, be contrary to the latent values of an organization. Recently we worked with a team whose first stated value was “Accountability — dependable teammates who do what is right and challenge others to do the same.” Unfortunately, the head coach routinely showed up late to meetings and players missed classes and tutor sessions without consequence. Clearly, the latent values that drove the team’s behavior were quite different from their stated values. Teammates began to see hypocrisy in the stated values because they were not in line with the true behavior of the team and its members.
It is important for high performing teams and their staffs to understand the latent values of the organization, because they will undermine the leader if not in line with the stated values. In other words, team leaders that fail to recognize the latent values that shape behavior may establish stated values that are contradictory to reality. For instance, a coach may state the importance of integrity but the latent values of the culture encourage winning at all costs. Players would consciously, or possibly unconsciously, recognize the hypocrisy of integrity when they are repeatedly encouraged to cheat in order to win. Leaders should understand the latent values of the organization and how they are influencing behavior.
When a new coach joins a team, it is often because the previous coach failed to produce the desired results. Often the new coach is convinced he, along with a record setting recruiting class, is going to change the existing culture. What is vitally important for leaders to understand and appreciate is that latent values (i.e. culture) are pervasive and enduring. Peter Drucker said it best when he stated, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Recently, we heard a coach tell us how appalled his freshmen were with how the upperclassmen behaved. This is no surprise. The new freshmen come from winning high school programs with a very different set of latent values. What coaches fail to appreciate, however, is how much influence these juniors and seniors have over the freshmen. Sure, the coaches will have two hours a day to influence the new recruits. But the freshmen spend hours at night and on weekends with the juniors and seniors who unwittingly reinforce the norms of the current culture. Part of the natural indoctrination process of any new member of a tribe is for the leaders of the tribe to teach (formally or informally) the collective behaviors and assumptions of the tribe. This indoctrination process includes the way members perceive, think, and feel. In short, the existing culture will win if it is ignored or discounted.
Culture creates another stress to the team when it comes to the indoctrination process of new members. Being that culture shapes our world view, it is often tied to our identity and our sense of right and wrong. When new team members have a cultural world‐view that conflicts with the organizational culture, it has the potential to create extraordinary amounts of destructive behavior on a team. When potential team prospects are sold on a culture that does not actually exist, there is a strong chance that the new members will have a difficult time adjusting to the team and sometimes they choose to leave.
For instance, a new player believes that accountability is the cornerstone of a successful program, but he quickly learns that those were just words to get him to commit. His value framework is inconsistent with the latent values of the team. If he remains with the team and begins to identify with his new tribe, then he will accommodate and adapt his world view for the current cultural context. He will adopt many of the rituals of the culture and will begin to behave like other members of the tribe. Conversely, there are some recruits that will see this culture as completely alien to their own. It will be extremely hard for them to adapt to this culture, thus they may remain outsiders or leave the program.
Another consequence that befalls teams with a distinct culture is that it will attract like-minded people making it harder for a leader to change the culture. For instance, the Navy SEALs have created a persona and a culture that attract a tough‐minded, alpha male personality that inherently includes a “risk taker” mentality. Some of these risk takers use poor judgment that impacts the SEAL’s reputation; it is a cost that comes with attracting this type of person.
Unfortunately, most underestimate the commitment required to change culture. Next week we will examine the difference between culture and climate, and how culture positively impacts performance.
