Something Wrong with Your Team Spirit or Culture? DON’T Try to Change That!
Chances are, you’ll make it even worse. Here’s what you should do instead.
First of all, why in the world would I tell you not to care about your team’s culture?! Of course, I didn’t exactly say that. What I’m saying is: if you feel there’s a bad team spirit or culture, do not try to influence your team’s culture directly. Because this does not work in most cases.
Remember the ‚team building event’ or ‚values workshop‘ after which everyone on the team felt really closer to each other and felt hopeful that this renewed spirit will shape the experience back at work? But then, even on day one after that event, you encounter your teammates and deep down you already know that the issues that concern you the most about your team’s culture did not change at all? I’m sure you do.
Why didn’t it work?
Of course there can be so many reasons. However, one very crucial reason is that an assumption behind such ‚culture-shaping interventions‘ is wrong: that culture would be something you could influence directly. Let me say that again and clearly:
You cannot influence culture directly.
That is because culture is always a result, an outcome or you could say the shadow or the memory of a social system (a group, team or organization is a social system). Culture is never the cause of what the social system as a whole does or doesn’t do.
That is basic Systems Theory, which is something like the Mathematics for <behavior of groups of people>. What it means is this: if you do not like the culture or spirit of your team you need to look somewhere else, somewhere where it originates and where you do have influence.
And yes, the good news is, this place exists: your team’s culture is a result of the conditions or setting in which your team is working. Remember when one team member left the team and a new person came in and somehow or other it did not significantly (or at all) change the atmosphere and habits of the team?
This is an example where we see this principle at work. That is not to say that the behavior of persons cannot have an impact or that people are not responsible for their actions. But they are certainly not responsible for the ‚behavior’ of your team as a whole. The behavior of your team is, to a major degree, determined by the conditions your team is working in.
Let’s get more practical
Let’s say you are concerned that your team members mostly don’t speak up openly, especially if they don’t agree with something. You could reason: „They should learn about the importance of giving feedback and how to do it competently.“ This is most probably the wrong approach. It is very unlikely that you have, say six, people in your team who all are personally not able or do not want to give feedback.
What is much more likely is that they all sense that giving critical feedback will have some type of negative consequence for them, and that is the reason why they rather don’t do it or only when it is very painful to not do it. If you are a team lead in this situation and decide to send them to a feedback training it could even make things worse! Of course they feel and know their competence or awareness is not what is holding them back. Thus this intervention will probably make them cynical, and even more reserved to give honest feedback. You will be more likely to have success if you take closer look at what happens if someone does provide critical feedback and which general condition or aspect of the setting you could change to enable a different outcome. One such condition could be your behavior as a team lead.
Another example: you observe that team members often make cynical comments about the amount of work they have to do or about often not getting things done in time. „It’s Monday again, welcome to another round of hell week.“ In this case, you could take the initiative and plan, let’s say a workshop where you together reflect on the communication in the team and how one’s personal energy influences the others to improve awareness and enable for a more constructive team climate. Here chances are even greater that such an intervention will make things worse, because here the issue is about the work itself and most of us tie their feeling of self-worth to their contribution or work.
It is more helpful to look for the reasons for these perceptions. The team may simply be used to work on too many things at once, which is stressful and makes it very hard to get things done in a reliable time frame. That is a valid reason for frustration! And this example shows even more clearly — you can set conditions (e.g. a work-in-progress-limit) that can dramatically change the results your team is producing — including the way people talk to each other about their work.
These examples also show that putting the blame for a bad team culture on the people is simply unfair, mostly not helpful at all and sometimes even harmful when this assumption drives interventions.
Instead of trying to shape or change our team’s culture, we should value it — as an indicator, as something that can give us a hint whether the conditions or setting allow(s) people to properly do their work. (And we can safely assume this is what 99% of the people really want).
So, here are some things you can do if your team culture feels off course:
- Resist the temptation of thinking it is the people — most often this assumption is wrong (and toxic).
- Take some time to dig out the reasons, e.g. in a team retrospective or in your personal reflection time. (you have that in place, right?)
- Reach out to your agile coach or organizational design coach/consultant — they are experts in deconstructing team culture and helping you identify aspects of your setting that are actually worth looking in the endeavor of meaningful change. Don’t simply ask them to prepare another workshop.
References
The theoretical basis of this article draws from Niklas Luhmann’s System Theory. Unfortunately, to date English sources about the theory and its application are either scattered or very comprehensive and ‘scientific’/dry. Therefore I also include German sources here for those who have the opportunity to read it.
For a general introduction I recommend these reads:
- Fritz Simon (2015). Einführung in die systemische Organisationstheorie.
- Stefan Kühl (2020). Organisationen: Eine sehr kurze Einführung.
- [ENG ]David Seidl (2004). Luhmann’s theory of autopoietic social systems. (PDF)
On culture specifically:
- Stefan Kühl (2017) Organisationskultur. (PDF)
- Mark Poppenborg (2016). Was ist Unternehmenskultur? (web article)
- [ENG] Mark Poppenborg (2021). https://youtu.be/yGRv1XYpfHg. (video)
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