7 Simple Statements to Foster a High-Performing Team Culture
How to cultivate creativity, connection, and candor across your organization
Words matter.
Sure, what’s said in big speeches by senior executives may express corporate intent, but team culture is defined by the everyday vernacular much more than the podium speech. And small vocabulary changes can make a big difference.
Of course, no amount of language matters without the demonstrated character to back up what you say, and each of the following statements has a foundation in humility. So, if your goal as a leader is to elevate yourself, this article won’t be helpful (and you’re not a leader, but that’s an entirely different article). But if your goal is to build a team that works hard and works well together, let’s dive in.
1. “Hi, team …”
Instead of: Individually listing names or addressing the group in a generalized greeting
When connecting with multiple people, I greet everyone — regardless of the audience or communication medium — as a team. The word team helps provide a framing for how the group can view themselves (as team members), which insinuates a variety of helpful messages: we all belong, we have a common goal we need each other to accomplish, et cetera.
This initial context setting is important because whenever adults come together, there is an initial identity crisis (at least subconsciously) of how everyone relates to everyone else, inhibiting productivity and innovation until resolved. This is demonstrated by how kindergartners routinely beat CEOs and MBAs at the timed spaghetti tower challenge (introduced by Peter Skillman), since kindergartners easily collaborate as peers, while adult teams spend a significant amount of time trying to organize group roles and consider each other’s plans.
Addressing a group as a team also avoids any subconscious exclusion (you don’t want to accidentally forget that one person’s name) and eliminates the hierarchy of whose names to say in what order (which contributes to the jockeying for group dominance). Preemptively suggesting a mental schema for the group dynamic as a team, especially when quickly reinforced with stated shared goals (such as “We’re all excited to …” or “We can all agree it’s important that …”), can improve not only the collaborative nature of a meeting but the culture as well.
2. “The next time we meet, let me know at least one way we can make this better, especially around ____.”
Instead of: “Any feedback on this? [Wait two seconds] No? Great, let’s keep going.”
Receiving honest feedback is tough. It’s much easier for others to say they don’t have any feedback on the topic in question for a variety of reasons: to minimize mental effort by avoiding strategic thinking about gaps or opportunities, to avoid potentially hurting your feelings if they’re not confident you’ll receive the feedback well, and/or to minimize the reputation risk of giving feedback with which others disagree. Rob Fitzpatrick published an excellent breakdown of the biases against honest feedback in The Mom Test. As a leader, asking for feedback from your team has the additional challenge of being easily perceived as asking if anyone would like to challenge your authority.
With all these biases working against feedback, the phrasing of feedback requests is key. Let’s break down this second recommended statement into its component parts…
Statement part one: “The next time we meet …”
The human brain is not designed to come up with our most creative ideas on the spot. Research shows human creativity actually expands the longer someone grapples with a concept, so while asking for feedback on the spot may draw some immediate gut reactions from the more extroverted members of your team, you’ll miss out on the more fully developed perspectives without giving space for others to think and come back with a response. To paraphrase Adam Grant:
We cannot conflate the confidence to speak up in the moment with the competence to provide a valuable critique.
Starting a feedback request with the context of expecting a delayed response (like “The next time we meet …”) removes the pressure for instant inspiration without denying space for initial reactions.
Statement part two: “let me know at least one way … especially around ______.”
As with all questions, specificity is the prerequisite to intentionality. So a broad prompt, like “any feedback?” often solicits a broad response, like “Nope, looks good!” It’s unfair to ask general questions but expect specific, actionable responses. To receive helpful feedback, define the ask (“let me know at least one way …”) and narrow the scope of the ask (“especially around _____ topic”).
Statement part three: “we can make this better …”
To counteract any stigma around feedback potentially coming off as offensive or competitive, where the feedback request is putting your ideas up against someone else’s ideas and asking them to prove you wrong, leverage “we” over “me.” If “we” can make something better based on feedback, now both people are on the same team with the same goal of improving the topic, and feedback can become mutually beneficial instead of oppositional.
3. “Thank you for asking that.”
Instead of: Immediately responding to a question.
When someone asks a question, always confirm the validity of the question before answering. Why? Because asking a question requires courage, and others will notice how you respond to inform their willingness to ask questions in the future. Everyone interprets the world through a unique lens based on their perspectives and experiences, so whenever you communicate information to others, there is comprehension leakage that occurs as people interpret what you say through their personal context. This is natural, and questions are the best defense against misinterpreting messaging.
If you don’t actively and continually celebrate questions, asking them will feel risky, and innate self-preservation will lead your team to try and figure out the appropriate interpretation later or from someone else’s perspective, which is inefficient and often incorrect, as we all learned from playing the telephone game growing up.
Simply celebrating questions with an affirming phrase before answering them helps create a culture of question asking, which provides you better feedback as a communicator on how to be more clear, and helps your team understand the message so they can implement it effectively.
4. “When you did X, it created Y impact for Z audience.”
Instead of: “Thanks for all your hard work.”
If you spend time around young kids, you’re familiar with the question “Did you see me do that?” This innate human desire never goes away, as evidenced by recognition being one of the five foundational pillars of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Let’s break down this statement as well …
Statement part one: “When you did X …”
Of course, recognition of existence is not the same as recognition of unique contributions. In fact: general recognition can easily come across as an insult to an exceptional contributor.
Any man married to a woman should know this. Saying “You look nice” to your spouse is not the same as “Wow, the way you styled your hair tonight turned out really well—you rock that wavy look.” The husband doesn’t need to know the technical differences between a balayage and an ombré hairstyle to give an effective compliment, but the more specific our compliments, the more ownership the complimented person can feel in their role to earn it.
A compliment is a gift. Receiving a handcrafted, engraved gift based on your unique interests is much more special than a generic airport gift shop present. Generic compliments are the verbal equivalent of airport gift shop gifts, they can actually do more harm than good when given. So, make an effort when giving a compliment to pinpoint a specific trait worthy of praise.
Statement part two: “it created Y impact for Z audience.”
Thought leaders for millennia have taught, and scientific research agrees, helping others makes the helper feel fulfilled. So, connecting an individual’s actions to a benefitted audience from their action helps them derive meaning from their work. This is especially important for people who don’t interact with the end beneficiaries of their work (here’s another article that dives deeper into meaning as a sustainable team motivator).
There are few higher-value uses of a leader’s time than giving a genuine, specific compliment. They only require a few seconds but can be cherished for a lifetime.
5. “Here at _____, we believe _____.”
Instead of: “Because I said so.”
This relates to the previous notion of incorporating “we” instead of “me” into asking for feedback. Leveraging position to force compliance is lazy management and creates an oppositional “me” versus “you” culture. Creating core values, or beliefs, which are actionable for decision-making and critique-giving is hard work (here is an article on how to do it), but leveraging a form of team beliefs to drive individual action is more sustainable because research shows humans are communal beings. Shared values are a powerful connective tissue to community building.
We need to feel we belong — not belong to someone in an org chart.
Management hierarchy can only manage to people’s minimal effort, while feeling part of a community can unlock people’s best efforts. Acting out of shared beliefs instead of order compliance also gives space for creativity and innovation to take place. This is because while the onus of ownership for an order is on the order giver (if something goes wrong, people will say, “Well it’s not my fault, they told me to!”), the ownership of enforcing a shared belief is on everyone. And when team members have ownership of their tasks, they can bring their unique and best selves to do the task better.
6. “I was wrong. Thank you for helping me see that.”
Instead of: Downplaying the error or shifting blame for the outcome.
Leaders set the tone for their team. Being willing to accept mistakes in front of your team normalizes them doing the same. Teams who don’t feel safe to admit mistakes cover them up, giving the leader a skewed picture of reality and compounding problems’ ultimate negative impact.
Insecure leaders need validation that they’re right; secure leaders will champion their team, even if it means admitting they were wrong.
No one is perfect, and teams don’t expect their leader to be. But everyone can be honest, and teams should expect honesty from a leader. Avoiding ownership of error creates internal politics focused on a cascading shifting of blame instead of a collective focus on solutions.
The business world moves fast. Sometimes, making the best decision in the moment with the information available turns out to be the wrong decision in the long run. To remain competitive, you can’t always wait for all the variables to play out to make a fully contextualized decision. And that’s okay. What’s not okay is refusing to accept the wrong decision was made, to identify any learning opportunities, and to move forward quickly with better context for the next decision.
7. “I don’t know that answer. What do you think? [and/or Can I get back to you?]”
Instead of: Guessing or rambling to avoid a direct response.
One of the most dangerous fallacies around leadership is that leaders should know all the answers. Similar to setting the tone by accepting failure, accepting ignorance is just as important. Without a leader and team’s willingness to explore new concepts, how can they ever expect to grow personally, let alone innovate their business or industry? It may feel like a weakness to not know all the answers, but admitting limits to your knowledge actually drives credibility for the things you do know how to answer.
It’s important to differentiate acknowledging initial ignorance from simply accepting ignorance. While no one can be an expert at everything, and a leader doesn’t have to know all the technical nuances of their team members’ skills, leaders need to ensure any question they’re asked is answered. Not necessarily immediately, and not necessarily by the leader themselves, but following through on questions asked communicates the value of questions and the questioner.
If you don’t know the answer to an inquiry— after acknowledging that you don’t — you can ask for insight from the question asker, and/or ask for time to track down an answer. People who ask questions know to ask them because they have context. Hence, by asking a few Socratic questions around their perspective on the situation, you may be able to help the questioner come to their own conclusions faster than you could. As previously discussed, everyone sees the world through a unique perspective, so it may also be helpful to gain additional perspective from others involved in or affected by the question at hand to understand a full picture of the situation. In either scenario, delegating authority to those closest to the question is often the most efficient way to make the most effective choice.
While leaders always maintain responsibility for outcomes, they don’t have to — and at scale cannot — own the authority for every decision.
Combining vocabulary with action
In the words of Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, “Culture is a thousand things, a thousand times.” No seven statements will transform a culture on their own, but what the above statements represent — humility, clarity, recognition, community, and empowerment — when these principles are lived out and reinforced by intentional vocabulary, they will build teams that change the world.
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