How Teams Can Start Talking About Culture
We spend a lot of time talking with leaders and teams about culture. What’s interesting is how often these turn out to be new conversations for them.
This is especially true today, when people sense that culture deeply impacts productivity and well-being. Back in the “good old days” of co-located teams, culture was something we simply lived—there wasn’t an urgency to explicitly talk about it. Now, that’s changed. We must talk about it.
Even though teams know culture is a core factor in performance, learning, and talent attraction and retention, many don’t know how to start that conversation. They’ve never been taught.
Culture can feel squishy and hard to measure. Some worry that opening up about it will unleash a flood of emotions that won’t lead to action. Others believe that culture issues could be fixed simply by “holding people more accountable.” But culture doesn’t have to be the elephant in the room.
Leaders become skilled at facilitating culture conversations once they’re clear on what culture really is.
Simply put, culture is what’s normal for a team—how the team interacts, learns, and gets work done. High-performing teams have cultures marked by alignment, shared values and strengths, psychological safety, continuous experimentation, and people feeling valued and supported.
For many teams, their current culture evolved naturally over time through countless events and dynamics. But whatever culture exists now, teams can intentionally shape the culture they want—starting by having open conversations.
A team can have a culture they never consciously created—but they can learn to intentionally and collaboratively build a stronger one.
Here are three questions that make the culture conversation accessible, manageable, and productive:
What do you think are the core elements of our team culture?
What about our team’s culture do you think is working?
What is something new we could try or experiment with to make our culture even stronger?
