Team Culture: Why do some teams pull together, even in the face of adversity? On the other hand, why do winning teams break down and go separate ways?
Team Culture: Creating Success That Endures
There are many things that characterize team culture. One of those things is that they share common goals. Second, team members share common interests. Third, team members can find a pathway to interact towards the goal.
Defining the Goal
Teams come together over a common goal. For example, Company A creates a team to increase customer satisfaction.
Common Interests
In putting a team together to increase customer satisfaction, a company picks people from different departments of a company to get a holistic view of the problem. However, the team members must share a common interest in increasing customer satisfaction.
Common Pathway
If everyone on the team will work together to layout a common pathway to accomplishing the goal, the team can move into action. On the other hand, teams without a common pathway will stumble over their differences. For example, some team members may want to begin by brainstorming the problem. One the other hand, other team members want to take a more formal, organized approach. These team members may want to identify roles and create a schedule of tasks.
Before teams can become successful, team members must find a common pathway.
The Breakdown
Second, if some team members have no interests in the goal, they will likely contribute little and may even distract from the process.
Third, until the team can decide in which order they are going to work, little work will get done. The team culture will become adversarial. Brainstormers versus the Organizers. In other words, they won’t be one team. The team culture breaks down and the team becomes just a group of people who stumble with little or no progress toward the goal.
The Solution
The solution is to consider all three points when putting the team together. Define the goal. Select people who will commit to the goal. Pick team members who have common ways for solving problems.
By following these three principles, you will create a team culture with a framework for success.