Fostering a Positive Team Culture
By Courtney Hanson
The Stepping Stone, March 2023
All the places that I choose to spend my time have their own cultures:
- As a people leader, it is a part of my job to create a team environment that fosters innovation and cooperation.
- At home, my husband and I are creating our family culture for our three young boys that encourages curiosity and generosity.
- At volunteer organizations, I am on a team that is working together to meet a need we see in our community.
Each organization in which I participate, or volunteer has their own goals and a distinct group of relationships. To cultivate a culture where I and others want to be and give our time requires effort.
Upon reading Daniel Coyle’s “The Culture Code,”[1] I appreciated his examples of leadership and the creation of culture in a variety of scenarios. Mr. Coyle’s book focuses on three skills that he has determined are at the heart of great teamwork—safety, vulnerability, and purpose—interwoven with real life scenarios of when they are working well and what happens when they do not.
The book is broken into sections focusing on each skill. He outlines and gives examples of the skill, with a final chapter that provides tangible “Ideas for Action,” perfect for boiling down the general concept and giving a takeaway to the reader to put into practice. Each section has pages of ideas for action, and I will share here a way that I chose to implement the call to action for each skill set.
Safety: “Create Safe, Collision-rich Spaces”
My management team and I read this book together and wanted to focus on creating more “safety” in our department. The concept of “collisions” is defined as “serendipitous personal encounters that form community and encourage creativity and cohesion.” These are the moments when you bump into someone on the way to the restroom or heating up lunch—those “water cooler” moments. His recommendation is to design workspaces so that the physical proximity creates more collisions.
Now this book was published in 2018— when that recommendation would make sense. But we were reading this book in 2020 when you didn’t collide with literally anyone outside of your bubble, let alone coworkers. We needed a different approach to apply this concept.
We asked ourselves: how do we get people to collide virtually? Moments that used to be more serendipitous had to transform into something deliberate. We designed a “Colleague Connect” program where we semi-randomly connect two people each month. Both set up a 30-minute one-on-one meeting with each other, and each person has a turn to “lead” the meeting.
We intentionally communicated that the purpose was personal connection, and they don’t have to focus fully on work, but that we did want them to also share something work related. We provided potential agenda topics:
- Something you’re proud of;
- An issue that you’re currently struggling with and on which you could use another perspective;
- A topic that you’re an expert on; and
- Ask for the other person’s expertise on a particular topic.
More than anything, these virtual meetings are to show that we encourage and support spending time connecting.
A particularly notable connection occurred when one person had just had a rough week with a particular tool and was using the connection time to vent about the difficult week. Their partner happened to know a solution to the problem and set up a follow up meeting to coach them and solve the problem. These two colleagues wouldn’t have run into each other organically as they were on different teams and in different cities. More than solving a specific problem—a relationship was created to allow the person to ask for help sooner in the future. At the end of the day, we hope that these relationships give staff the ability to cast a wider net when they encounter something difficult.
Vulnerability: “Make Sure the Leader is Vulnerable First and Often”
As a child I had the illusion that my parents were perfect. My parents didn’t admit fault and as a result I felt they just didn’t make mistakes. Apologies didn’t come easily to my family of origin, and it created a culture where admitting you were wrong was difficult. As a co-leader of my own family, my husband and I are purposefully creating a culture where we acknowledge that mistakes are a part of life and that how we handle the mistakes matters the most.
As the leaders, my husband and I need to be vulnerable first and set the example for our children. I do this by apologizing to my kids and taking ownership of my own actions. Sometimes I’ve had a long day at work, am trying to make dinner and hear a chorus of “MOMMY!!!” and ask not too kindly for them to be quiet. It takes vulnerability to tell them I’m sorry for snapping at them and admitting that I didn’t handle the situation in the best way.
When “the leader is vulnerable first and often,” there are ripples that flow into the team. My children are still young, but they know how we apologize in our family. The example we set as parents acknowledges that we hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect them to live up to.
Purpose: “Name and Rank Your Priorities”
In most companies, departments and teams, there is always more to do than there is time for. This became abundantly clear on my team earlier this year when a series of events caused my team to be less than 50 percent staffed, leaving only a few people to do both the planned work and manage the large incoming requests for unplanned work. It was unrealistic to expect the team to accomplish all of it.
The recommendation to “name and rank your priorities” is pertinent to even the best of times, but when times are rough it is incredibly useful. I sat down and ranked the priorities for each person on the team, and for the team in general. I clearly called out the items that we would plan on delivering, the ones we would work on if time permitted and then all the items that we would not be working on. More than that I noted that one of my highest priorities was that I did not want the remaining team members to shoulder the burden and get burnt out.
As a team, it was invaluable to have a clear list to focus on and re-direct when more requests came in. What I expected to be a dumpster fire ended up being a controlled burn while we were able to get fully staffed.
Conclusion
This was one of the best books I’ve read on creating culture, with numerous tangible actions to apply to your daily life at work, home or wherever you are connecting and working with other people. I would highly recommend reading the book, but more than that I challenge you to implement one of the calls to action that Mr. Coyle provides. Creating the culture you desire requires time and effort, but it creates a space where you and others want to be and feel like you belong.
Statements of fact and opinions expressed herein are those of the individual authors and are not necessarily those of the Society of Actuaries, the editors, or the respective authors’ employers.
Courtney Hanson, FSA, MAAA, is a manager of Actuarial at Cambia Health Solutions. She can be reached at courtney.hanson@regence.com. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtney-hanson-fsa-maaa-965697168/