How Can You Use Strengths For Team Culture?

In this episode, Mike Ganino joins Lisa to answer the question: How can team culture be shaped by strengths?

So, how is company culture shaped by your personal strengths and the overall lineup of natural talents on your team?

If It Is So Important For Managers To Build Culture, Why Can I Only Find Articles About Offering Stand Up Desks And Pinball Machines - Perks That HR Offers?

We love to talk about culture, write about it, read about it, and even watch the 2,000,000 videos on Youtube about it. We love to blame it, leverage it, and try to change it. We spend billions of dollars and a whole bunch of hours on employee engagement and culture improvement initiatives to try to improve it and yet we keep coming up empty.

Is it really all about office fun slides, cold brew coffee on tap, and nap rooms? Do the rest of us have a chance at dipping into the power of culture without the budget of a tech giant who seems to print their own cash?

If you're managing a project, team, or division inside of a bigger organization, do you have any chance of fixing things if the wider organization isn't promoting the kind of vibe you're looking for? Before I answer all of those questions, let's get clear on exactly what culture is and what it isn't.

Does The Physical Environment Create Culture?

So culture is not about the stated values written in the handbook or hanging on a wall somewhere. It's not about the mission that adorns the company website or the funky design of the open office floor plan. It's not even about how often you get together for happy hours. It isn't about making everyone happy all the time or being a pet-friendly workplace.

Yeah, I get it. I love the idea of an office full of cuddly little Corgis as much as the next person, but I know it won't help improve the business or the working conditions for the team. It's possible to have a great culture even when the perks aren't best in class. Yes, even when there aren't fancy modern Norwegian looking desks all around.

Sorry to break it to all those fun committees out there, but we don't need another group picnic to have a great culture. Now I'm not saying that all of those things aren't useful and aren't helpful. I mean, the point of them should be in getting people to connect with each other. So if you are one of these fun committee folks out there, don't despair — but I do want you to consider changing your objectives a little bit.

Instead of getting people to sign up to go have fun together outside of work, make sure that the events are helping people build relationships — helping them connect with people they don't normally talk to — because if we all go to happy hour and we all just talk to the normal people we talk to, it isn't improving your culture.

So if you are doing fun stuff, make sure you're getting the best out of it by making sure that you're encouraging people to talk to people they don't normally interact with.

Culture = The Existing Beliefs On The Team

Okay, back to the topic at hand. See, culture is actually the collection of beliefs on your team. Don't worry, I'm not going to go all hippy dippy here and ask you to start meditating or saying namaste day to each other.

But culture is still the beliefs that your team has about what it's like to work there. Their beliefs about your leadership. Their beliefs about what matters. It's the beliefs about how they act, how they work, and how they build relationships. Those shape the way we treat each other.

If I were to meet you and I thought, hey, this is someone pretty awesome. If my belief about you was that you were a good person and I thought I wanted to get to know you, I would act a certain way. If my belief about you was that you were out to get me or that you were somebody who was ... you know, not so fun to be around, then I would treat you a different way.

To Get More Practical, Think Of The Beliefs As Stories Or Examples That Get Passed Around

I like to think of those beliefs as stories. The stories we tell at work, the stories we tell ourselves (and sometimes we tell each other at work) are our beliefs. They impact the way we choose to act, the way we choose to work and the relationships we commit to at work. The stories that we tell each other become the culture of the company.

Every company has stories that are unspoken expectations about things like:

• The way things get done

• When it’s a good idea to speak up (or stay quiet)

• What kind of people and behaviors wins or lose (and how the game of work is played)

That becomes your culture. The stories your employees tell is where your culture lives. Think of what they'd say:

• What is their story about their first day at work or their first week?
• What are their beliefs about performance reviews?
• What are their beliefs about speaking up in meetings and contributing their best ideas to projects?

Do you know what they're telling each other? Do you know what you're telling your new hires or even what they’re telling themselves? Because all of those things are being played out in the team culture.

When it comes time to sit down in a meeting and contribute, when it comes to showing up for a performance conversation and saying, "I'm invested in this because this is about making me better." All of those stories are ultimately what shape and drive your culture.

Now, I'm not saying that you need to just basically go and create a whole new world of storytelling at work. There are a lot of storytelling folks out there who focus on brand and marketing storytelling, which is really about controlling the narrative. No, no. That's not what I'm suggesting here. It's not about attempting to control it.

Is It Effective To Try To Guide Or Control The Stories That Get Passed Around?

I'm not telling you to control your culture or control your narrative. In fact, I don't think you can. What I'm saying is, as a leader, as a manager, as somebody who wants to make a difference, you have the power and the ability to fuel a different kind of story, and when you fuel that different kind of story, you create a different set of beliefs which creates a different set of actions from your team and those sorts of actions. You probably guessed it: those create your culture.

The way we decide to show up every day is the culture. Some of that is based on how we see leaders around us responding and behaving. A lot of it is based on what the expectations are every day about how you interact with each other.

So if you're a leader and you've been thinking, "Hey, I want to start thinking about culture in a different way. But we can't get the insurance to do a slip and slide through the grassy area outside of the office.” Well, you don't need to do any of that. In fact I wouldn't recommend it. It even sounds a little weird and creepy.  What you can do is start to source the positive stories that your team is already telling.

How often do you ask and listen to and document what's really going on with team members (outside of an annual employee engagement survey)? How often do you look for the common variables and the stories they tell?

Are you collecting long-form survey data - more than just a score on a piece of paper? Ask questions like:

• What do you believe leadership cares about here?
• What do you think matters most here?
• Or how do you think people get ahead in this organization?

Uncover The Stories That Highlight What You Already Do Well As A Team

You can use the stories that you hear to start to uncover common trends in your culture. Then you'll see a maybe not so surprising thing (because you're on a strengths-focused website, after all)  — you'll start to recognize the strengths of your team. You'll start to see what your culture is strong at. You'll start to see what your leaders are strong at. I'd imagine that those start to look like things that you would have found in a StrengthsFinder assessment. You'll start to see ideas and words resonating.

If your team is all about taking action, you're going to notice that your team is all about moving forward and not stopping to consider lots of options. You're going to see that and you're going to recognize that as one of the strengths that people have.

What's interesting is that you can also use those to start to develop a clearer story for your culture. Once you understand what the strengths of your team (and the strengths of your overall culture) are, then you can get specific about telling more stories like that. You can start to use that information for interviews and 1x1 and team conversations. You can even use the information to help you set customer expectations.

Leveraging your strengths gives you a really interesting opportunity to create a new kind of culture. So let's go back to culture for just a minute to look at how it morphs in clusters.

If You Work For A Large Company, Create A Culture Pocket

When you think about culture, a lot of times what happens is that we think of this big, big culture of the entire organization. That might be true if you're working for a small company where there are only 20 of you. Then yes, the culture of the team is probably the culture of the company and I would argue that the culture of a 20-employee team probably matches up pretty closely with how the founder believes and thinks and acts.

As a company gets bigger and bigger and you start to go into national and global territory with the hundreds or thousands of employees. You start to see that cultures get pocketed. There's a chapter in the Company Culture for Dummies book where I talk about cultural pockets and I show how even in a huge organization there are all of these little cultures that exist.

You have the ability to create a culture pocket for the way that your team interacts. You don't have to worry about having perks and happy hours and food trucks outside of your office every day in order to get top talent and be known as a great place to work. You know, Lisa always says that differences are differentiators and I can't agree more when it comes to culture.

Notice What Already Works - What Already Attracts People To Your Team

If you start to use the stories of the strengths of your team, you'll start to see the differences on your team. You know, Apple is a very different place to work than Google. Both are interesting companies creating cool new products and services, but it feels very different to work at each place. They both have cool offices and perks and benefits, but it feels different to work there. The digital component of Disney feels very different than working at Netflix. Why? Because of culture.

At the end of the day, the three weeks of vacation, the ping pong tables, the catered lunches — those don't necessarily drive the experience with each other. These perks don't change the relationships or the stories that we have about our coworkers, our manager, or the work we do. These perks are easy to copy and if perks were all that it took to build a great culture, then everyone could do it.

By leveraging your strengths to tell new kinds of stories about your team and the way you work, you can start to find the thread of your culture and then you can leverage it, communicate it and double down on it so that you can get the kind of people on your team who can help it grow. Whether you're a team of 10 or you're a company of thousands, leveraging those parts of your strengths to create new stories will drive your culture.

Don’t Worry - You Don’t Have To Create A Circus Of Entertainment At The Office

Look, you don't have to treat people like preschoolers who need to be tickled, entertained, and fed every hour to have a great culture. It's about diving in, listening to the stories, promoting those stories of your existing strengths - and creating new ones over time.

As a leader, your job is to find stories based on the strengths of your team and the group. That allows you to pull out the threads of awesomeness and build on what already comes easily to your team. So go out there and start thinking about culture in a new way. You don't need 5 tips, 7 Hacks, 9 habits — you don't need any of that. What you need to do is start listening to the stories and changing the way your team works.

Get More Culture Learning From Mike

• Watch the video training on how to uncover cultural stories that highlight your strengths
• Company Culture for Dummies - Book by Mike Ganino
• Chat with Mike on Twitter about his Corgi, living in LA, or … oh yeah, team culture

 

Here's A Full Transcript of the 16 Minute Episode

 

Lisa [0:04]: You're listening to Lead Through Strengths, where you'll learn to apply your greatest strengths at work. I'm your host, Lisa Cummings, and I gotta tell you, it's hard to find something more energizing and productive than using your natural talents every day at work.

And today, you'll explore the concept of team culture, and I brought my friend, Mike Ganino, along to give you a more expert view on the concept of culture. So, I do this year-long program with leaders and as I'm delivering it, we talk a lot about the art side of people management. And all of this is through the lens of strengths and what came up this month was this big, heavy word. At least it was weighing heavily on everyone. And that word was culture - team culture, corporate culture, engaging culture, any way you slice culture, it was really heavy on their minds.

And several managers were saying, “Oh, man, this is tough. We work for a giant company, and even if I know my team strengths, and even if we have a neat, small team vibe going on, the word culture makes me think of something beyond my ability to influence.” And so their conversation immediately made me think of my friend, Mike Ganino, coz he literally wrote the book on Team Culture.

So by the way, that book that I'm talking about is called Company Culture for Dummies. And so if you want to grab a copy on Amazon so you can go deep on the topic after the show, you got it right there. And Mike really is the right one to answer this question from my manager group, because he lives and breathes team culture as his full career focus. So, he's gonna get you a better answer than I would. So, I got him to jump in to our leaders during sandbox for a few minutes to directly answer your question.

So, Mike, the leaders and the strengths champions who listen to the show, want your help. And I, what I keep hearing from them is some variety of this reaction. They say things like, -

“Oh, geez, oh, isn't this culture thing too big to tackle as one human? I've read a million blog posts, I've really been diving into the topic, but all I get is impractical advice.”

So where do we even start on something like this?

 

Mike [2:30]: Oh, culture. We'd love to talk about it, write about it, read about it, watch the 2 million plus videos on YouTube about it. We love to blame it, leverage it and even try to change it. We spent billions of dollars and a whole bunch of hours on employee engagement and culture improvement initiatives to try to improve it. And yet, we keep coming up empty. Is it really all about inter-office fun slides, cold brew coffee on tap and nap rooms? Or do the rest of us have a chance at dipping into the power of culture without the budget of a tech giant who seems to print their own cash?

And if you're managing a project, a team or a division in a bigger organization, do you have any chance of fixing things in the culture in the wider organization? Is it promoting the kind of vibe you're looking for? And before I answer all of those questions, let's get clear on exactly what culture is, and what it is it.

So, culture is not about the stated values written in the handbook or hanging on a wall somewhere. It's not about the mission that adorns the company website, or the funky design of the Open Office floor plan. It's not even about how often you get together for happy hours. It isn't about making everyone happy all the time, or even about a pet-friendly workplace. And yeah, I get it. I love the idea of an office full of cuddly little corgis as much as the next guy. But I know it won't help improve the business or the working conditions for the team. It's possible to have a great culture even when the perks aren't best in class, even when there aren't fancy, modern Norwegian-looking desks all around.

Manufacturing plants and ships in the ocean and military places can have great cultures. Sorry to break it to all those fun committees out there. But we don't need another group picnic, to have a great culture. Now, I'm not saying that all of those things aren't useful and aren't helpful. I mean, the point of them should be in getting people to connect with each other. So, if you are one of these fun committee folks out there, don't despair. But I do want you to change your objectives a little bit.

Instead of basically getting people to sign up to go have fun together outside of work, make sure that the events are helping people build relationships, helping them connect with people they don't normally talk to, because basically if we all go to happy hour and we all just talk to the normal people we talk to, it isn't improving your culture. So, if you are doing fun stuff, make sure you're getting the best out of it by making sure that you're encouraging people to talk to people they don't normally interact with.

Okay, back to the topic at hand. See, culture is actually the collection of beliefs on your team. And don't worry, I'm not going to go all hippie dippie here and ask you to start meditating or saying ‘Namaste’ to each other. But the beliefs that your team has about what it's like to work there, the beliefs they have about leadership, about what matters about how they act, how they work, how they build relationships, all of those things or your culture, see, when we have specific beliefs, it starts to shape the way we treat each other. If I were to meet you, and I thought, -

Hey, this is someone pretty awesome. My belief about you was that you were a good person, and I thought I wanted to get to know you, then I would act a certain way. If my belief about you is that you were out to get me or that you are somebody who is, you know, not so fun to be around, then I would treat you a different way.

Those beliefs or even I like to think of them as stories, the stories we tell at work, the stories we tell ourselves, and sometimes that we tell each other at work, are our beliefs, which impact the way we choose to act, the way we choose to work, and the relationships we commit to and connect with, when we're at work, those beliefs or stories that we tell each other become the culture of the company. Over time, the things we believe or the stories we tell about the way things are done, about when to speak up about when to stay quiet, about when to contribute or when to hold back, about who wins, who loses and how the game of work is played, that becomes your culture.

Think of the stories your employees tell. This is where your culture lives. Think of what they say, what is… what is their story about their first day at work or their first week? What are their beliefs about performance reviews? What are their beliefs about speaking-up in meetings and contributing their best ideas to projects? Do you know what they're telling each other? Do you know if they're telling your new hires or even telling themselves, because all of those things are being played out? When it comes time to sit down in a meeting and contribute, when it comes to showing up for a performance conversation and saying I'm invested in this because this is about making me better.

All of those beliefs, all of those stories are ultimately what shape and drive your culture. Now, I'm not saying that you need to just basically go and create a whole new world of storytelling at work. There's a lot of storytelling folks out there who focus on brand and marketing storytelling, which is really about controlling the narrative. No, no, I'm not telling you to control your culture, or control your narrative. In fact, I don't think you can. What I'm saying is as a leader, as a manager, as someone who wants to make a difference, you have the power and the ability to fuel a different kind of story. And when you fuel that different kind of story, you create a different set of beliefs which create a different set of actions from your team. And those sort of actions, you probably guessed it, those create your culture.

The way we decide how to show up every day is the culture, and some of that is based on how we see leaders responding, a lot of it is based on what the expectations are every day. And it is stuff that you can change control. So what do you do if you're a leader and you say, hey, I want to start thinking about culture in a different way. We can't get the insurance to do slip and slide through the grass in the area outside of the office? Well, you don't need to do any of that. And in fact, I wouldn't recommend it. It sounds weird and creepy. But what you can do is start to source the stories that your team is telling.

How often do you ask and listen and document what's really going on with them outside of an annual employee engagement survey? How often do you look for the common variables in the stories they tell? Are you collecting long form survey data more than just a score on a piece of paper, but asking questions like, what do you believe leadership cares about here? Or what do you think matters most? Or how do you think people get ahead in this organization? You can use the stories that you hear to start to uncover a common theme for your culture. And then I've got a maybe not such surprising thing for you.

You'll start to recognize the strengths from your team. You'll start to see what your culture is strong at. You'll start to see what your leaders are strong at. And I'd imagine that those start to look like things that you would have found in a StrengthsFinder assessment. You'll start to see the kinds of ideas and words resonating.

If your team is all about taking action, you're going to notice that if your team is about moving forward and not stopping to consider lots of options, you're going to see that and you're going to recognize that as one of the strengths that people have. What's interesting is that you can also use those to start to develop a clearer story for your culture.

Once you understand what the strengths of your team and the strengths of your culture are, then you can start to get specific about telling more stories like that. You can start to use in the way that you interview people, in the way that you talk to people. Leveraging your strengths gives you a really interesting opportunity to create a new kind of culture.

So, let's go back to culture for just a minute. When you think about culture, a lot of times what happens is that we think of this big, big culture of the entire organization. And that might be true. If you're working for a small company, where there's only 20 of you, then yes, the culture of the team is probably the culture of the company. And I would argue that the culture of a 20-employee team probably matches up pretty closely with how the leader believes in the stories a leader creates.

As a company gets bigger and bigger, and you start to go into national and global territory with hundreds and even thousands of employees, you start to see that the cultures get micro-pocketed, almost. There's a chapter in the book where I talk about culture pockets, and I talk about how, even in a huge organization, there are all of these little cultures that exist. The good news is that you're…if you're managing a team, and you think, -

“Well, I'm not in charge of the culture of the whole company”, I've got good news for you. You don't have to be, you can start changing the culture one person at a time on your team. You can start changing the way that your team works together. Start crafting new stories together, the stories that get promoted and shared, the stories of that place. And you have a ton of power as a manager to shape them. You have the ability to create a culture pocket for the way that your team interacts.

Even if things are tougher in the broader sense, or the broader company, you can use that. And the great thing about it is just like the culture of a company, or a region or a state or city, you can use it to differentiate yourself. You don't have to worry about having perks and happy hours and food trucks outside of your office every day in order to get top talent and be known as a great place to work.

You know, Lisa always says that differences are differentiators. And I can't agree more when it comes to culture. If you start to use the stories and the strengths of your team, you'll start to see that the differences on your team can be the thing that makes you different. You know, Apple is a very different place to work than Google. Both are interesting companies creating cool new products and services. But it feels very different to work there. They both have cool offices and they've got cool things in their office and perks and benefits. But it feels different to work there.

The digital component of Disney feels very different than working at Netflix. Why? Because of culture. At the end of the day, the three weeks of vacation, the ping pong tables, the catered lunches, those don't necessarily drive having a great experience with each other. These perks don't change the relationships or the stories that we have about our co-workers, our manager or the work we do. These perks are easy to copy. And if it's all that it took to build a great culture was having the perks, that everyone could do it.

By leveraging your strengths to tell new kinds of stories about your team and the way you work, you can start to find the thread of your culture and then you can leverage it, communicate it and double down on it so that you can get the kind of people on your team who can help it further grow. Whether you're a team of 10, or you're a company of thousands, leveraging those parts of your strengths to create new stories will drive your culture.

Look, you don't have to treat people like preschoolers who need to be tickled, entertained and fed every hour to have a great culture. It's about diving in listening to the stories, promoting those stories and creating new ones. As a leader, your job is to create the culture on your team that creates the kinds of stories based on the strengths of your team and the group.

So, go out there and start thinking about culture in a new way. You don't need five tips, seven hacks, nine habits. You don't need any of that. What you need to do is start listening to the stories and change the way your team works.

 

Lisa [13:43]: Thanks so much for that, Mike. I couldn't agree more. And isn’t that cool how Mike reinforces ideas like differences are differentiators, things that we've been using in the strength world. For years only he gives them a team culture spin. It's so cool how they tie together. And his advice to watch for the stories, it's exactly like my concept of noticing what works to get more of what works.

Now his stories approach actually takes it further because I often will stop once I give the advice about communicating what works to the person who did the thing that works. He's expanding on the idea. So, I love that he's making it go further. Because he's using it almost like the way you would have a viral video take effect. It's like looking for examples that are worth spreading around.

You have to have a story or an example that is cool enough that people would want to share it or retell it with each other so that they know what these expectations are. When you share those stories with each other or with new hires, how beautiful it helps them clearly see what you value. And then they give you more of that. It's exactly noticing what works to get more of what works but also making legends out of it and over time, your team culture is born out of the things that already come naturally to you, you meaning the team. It’s really brilliant.

And it's so much easier than trying to create a culture from scratch. I think that's what feels so onerous and so big and immovable when you think about a big company, because it's already this big giant Amoeba and you're thinking, - “How can I affect this? It cannot be contained.”

And really what Mike's saying is, - “Yes, that's true. It can't be contained. You can shape it, and you can mold it, and you can find the threads that really work for you. And latch on to those, you get more of those.”

That's so much better than trying to twist your existing culture into something it doesn't want to be and will refuse to be. So, if Mike's ideas resonated with you, be sure to go grab his book, Company Culture for Dummies. He also made you guys a quick video training on how to uncover the stories on your specific to the ones that you can be using to shape your culture. Based on what already works, shape your culture based on your strength.

So, you can get that at mikeganino.com/strengths. Ganino is spelled G A N I N O. And oh, we all know strength is a good term to spell but you…you know how to figure that one out.

So, with that, thanks for listening to Lead Through Strengths. Remember, using your team's strengths will strengthen your culture. If you're putting a lopsided focus on fixing your weaknesses, you're choosing the path of most resistance, and that's so inefficient. So, claim your existing differences that already work for you and share that culture with the world.