Can’t we all just get along? Establishing a positive team culture

The first time I led a team at work it was broken.??The team was a group of Union warehouse workers and drivers, all of whom were at least 10 to 20 years my senior.??The previous manager had done a lot of damage… the person was very critical, they did not allow for mistakes, and worst of all, they yelled at people frequently.??The bad attitudes and the way they sniped at one another showed me that morale was low, and trust was non-existent.

To reset things, I gathered them all together in the break room one morning and told them the following:?

“I know this team has faced some challenges recently.??What we need to do now is try to reset that.??I am not rich, and I assume none of you are, either.??All of us have to come to work each day so we can support our families and pay for the things we need and the things we want.??I don’t need you to be friends or best buddies, but we do need to respect one another and work together.??We might as well have fun while we are here, right?”

Over the next couple of weeks I made efforts to recognize the positive things that the team was doing and when things went wrong I refocused them on how we correct things and what we could do to prevent the same mistake in the future.??That little speech and my follow up behavior sparked something… it helped to set the tone and resulted in a change in behavior among the team.??They quit focusing on being critical of one another and started focusing on how they could help one another.??Our accuracy went up, and our mistakes went down.

I have used this story frequently when mentoring and coaching people.??When I dig a bit deeper into it, I think the keys to why it worked (and the keys to leading successful teams) are as follows:

Talk the talk and walk the walk: Resetting team behavior starts by communicating what you are seeing, what you want to see, and the gap in between.??But communication is not enough… the team needs to see that your actions and deeds align to your words.

Understanding and respecting differences: I frequently say that one of the most valuable things I learned in my #mba at Penn State Smeal College of Business was that other people are different than me, and that is okay.??Not everyone on your team will be like you, so make sure you take the time to understand their needs and meet them where they are.

Assume best intent: This is a hard one, but critical to building trust.??You need to assume that people have the best intentions with what they are doing and that when they act in a manner that is out of alignment that they are not doing it to sabotage.??When someone seems out of alignment it is best to quickly find time to talk about the situation, understand what their line of thinking was, and find common ground to fix the issue.

Thank you for reading this.??During my career I have had the joy of mentoring a lot of fantastic people.??One of the main ways I do this is by listening to their challenges and then sharing stories of my experiences with those same issues and how I worked to overcome them.??I have started documenting them in the hopes that others can find value in them, too.