Team Culture - What you tolerate becomes the norm.

The culture of a team is the worst behavior you are willing to tolerate ??

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Think of a great team like the pot of flowers on the top left frame above. They have been working together for a while. High-performing and highly engaged. Flourishing. Have you worked on a team like that?

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Then something happens. Either the team leader hires some new employees from other teams/organizations, or one team member just changed how they showed up for some reason. This person(s) behavior(s) are toxic, yet they are a great performer. They exceed the results expected of them and are really smart and hungry. The team leader tolerates the toxic behaviors because of their performance. That person(s) becomes a weed.

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In a team of humans, when bad behaviors are tolerated by a team leader and no one on the team speaks up either, people look to that person(s) and their behaviors and say to themselves.....

"If you are willing to tolerate that, then I will behave in the same way."

One weed turns into more weeds.

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? It's only a matter of time before toxicity is now the cultural norm. The weeds always win and it's only a matter of time before the results fail. Game over.

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The hardest yet most important skill of a leader is holding people accountable for how their team shows up and behaves, and not tolerating weeds no matter how well they perform.

A leader who is incapable of holding people accountable to a set of high standards can destroy a great team in an extremely short period of time.

? High-performing teams that win over a long period of time, need high-performing leaders who do not tolerate toxic behaviors from anyone on their team. They create a North Star of values and behaviors that are expected from everyone, including themselves. This is the essence of culture. A set of beliefs and values, with processes to support them.

Let's wipe out the weeds. Don't tolerate them. Period.

That’s why high-performing cultures have psychological safety at their foundation. High-performing teams need high-performing leaders who know the human skills to get the hard stuff done.

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They CARE to win. They create clarity (C), give autonomy (A), build relationships (R), and maintain equity (E). Clarity, Autonomy, Relationships and Equity?. The four leadership habits of higher performance. With this playbook as a foundation, high-performing leaders build high-performing teams that help the leader by holding each other accountable to the North Star and speaking up early and often about mistakes. No weeds tolerated. Wiped out in a flash.

There is no them (leaders on the right) and us (team members on the left), we win together. Imagine that?

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High-performing teams are a symbiotic relationship between leaders and teams. Not a "them" and "us". We. Working together for the greater good. Psychgoliocal safety.

What resonates with you on this post? Do you agree? Please comment ??

De-weeding teams is a passion of mine. Wiping out weeds typically starts small with a simple message from a keynote at a team offsite. Check out my keynote page here: https://lnkd.in/ga9TdQsH

More reading on the science of high-performing teams here: https://www.dx-learning.com/blog/positive-psychological-capital