What is Team Culture and How to Build a Strong, High-Performing Team

An ideal company has employees from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Each has duties and goals to fulfill while working as a team. But how can employees get along and work in such a diverse environment?

Employees are united by the team culture that gives them a sense of purpose and belonging in their workplace. An employee’s team culture can make or break relationships with other team members.

A vibrant team culture across all teams and groups in an organization is crucial for its business growth and employee satisfaction. Unfortunately, there are no standard metrics for determining or measuring a team's culture.

Let’s learn more about team culture, the key parameters that show a strong team culture, and how to prevent the emergence of a toxic team culture.

What is Team Culture?

Team culture is determined by the collective “oneness” of its members in terms of their goals, values, attitudes, and engagement towards each other. These factors are crucial in establishing a team’s dynamics, which in turn fuel the team’s overall productivity.

A positive and motivated team forms the building blocks of a successful organization. When every team or group in the company has actively engaged members, it shows that it fosters a great organizational culture.

Fostering a positive team culture is not easy, as each team member must be a facilitator and torchbearer of discipline and active employee engagement. Similarly, it takes considerable time and effort to see the benefits and impact of successful culture initiatives.

Why is Team Culture Important?

A strong culture among all the teams in a company contributes to the overall organizational culture. A Gallup survey shows that a strong organizational culture shows improvement in performance metrics in the following areas:

• A 50-point increase in employee engagement over three years.
• 25% increase in workforce over three years.
• An 85% net profit increase over five years.
• 138% improvement in patronage over five years.

With constantly changing work dynamics worldwide, more and more companies are shifting to flexible work setups and embracing remote employment. Establishing and maintaining effective team culture dynamics is, therefore, crucial to ensuring all employees remain united while fulfilling their personal and professional commitments.

Moreover, when skilled employees join teams with active engagement and high productivity, they further fuel the output quality of the team’s deliverables. Strong teams never remain stagnant. They always look for ways to improve themselves and embrace change for the benefit of every member.

For the company, having a strong team culture ensures lower employee turnover and saves costs. When employees find themselves valued within their team while having their basic needs and expectations satisfied by their employers, they need not be anxious about their future in the company. Such a scenario indicates that the company’s work culture is strong and makes employees happy to work there.

Key Elements Of Strong Team Culture

An ideal workplace is not identified only by its growth or success. An employee’s sustenance in a company is determined by the team and organizational culture followed by all company employees.

How can one sense the prevalence of a strong team culture in a company? The answer comes from seeing the employees and the feelings they experience when working in the company.

Here are some of the important parameters that you can check to judge how satisfied employees are with their team culture:

1. Trust and psychological safety: An employee joins a company with the hope and trust that the company values them as an important asset. Under no circumstances must the company take steps that can make employees feel anxious about their future at work. This psychological feeling of being in a safe workplace, where the company will never make any amendments without prior notifications and negotiations, clearly indicates a strong team culture.
2. Clear Values and Purpose: Companies and teams that have clear vision and mission statements and take sufficient steps to reinforce each employee’s sense of importance show that they have a strong organizational culture. These vision goals drive diverse employees to stay united and work for the benefit of both themselves and the company.
3. Effective Communication: Communication between employees and management is an important employee engagement initiative. Workplaces that follow open communication and feedback through several channels show signs of a team culture that attracts more talent from outside.
4. Collaboration and inclusivity: When teams with diverse employees show the expected business results and meet quality standards, their work dynamics indicate unity in diversity. Such teams are examples of a successful team culture that values inclusion among diverse employees who collaborate by harnessing their collective strengths.
5. Recognition and Appreciation: Teams that appreciate and celebrate each other’s wins (both large and small) show they are on the path to growing better together. Celebrating team members shows these employees that they are valued for their time and contributions.

Types of Team Culture

The concept of team culture is constantly evolving, and so are the different types of team and organizational culture. The type of engagement among employees and leaders determines how effectively the team’s culture contributes to a successful team.

Also, teams can follow several cultures and create their own, with one or more cultural styles appearing dominant from the outside.

Out of the several types of team culture, we have a few models here that focus on building strong teams in current work scenarios worldwide.

1. Collaborative Culture

This type of culture is prevalent in which all team members work together regardless of their designations. In such teams, the leaders or managers do not see themselves as superiors and work at the ground level along with other team members.

The key driver of this culture is transparent and effective communication, which is more focused on direct, face-to-face communication with one or more members. Such a culture values employees' feedback for every small and big decision made within the team.

2. Innovative Culture

Just like how creativity and innovation drive business results and outputs, innovation can also fuel a productive team. In such teams, all employees are encouraged to share their approach to solving a problem, arriving at a decision, and sharing their opinions.

The key driver of this culture is encouraging employees to step outside their comfort zones and think creatively to discover remarkable opportunities. Such a culture enables employees to take calculated risks while considering their team's overall strengths and abilities.

3. Results-Driven Culture

Another type of team culture that unites employees is working towards producing results above expectations. Such teams have employees working hard to exceed expectations and earn appreciation and recognition from the company and their peers.

The key driver of this culture is a competitive spirit within the team, where each employee tries to prove they can do better. Such teams require frequent motivation and engagement with their leaders to understand how they are performing and to get feedback for improvement.

4. People-Centric Culture

A team culture focusing on members' well-being is increasingly popular among job seekers. A study shows that employees will likely remain at work and face reduced fatigue levels when working in a people-centric environment.

The key driver of this culture shows how leaders and the company management value their employees as invaluable company resources and go to any extent to meet the fair demands and expectations of all their employees. Team members tend to be more empathetic of one another and connect beyond work on a regular basis.

5. Remote-First Culture

Since remote and flexible working is becoming a de facto expectation from employees, teams are embracing a culture where employees can work remotely while staying connected. In such teams, the members and leaders rely on several task managers, planners, and similar online cloud-based tools to remain synchronized.

The key driver in such teams is the flexibility and freedom that members get to work without being micromanaged, while also honoring team meetings and deadlines. Such a culture helps employees balance their work and personal lives more effectively.

How to Build a Strong Team Culture?

Each team can have a unique and different culture, but a strong team evolves when all the members unite over their team’s cultural values and leave aside their native differences.

Here are some of the strategies that teams must adopt to foster a good team culture:

1. Define Core Values and Goals

Apart from the organization-wide vision and policies, each team must have its own set of rules and goals that all members must agree upon. For instance, some teams may value the output quality alone, while others value each step of the process that can impact their business.

So, it is important for the team and its leaders to discuss the list of non-negotiables within the team to establish smooth working relationships and dynamics.

2. Hire for Cultural Fit and Values Alignment

When companies hire for a job role within a team, they must look beyond the desired technical skills. Leaders and recruiters must also check for new recruits' compatibility with the target team’s culture.

While it can be easy to dismiss this, saying anyone can adapt to a new culture, such misfit hiring can lead to huge losses for the company in case of employee turnover.

3. Encourage Open Communication

Employees with sufficient channels to voice their opinions and receive the right feedback feel empowered to be part of such teams. Effective communication is a strong driver for a positive team culture.

Employees must connect with their teams daily to know how each one is progressing. Companies must also encourage communication between teams to allow peer connections.

4. Promote Collaboration and Team Bonding

An important driver in measuring the success of a team’s culture is to see how the employees are engaged with the team and their work. Team-level events and celebrations are important employee engagement initiatives that enable employees to bond with the team apart from their work.

Moreover, employee engagement provides opportunities for working with members outside the team and collaborating on new work goals.

5. Recognize and Reward Employees

Strong teams are recognized by how effectively employees appreciate and value contributions from their team members. Several employee engagement solutions and platforms allow members to give each other shoutouts on company-wide online platforms, thereby showing their concern and value for each other.

In addition to peer recognition, the team leaders must ensure that no employee’s contributions go unnoticed. Such a culture ensures that all employees are recognized for their work.

6. Lead By Example

A team’s culture is not just represented by the team leader. While it is the leader's responsibility to set an example, each member must voluntarily take it upon themselves to reflect their team’s culture in their attitude and daily lives.

Passing tokens of appreciation to anyone around them, being patient in solving problems, looking for smart ways to work, and being an effective communicator are some ideals that anyone can follow in their daily life, while also practicing them with their team members.

How to Build a Strong Team Culture for Remote Teams?

Undoubtedly, team culture is built over time with employees meeting one another for discussions, debates, celebrations, and rejuvenation. Engagement with team members on a regular basis through physical meetings helps employees learn something new every time.

However, remote teams can find this engagement and subsequent culture-building challenging. While flexibility to work is a prime factor in such teams’ culture, connection and engagement must be mandated to remain a strong team within the organization.

Here are some innovative methods to connect and engage with remote team members:

1. Frequent virtual check-ins: Ensure to have frequent virtual check-ins daily. Decide on a time when all team members can sync to discuss their tasks for the day and how they have progressed.
2. Clear communication norms: Use the latest tools for collaboration and clear communication. Cloud-based tools and apps like Slack, Teams, Google Meet, and similar tools help employees connect for formal and engagement meetings anytime.
3. Remote team-building activities: Encourage and find innovative ways to promote remote team-building activities. Gamified online training sessions, online arcade gaming outside work hours, and many more initiatives help employees bond with each other and learn more.
4. Flexible work policies: Try promoting a hybrid work culture in which employees meet periodically at the workplace or at a common location to celebrate milestones and festive events.

Signs of a Toxic Team Culture

The opposite of a strong and positive team culture is a toxic environment that employees never wish to be part of. Such a culture lowers an employee’s morale, often making them question their self-worth, leading them to depression and distress.

Here are a few red flags to identify teams that have a toxic work culture:

• Lack of Trust and Transparency: A toxic team has leaders or members who do not communicate transparently. They derive pleasure from keeping other team members anxious about their next moves and hindering the overall team’s progress and productivity. Such members do not trust others and do the opposite of what they preach, leading to confusion within the team.
• High Turnover and Disengagement: Toxic teams can be easily identified when they always have job openings in their teams. For an outsider, it may appear like the team has abundant opportunities. However, a deeper analysis can show that employees recruited into such teams leave within a short span and cannot engage with other members.
• Poor Collaboration and Conflicts: A significant portion of working hours in toxic teams is dedicated to deliberation and negotiating conflicts. Suppose teams frequently require the involvement of higher-level leaders and management to resolve small issues. In that case, it shows the inefficiency of the team’s leader and members in solving problems and uniting over common goals.
• Low Morale and Productivity: The attitude of members in toxic teams is predominantly neutral and hostile towards their work goals and overall engagement with other employees. Such employees can be a pain to satisfy, even if the company makes several amendments and initiatives to boost their motivation. They also tend to spread negativity among actively engaged employees.
• Resistance to Change: Strong teams are always willing to collectively accept their failures and find ways to improve. In contrast, toxic teams simply find ways to divert the problem rather than address the elephant in the room. They find it convenient to blame each other and management rather than rectify their mistakes.

Final Thoughts: Improving Team Culture With Revaluate180

More than the technical skills and expertise of the team members, the overall attitude and dynamics of the team determine their success and productivity. Having misconceptions, forcing their opinions, and being poles apart despite possessing technical strengths hinder the team from achieving its business goals.

Here is where Revaluate180 helps diverse teams build a healthy culture and work in a unified manner. We conduct detailed assessments to understand the team members, their attitude towards their work, and their dedication to the team.

Then, we offer interactive workshops where we discuss areas of improvement and how teams can leverage their strengths to meet their specific team goals. Moreover, our employee development programs promote shared values, which directly impact the team’s culture.

Also, Revaluate180’s data-backed insights and AI-powered solutions help organizations identify culture blockers and costly hiring mistakes that can hinder team cohesion.

If your team members are having trouble achieving their business goals or finding it difficult to engage with one another, feel free to contact us for a detailed assessment.

FAQs

What is team culture?

A team’s culture refers to the unwritten or informal rules and policies that unite all the team members to remain productive. The team’s working style, engagement initiatives, ability to handle and overcome failures, empathy for one another, and many more factors contribute to a successful team culture.

What is a positive team culture?

When all team members are actively engaged in a team and work together to exceed expectations, the team shows signs of a positive team culture. The team's overall attitude will appear positive and welcoming, ensuring that employees never feel anxious about their future and value at the workplace.

How do you create a good team culture?

Every team member must be involved in improving the team's culture. Creating a strong culture starts when employees lead by example. From being actively engaged in the workplace and practicing effective communication with team members to fostering healthy relationships with leaders and peers, a strong culture shows off through employees’ attitudes.

What are the 6 C’s of team culture?

1. Collaboration: Providing sufficient channels and opportunities for working together with skilled professionals.
2. Communication: Practicing transparent and effective communication with all team members.
3. Creativity: Prioritizing innovative ideas and processes to boost productivity and bring the team closer.
4. Commendation: Appreciating members for significant contributions that make a difference in the team and the company.
5. Career: Ensure all team members are trained and updated with the required skills and technical expertise to support one another during emergencies.
6. Connection: Enable sufficient online and offline channels for employee engagement during work hours and outside work.