How to get your team bought into the company culture
How do I get my team bought into the company culture?
It’s the values
To me, company culture is brilliantly defined by Brené Brown as:
The way things are done around here.
It’s pretty simple to distil the company culture to the rest of the organisation when there are only a handful of people. You can just say, “watch the CEO, she’s the culture.”
But what happens when we scale up and we reach hundreds, or thousands of employees? Well, we need to define the culture and that definition lives in the Values.
Values are the fundamental beliefs you have about how the world works. As an individual you will have between 3-5 values which guide both your everyday decisions and your major life priorities. For example: Honesty, Courage, Adventure, Community, Health. But the organisation you work for also has values. My old company Kraft Heinz had a set of values. It won’t surprise you to know that I bought into some, and others felt a bit distant. That’s totally normal, however, in order for us to move forwards as a strong team in a strong culture, we need to find meaning in those values.
More importantly, I want to address the specific challenge many leaders have: how do I get my team to buy into the company culture? Because once they are, they will move mountains for you and the organisation.
In this article I’ll walk you through how I would do just that with a great exercise you can use in your next team meeting. But first, if you’d like to see what happens when a company loses its values, check out the video below.
How connected are you to the company values
What I hear all too often is people wanting their team to be connected to the company values without being conscious of how they connect to the company values. Because, when you connect to them and you exhibit those behaviours, it becomes a lot easier for your team to follow you into battle.
Reflect on this: for each of my company’s values, can I share a story where I have exhibited that behaviour?
Start with personal values, then company values
Yes, connecting to the company values are important, but so is connecting to your own personal values. Why, because you aren’t the company! They’ve hired you to be brilliant, creative and an individual - not to be a robot that blindly does what it’s told.
When you know your own values, you are also able to map them onto the company values. When you do this, you will have a much richer appreciation for what the company stands for.
If you want a real deep dive into why values are important, check out our review of Mark Manson’s podcast on values.
Have this conversation in your next team meeting
You know your personal values and you have some stories to share about how you connect to the company values. Awesome! Here’s two exercises you can do in your next company meeting. This would work well standing up or on Zoom breakout rooms.
What are my team’s personal values: get them to write down 3-5 values that they stand for using our WISH framework (video below). Get them to share in pairs which 1-2 are the most important to them and why.
Which company value do they most connect with: get them to find a different pair and discuss which of the company values (and why) they most connect with. Are they able to share a story when they’ve exhibited that trait? Can they share an example of when a leader they admire has exhibited that value?
Agree a values based routine with the team
During your meeting, you will have noticed some themes come up from the team. Perhaps there was a value they really connected with, or one that wasn’t mentioned at all! I would recommend you take one value for the month and commit to each other that you’ll each exhibit that value as much as you can. You could then check in and hand out a prize for whoever did the best job of it at the end of the month.
If you want to read about how we bring values into an event, you can read about it here where we did Scavenger Hunt style values challenges.
If you’re interested in how we help teams connect more to their own and their company values, get in touch.
