Team Culture: How to Create a Strong Team Culture

Team culture is coworkers' shared values and common goals. Team culture feeds into the overall company culture because a great team can adapt to cultural shifts in a work environment and weather the toughest storms.

A winning team culture includes high engagement from the top-down and psychological safety for the workers. It takes time and effort to build a strong team, but it brings about positive results.

A strong team culture offers several perks to coworkers and great leaders alike, including:

• Better problem-solving: A good team culture delineates its values, which can nurture collaboration between coworkers. Since everyone knows the team’s north star, this reduces friction in the workforce and creates a better environment for problem-solving.
• Fewer interpersonal conflicts: Team culture fosters a more positive attitude and respect in the workplace, which can make handling disagreements easier.
• High-performing teams: Workers who have a place to develop their career while enjoying a healthy work culture are more likely to stay longer. This employee engagement reduces turnover at any organization, leading to a better workflow and overall more productivity.
• Improved company reputation: If a company has a bad team culture, potential employees may hear about it. A bad reputation can make it more difficult to attract new high-performing employees. Conversely, people will want to apply to companies with a good work environment.
• Pathways to success: With a new culture in place that explicitly outlines goals and roles, employees will know what paths they can take for success—whether that’s a leadership or management role.

There are several types of team culture, including:

1. 1. A customer service culture: These companies do what it takes to build a good customer experience. They provide employees with the tools they need to help customers.
2. 2. A hierarchy culture: This culture has a foundation of employees, upper-level management, and supervisors, each with specific responsibilities. There is a very organized structure with distinct roles.
3. 3. An innovative culture: A company of this ilk focuses on a culture of creativity as employees try to create new solutions and ideas.
4. 4. A purpose-driven culture: Companies with a purpose-driven culture work toward a shared goal, which generally highlights a mission that gives back to a community. For example, a company may choose to donate money from each sale to different charities, which encourages those who work there to care about the company’s mission.

Building team culture means understanding the core values of your business. Here are a few ways to create a good team culture:

1. 1. Create new strategies to handle ongoing issues. Improve the overall health of your team culture by putting a brand new system in place. Create a plan to address systematic issues, like employee behaviors and inefficiencies in the workplace. Identify ways to create a more tolerant workplace, and create pathways to bridge cultural differences. Develop physical spaces, time-off policies, and company benefit packages that contribute to a better experience for employees.
2. 2. Decide what makes good leaders or senior managers. Great culture starts from the top-down. Good leaders can create effective teams by setting a good example. Consider what shared values and skills senior managers should have. This may mean handling conflict resolution or communicating well with team workers.
3. 3. Discuss your plan for a positive team culture. Discuss your ideas for a positive team culture with your team, and share why you want to implement these changes. Take the input your team members and senior managers give you, and use it to refine your new culture.
4. 4. Embrace remote work. Effective teams can collaborate across the nation or even internationally. Some employees prefer to work from home, and enabling access to remote work will create a more positive team culture as it promotes a healthy work-life balance.
5. 5. Evaluate your current company’s culture and consider how to improve it. Ask yourself: What does your company’s culture look like right now? What problems do you face? What shared values do employees and leadership share? Understand the strengths and weaknesses of your team culture before attempting to change them.
6. 6. Implement the new plan to create a strong culture. Collaborate with high-performing teams, managers, and company leaders to build a new team culture. Work with human resources to build a strong team from the ground up. Employee engagement will depend on the examples leaders set, so try to convey the plan through your actions. Special perks like extra time off, flexible schedules, or team-building exercises can give employees an extra incentive to become invested in the new company culture.
7. 7. Provide new tools to aid the overall success of your team culture. Set the new team culture up for success by providing team members all the resources they need. Team members may need new computers and software for remote work or updated equipment to better perform their jobs. They may need training on the importance of team culture or access to webinars and classes. You may need to create new processes to aid in a more efficient workflow.

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