Culture Continuity within Your Team

When someone new joins the team, they inherit the existing culture.

New people don’t know the previous choices made.
Senior people can take those previous choices for granted.

This is how mediocrity can develop within a previously high-performing team.

Excellence is a daily choice and requires you to constantly cultivate it. This is why rituals, routines, ongoing training, storytelling, and celebrations are all an important part of cultural continuity.

It’s also why clients know I’m a strong advocate of regular coaching and frequent communication. Not as a way of micromanaging, but as a way of ensuring alignment and direction for their team.

One of the things managers get wrong in hiring for soft skills is they focus on personality instead of character.

Personality is outward expression of thoughts, feelings, and actions.
Character is internal moral compass and values.

You mistake charisma for character.

Someone can be likeable during the interview process, but that doesn’t tell you how they’ll show up when things get tough or when you’re OOO.

• How has this individual responded in the past to specific situations?

• What was their role and what steps did they take?

Just because someone can charm you or the client in the moment, doesn’t mean they’re able to execute at a high-level and exceed expectations. A client might let it slide once, but not twice.

Hiring for charisma is why you end up being disappointed down the road.

A team is made up of many personalities. Personalities that suit each role.

A high-performing team shares character traits. Character traits that drive culture and performance.

Character often shows up in interactions between people with different needs. You see this in how the interviewee treats the receptionist or in how the interviewer treats the interviewee. Is everyone granted the same level of initial respect, regardless of their role?

Mission is what your team is working together to achieve.

Values are the daily practices that make achieving the mission possible.

Character traits align with the values to make the daily practices and standards of behavior possible.

If your shared value is respect, you’re looking for team members who respect themselves and others. What type of behavior are you looking for?

• How do they organize their time?

• How do they manage a budget?

• How do they respond to authority?

When you don’t know your mission and values, it’s harder to know what questions to ask in the interview to properly identify the character traits and behavior necessary for excellence.

Resource: Character vs Personality

Only 46% of leaders rate themselves highly at holding their team accountable for exceptional performance. - Gallup

It’s difficult to hold team members accountable when expectations aren’t clear.

• When deadlines aren’t set...

• When quality isn’t detailed...

• When clear examples aren’t provided...

• When success isn’t defined...

If you don’t know the answers to these, neither will your team.
They can’t read your mind nor be confident in relying on the past.

This is often where accountability breaks down. Managers skip it because they acknowledge the gap OR attempt it without clarity and instead create frustration and resentment.

Even creative projects still require order and clear expectations.

Ambiguity creates more chaos and service issues, than setting expectations and updating them when necessary.

Leadership is an active role, not passive.

Does your business let team members develop their skills to further their career, or does it keep them dependent on managers who enjoy being needed?

Excellent breakdown from my friend KT on the impact of a bad hire on team dynamics. As I shared with her: “People don’t know how to filter against this. They don’t know what questions to ask or what behavior to look for because they haven’t identified what behavior is important for their company.”

Share three values for your existing or future team and why they’re important to your company.

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