Leading High-Performance Teams For Dummies

Chapter 13

Identifying and Addressing Work Culture Challenges

IN THIS CHAPTER

Assessing the health and dynamics of your team culture

Introducing the full spectrum of culture zones

Shifting a harmful team culture into a healthy, motivating one

Every team has a culture, and aligning this culture with the team’s members and functions can be a huge competitive advantage. The opposite is also true. Cultures can be unhelpful if they don’t support what you’re trying to accomplish. Some cultures are so bad, they’re referred to as toxic.

Toxic cultures damage the people on your team and diminish their ability to do their best work. Rather than working together to solve problems, team members in a toxic culture often work at cross-purposes, motivated more by personal gain than team success.

This chapter covers how leaders can address challenges in their team cultures.

Diagnosing the Current State of Your Team Culture

Obviously, before you can chart a path to your desired culture, you need to know what kind of culture currently exists. To do this, it’s probably not helpful to read about your team’s culture on your organization’s website or a poster of your company’s core values. These are ...