3 Tips for Maintaining a High-Performing Team Culture
We’ve talked in past blogs about how to establish a high-performing team culture, so let’s look at tips for maintaining a high-performing team culture. One of the four most important things that team members need from leaders is stability. Given the current state of our world, the need for certainty is more important than ever. Here’s a few ways you can help maintain team culture in a way that gives team members stability and takes their performance to the next level:
Establish traditions
When you reflect on your childhood, what do you remember with positive emotions? For many, it’s ongoing traditions that were instrumental in our lives and gave us a sense of community or belonging.
Similarly, by creating intentional and ongoing traditions in our professional environments, we can celebrate excellence and other behaviors that support a healthy culture. For example, if you want to promote team collaboration, create a monthly award centered around that. Or if you want to promote a sense of family, create safe opportunities for team members to get to know one another and each other’s families outside of work.
Implement ongoing feedback processes
Create structured and ongoing feedback processes that provide optimal support and challenge to team members instead of waiting until the annual review. If you have Gen Z employees, good news – 97 percent of them are open to receiving ongoing feedback.
Try one of the feedback processes below or infuse these ideas into your existing process. You don’t have to have a meeting to provide impactful feedback. Make ongoing feedback doable by engaging in regular conversations with team members that promote continuous learning and improvement.
Good-Better-How™ – From VISION54 (Lynn Marriott & Pia Nilsson)
- What are three Goods?
- What is one thing we could do Better?
- How will we do the one thing Better (or differently)? You can have multiple “hows.”
After Action Review (AAR) – From the U.S. military
- What were our intended results?
- What were our actual results?
- What caused our results?
- What will we do the same next time?
- What will we do differently?
Three Questions to Help Me (your Supervisor) Support (or Challenge) You – From GiANT Worldwide
- What is one thing I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do?
- What is one thing I don’t currently do frequently that you’d like me to do more often?
- What can I do to make you more effective? To help you get to the next level?
Conduct a weekly culture check
Experiment with the two steps below. The key is to be consistent, so your customized culture check becomes part of daily and weekly conversations.
Step 1
With your team, discuss behaviors you can track and measure that embody your:
- VISION (where you want to go)
- MISSION (your why, cause or purpose)
- CULTURE (who you are/want to be as a team)
Think about how you can track behaviors that will get you where you want to go.
Identify three key behaviors and create associated metrics to track over time. For accountability and sustainability, consider checking in once a week for five minutes to share examples of others exhibiting these behaviors.
Step 2
Kick off team meetings with a culture check and highlight the behavior(s) of one or more team members. To do this, you’ll need to notice behaviors throughout the week that exemplify your team’s mission and culture.
For example, if an essential part of your culture is accountability and you noticed a team member acknowledge and correct their own mistake, you could highlight that.
As you consider ways to maintain a high-performing team culture, keep in mind that the world’s best leaders “communicate a lot and connect frequently with team members.” Communication needs to be not only intentional and consistent, but also filled with empathy. As Theodore Roosevelt said:
“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”
For more information on communication and other tips for maintaining a high-performing team culture, reach out to Dr. Beth to schedule a free, introductory consultation.