Episode 18: Team Culture

Practising The Art Of Small Business

In this podcast episode, Julie and I talk all things team culture and why it's important in your business.

What is team culture?

We define it as the heartbeat of the organisation and it can be from how we behave with each other - during times of conflict and challenges in the business through to what is acceptable to wear and when we all go out for coffee.

Creating a culture is like creating the tribe - it creates cohesiveness around what is important and not.
Values
Your organisational values will underpin the culture, which will also embed the ground rules of acceptable behaviour.

Values shouldn't simply be what's in the business plan. They should strategically align with the vision of your business and will help you to hire, align and hold your team accountable to appropriate behaviours. These help to achieve the long-term goals of the organisation.

Julie suggests that if you don't have values, and you have a team, a strategy to improve your values can be to get the team together to talk about the experiences that were great and not so great about having a happy harmonious team. Ask the question on what made you feel deflated. What's helpful and not helpful in terms of creating the culture that people want to be a part of.

We discuss that team culture gets clarified over time and that it is important as the business owner to walk the talk and reward the behaviours that you want to have repeated.

Accountability

Shannyn encourages business owners to have creative and passion-driven values and then suggests that business owners make them tangible by documenting behaviours that underpin the value. This drives conversations on "how" you live the value.

We talk about creating a regular cadence of continuous improvement and Julie suggests using a morning huddle to support this. She asks two questions what went well yesterday, what could be improved from yesterday?

Shannyn also suggests that business owners use values as part of regular performance management discussions.

A final word, values and the culture they create provides consistency to the brand and promises you make to your customers and team when being involved in your business.
Key takeaways

• Your culture exists in the business, whether you're aware of it or not
• Values underpin the culture
• Julie and Shannyn strongly encourage the use of values and values-based behaviour management in small businesses.
• Use values as an easy way to hold the team accountable.

References

Suzi Dafnis and Michelle Falzon - https://herbusiness.com/ and podcast https://herbusiness.com/podcast-series/content-sells/

The Movember Foundation - www.movember.com

Steve Simpson (unwritten ground rules)

Inspired Outcomes Consulting You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEJFN_6FQ4si_r3ujhgC8XQ

Resources

Organisational Values Sheet -

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Julie and Shannyn are independent business coaches and consultants.

Work with Julie
Julie is a Dental Practice Management Consultant, Coach at Julie Parker Practice Success.

Julie and Shannyn are independent business coaches and consultants.
Work with Julie
Julie is a Dental Practice Management Consultant, Coach at Julie Parker Practice Success.
https://julieparkerpracticesuccess.com/
Work with Shannyn
Shannyn Merlo is a business coach and consultant and founder of Inspired Outcomes Consulting.
https://inspired-outcomes.com/contact/
Go to our website for previous episodes and resources: https://practisingtheartofsmallbusiness.com/