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Posted by Glassdoor Team
Career Advice Experts
Last Updated June 29, 2021
In each workplace, the culture of its team of workers has major impacts on its environment, operations, and ambiance. As a potential employee, learning about the key identifiers of a good team culture can help you find one during your job search. Alternatively, discovering how to build a healthy culture within your organization can help you gain a competitive edge if you're an employer. To discover the characteristics of this critically important organizational component and a process for developing it, keep reading.
The team culture of an organization is a combination of values, beliefs, and behavioral norms that workers share and the behaviors that these factors cause. Similar to the culture of a society, the culture of a team is supported by the people who are in it. As a company’s culture manifests in how its leaders and followers behave when representing the company, interacting with each other, handling conflicts, performing job duties, and obeying company rules, it’s a critically important organizational component. This construct is also called company culture and workplace culture. A good team culture has several identifiers, such as:
Learn more: The Effect of Culture in Communication
Whether you’re an employer or an employee, a strong team culture can offer you several benefits, including:
Learn more: A Guide for Cultural Differences in Communication
Building a good team culture can give you many advantages. To do so, use the following steps:
Begin by understanding the existing culture. Using the following checklist of questions to assess it:
Research the team cultures of high-performance companies in your industry sector. Focus on the following areas:
Compare your team culture with that of the industry leaders you’ve researched. Identify areas for improvement, such as:
Create strategies to address each team culture issue you identified in the previous step. Use the following tips:
To successfully build team culture, you need the support of key influencers in your organization. For example, popular workers, supervisors, and managers must accept the culture you’re trying to build. Then, they must help you establish it through their behavior. Use the following tips to achieve this:
Learn more: Benefits and Examples of Teamwork in the Workplace
If you’re an employer or senior manager, there are several activities you can use to promote a strong team culture in your organization, such as:
Request the feedback of employees, clients, and other external stakeholders regarding staff values, beliefs, and norms of behavior. Use their input to determine differences between your vision for the team culture and its reality. Then, use findings to realign the cultural factors in your organization that differ from the target culture.
The culture of the company leaders is likely to have a bigger influence on team culture than any other factor. In a good team culture, the senior managers are its main advocates. Use the following tips to direct managerial culture:
To promote a strong team culture, it’s important to show your employees that you value their contributions to it. Use the following tips to do so:
As team culture is essentially composed of specific features of people and their behaviors, it’s important to hire employees who can support your team culture instead of sabotage it. Work with an HR expert, like a recruiter, to develop a list of ideal worker characteristics that reflect the team culture of your organization. Use this list during the recruitment process. Formulate hiring activities that can help you to identify candidates who are likely to fit in. For example, you can refer to this list when developing behavioral interview questions.
Now, you have learned several identifiers of a good team culture, steps for building a strong culture, and activities for promoting it. During the job search, leverage this information to identify and pursue companies with healthy cultures. Alternatively, use the techniques you have learned to transform the culture in your current workplace and attract the best talent in your industry.