Over the years I have developed deep expertise in building and leading teams that make work and life better for people. As a kid I had a knack for inclusion and always relished an opportunity to get strangers intermingling with each other. I think Jacob Morgan would say that I embody a lot of The Chef leadership mindset because Chefs “look beyond the organization to see how the work [they are] doing is impacting society, local communities, and the world.” I love adapting frameworks, systems, and practices to the talents and abilities of teams. During a recent conversation with an awesome colleague, Sharon, she shared a few thoughts on what it takes to create a high performing culture that makes an impact beyond an immediate team or business. I added a couple of ideas to her great list. Here are the five ingredients of healthy and thriving communities that you can integrate into your work and life today.
As you arrange the ingredients of healthy and thriving communities, consider these foundational requirements for elevating people to your cause, mandate, and/or vision. A healthy, thriving, and high performing team should have the following things.
Connection to purpose
Whether you want your company, classroom, neighbourhood, or family to thrive, it’s important to start with why your community exists. When people feel an authentic connection to an organization’s purpose amazing things follow. According to Fast Company’s Sherry Hakimi, “a purpose mobilizes people in a way that pursuing profits alone never will” because both employees and customers will increase their engagement when an organization demonstrates authenticity in why it exists. Once you get clear on the why for your community, encourage – if not expect – employees, members, and customers to articulate why they feel connected to the experiences, services, and/or products created by your team.
High safety
It is said that teams move at the speed of trust. This important touchstone of positive team culture comes from psychological safety, which Amy Edmondson describes as “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up.” Project Aristotle, Google’s famous analysis of what made high performing teams so capable, found that psychological safety was the secret ingredient for success. From my perspective, no compliment is greater than ones that espouse gratitude for the safe space I’ve created (oftentimes these compliments come on the heels of direct criticism of my idea or interrupting my unhelpful monologue, both of which are touchstones of psychological safety). You can build psychological safety on your team by being vulnerable, asking for feedback, celebrating failure, and cultivating dissent.
High fun
Employees everywhere want to work with joy. Many folks expect work to be fun. Fair enough, as human beings retain more information, engage more with their teammates, generate better ideas, and produce greater results when we are having fun. For me, growing up was a purposefully joyful experience – my parents were/are both ridiculous, as they elevated my sister and I as co-hosts of massive family gatherings, gamified everything from chores to road trips, and always reminded us that nothing needed to be taken seriously all the time. Rich Sheridan, CEO at Menlo Innovations and author of Chief Joy Officer, argues that “when times get tough, we need to inject optimism based on stories we’ve collected over the years when we survived earlier scares.” Approaching problems with as much optimism and joy as critical thinking and stress will enhance enthusiasm for the work and confidence that the challenge can be overcome.
High learning
The ability to learn is probably the most important skill that you can build for yourself, your team, and your community. As renowned futurist Heather McGowan notes, “Where we once learned in order to work to produce a unit of value, we must shift our thinking from the outputs of processing to the inputs of capacity building. The change cycles are too great and technological capabilities are advancing too quickly to rest on our ability to produce units of value with our stored expertise.” McGowan’s frameworks reflect a constantly changing world that requires perpetual learning, unlearning, and relearning for everyone. When we make learning a valued habit within our teams then building new skills, sharing information, and bridging talent gaps happens naturally, collaboratively, and at a fast pace. Teams that gamify learning with trivia or Kahoot! challenges will also build social connection and trust as they add knowledge and capabilities to their toolkits.
Low consciousness
Learning in the flow of work is a perfect example of doing something with low consciousness. When we are performing something with low consciousness it means that the work or the game is coming to us naturally, we are easily applying our strengths, and we are in the zone. This is why star athletes like Serena Williams and Steph Curry are described as “unconscious” when they can’t seem to miss. When employees work with low consciousness they are probably operative with what Organizational Psychologist Adam Grant calls “pronoia”, which means that the world around them is conspiring to do good. It also means that we are probably applying our strengths and natural talents in our daily tasks and focusing on what makes individuals and teams excellent, as opposed to focusing on the gaps and striving to improve them. Operating with unconscious competence means that you can perform a task, solve a problem, or create a strategy without overthinking the impact of the outcome or worrying about what critics might say.
These are my five ingredients of healthy and thriving communities. What would you add to the list? How do these touchstones of culture resonate with you and your team?