Your First Day on the Job

Let's say that you are a coach, a teacher, a principal, or in a leadership role and you are starting a new season, a new year, or starting a new leadership position; what are some of the first things, from a cultural standpoint, that you would think about or do to set the tone for success?

Daniel Coyle is the New York Times bestselling author of the Culture Code. He has worked with and learned from some of the best leaders of the best cultures in the world. He was asked this question, and the first thing he said was he would think about the relationship between connections and safety. He says connection and safety are the foundations of a great culture.

"WITHOUT PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY, YOU CAN BE AS SMART AS YOU WANT TO BE, BUT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO ADD UP TO MORE THAN THE SUM OF YOUR PARTS BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT GIVING PEOPLE A VOICE." - DANIEL COYLE

When teams win championships, they often talk about how close they are and how strong their relationships are. When the LA Rams won their second Super Bowl in 2022, head coach Sean McVay said:

"What was so special about this team is it was genuinely a group that wanted to win for someone other than themselves. They were playing for one another."

Great teams have passionate players and coaches who are intrinsically motivated and competitive to try to be the best they can be, but they also have a purpose that is bigger than themselves and their own selfish ambitions. The great teams have players and coaches who embody a We, not Me culture where they love the opportunity to compete but also love the opportunity to coach and play at the highest level with and for someone other than themselves. 

A championship purpose comes from having a desire to compete for and with people that you are connected with and care about.

We are hardwired to connect with others and search for social belonging. We need relationships to survive. Great leaders of great cultures intentionally seek out ways to increase connections and belonging among their teammates because they see that belonging is a fundamental, basic need.

When we make people feel like they belong, we have happier, more hopeful, and more engaged teammates. When people don't feel like they belong, they don't work as hard, they don't work as often, and they are more likely to quit or leave.

We lose people because we neglect the human need to feel included. Loneliness is considered by some a pandemic, and loneliness and exclusion can be as bad or worse than unhealthy habits like smoking, alcoholism, and obesity.

Building connections with the people you work with can increase job performance by 56% and can decrease your turnover rate by 50%.

An important step in building those connections is creating a space where psychological safety can flourish. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson coined the term psychological safety and define it as, "A shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking." Establishing a climate of safety gives people the freedom and permission to speak up and share their ideas. A championship culture is a culture where people have permission to try and fail, to learn from their mistakes, and to try again.

Building real connections requires having a space where people feel safe enough to share their thoughts and ideas. Sharing and trying new things can be scary and requires vulnerability, something that can feel weird, different, intimidating, and even painful, but as Coyle says, "The pain of vulnerability and exposure is what brings people together." 

The people with whom you are the closest are the people with whom you are vulnerable.

Safety does not mean that everyone feels completely safe all of the time. Growth doesn't happen in completely safe conditions. Growth happens through stress, tension, and adversity. Psychological safety and building great cultures are similar to a good workout. If you don't feel any pain or discomfort when you are working out, you probably aren't getting much stronger, but if you feel too much pain and discomfort, you might be doing something wrong and causing more damage than good.

BUILDING AND CO-CREATING TOGETHER

If I am starting a new season or a new role, I am going to start by creating a space where everyone has a voice, and where we are building and co-creating something together. One useful thing to co-create is a team charter or a team share purpose.

Every new year, let the old year go, start the new year strong understanding that there will be a new set of challenges, and talk about why we are here, how we are going to work together, and what we are going to work towards, and what are rules of engagement are going to be.

You can do that by creating a shared vision. Ask everyone to write down why they are on them and what they hope to accomplish. Take everybody's answers and then use them to create one shared vision. 

USER MANUAL

There is a user manual or user guide for everything except for people. Why? Create a series of prompts and questions followed by conversations about what would be in your own personal user manual. The process of pausing, thinking about, documenting, and having a conversation about how you want to be treated is an impactful team-building activity and a big part of culture building. When we learn about other people and share about ourselves, it brings people together.

You can make a 1-page, User Manual for everyone:

1 - I am at my best when ...

2 - I am at my worst when ...

3 - What I need from this team is ...

4 - What I can help this team with is ...

Take those 4 answers and create a team User Manual that defines what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.

PIT STOPS

Formula 1 race cars are required to make a pit stop in the middle of their race. Their tires wear down through the course of the race, they have to take a quick stop to check and then replace them.

A quick Pit Stop in the middle of the season or year to facilitate is:

1 - Are we working well together?

2 - What is working?

3 - What is not working?

4 - What should we be doing differently?

Simple meetings where you get teams together and just talk are powerful. Here are some questions to ask to spark conversations that lead to meaningful connections:

1 - What are you most excited about?

2 - What do we look like at our best?

3 - How are we doing?

4 - What are we curious about right now?

5 - How can I help the teamwork better?

6 - What am I or we doing right, and what am I or we doing wrong?

VULNERABILITY

Answering questions like this can be a vulnerable exercise because it can be hard to open up. Moments o but vulnerability is about visibility. Create a shared sense of where we are and of our situational awareness with each other so that we can function better as a group.

USER MANUAL

There is a user manual for everything except for people. Why? Create a series of prompts and questions followed by conversations about your User Manual. The process of pausing, thinking about, documenting, and having a conversation about how you want to be treated is an impactful team-building activity and a big part of culture building. Learning about other people and sharing about ourselves brings people together.

SUMMARY

When starting something new, focus on establishing a culture built on connections and safety. Find ways to build and sustain relationships by creating Treatment Agreements or User Manuals for how we want to be treated and how we want to treat each other. Create a shared vision for what you want to accomplish and how you want to accomplish it.

Remember that success is rarely linear, but is full of successful and failed experiments. Try new things then take the time to reflect on what went great, what went bad, and how to learn and grow from the experience.

Find ways to capitalize on our universal need to feel like we belong and to be a part of something.