Tip 210 - Bring Life Lessons Into Your Team Culture

As leaders, we bring our whole selves to our work. Our life lessons are present in are daily experiences, with formative concepts shaping our leadership and influencing the decisions we make to build team culture. From your life lessons, what choices are you making that either build or tear down your team culture? Every decision we make won’t be perfect, but we do have opportunities to practice and improve. As Brene Brown says, “I am not here to be right, I am here to get it right.”

Leaders are all tasked with specific outcomes—meet goals, retain team members, ensure high-performance, engage employees, and more. That’s why every choice we make should be in support of each team member, in support of those we serve, and in support of our overall commitment to learning and growth. And when we don’t get it right, we should be willing to apologize and practice getting better.

If your team culture requires some rebuilding and/or repair, reflect on these two practices:

• Retrace your steps. Explore when the culture was strong and identify what happened along the way—when it happened and why it started to diminish.

• Revisit your core values. Personal values and shared team values serve as beacons that point us in the right direction. Choosing to live consistently and intentionally with our values continue to shift the dynamic from dysfunctional to functional, making us and our teams stronger and more resilient.