This document discusses how to create a positive team culture. It emphasizes that culture is the personality of the team and affects how people work together. The goals of culture include productivity, collaboration, and happier team members. It recommends getting influential team members onboard, laying out a clear roadmap, establishing accountability and responsibility, managing perception, giving and receiving feedback, and making the culture about the team rather than individuals. Culture is a key differentiator for high performing teams.

1. Lets Get
Organized!
How to create the team culture you need.

2. Introduction
Chris Dagenais
Point2 / Yardi Systems Inc.
Director – Point2 Development
12 years in the industry
Twitter: @mdchris
Email: mdchris@gmail.com

3. What is Culture?
 The predominant personality of your team

4. What is Culture?

5. What is Culture?
 How does your team treat people on and off of their
team?
 How do people outside the team view your team?
 Is the team more interested in helping themselves or
helping others

6. Why does culture matter?
 Culture has a drastic affect on how people work
together
 One of the primary differentiator between poor,
average, and high performance teams
 Will either attract or repel people from teams

7. So what are our goals?
 Productivity
 Self organizing teams
 Great communication and collaboration
 Better solutions
 Happier team members
 Comfortable work environment

8. What do we want in our
culture?
 People should have a strong desire to excel and
outperform the competition
 Hire the right people
 Make sure they understand the big picture and how their
work contributes

9. What do we want in our
culture?
 People that are concerned with the overall performance
and success of the business
 Must believe in what the company is doing
 Understand and buy in to the roadmap
 Know what’s at stake

10. What do we want in our
culture?
 Focus on the team, not the individual
 Team wins and loses together
 No room for lone rangers

11. What do we want in our
culture?
 Freedom to fail
 If you want creativity then people need to know it’s ok if
their idea doesn’t work

12. What do we want in our
culture?
 Passion and intensity

13. Get the “Drivers” on board
 Get the influential people from the team on board
 They didn’t choose this role for themselves, their peers
did, use that.

14. Lay out the roadmap
 People need to understand the value of their work
 Would you ask your spouse to pack for a trip without
telling them where you’re going?

15. Accountability
 Expectations clearly laid out
 Responsibilities understood
 The team knows what they need to do
 The team makes decisions that are in the best interest
of everyone

16. Responsibility
 Responsibility must be taken
 Responsibility given is actually obligation
 You need people to care about and be invested in their
work
 You need them to be driven to do a good job and
deliver value
 How are your people motivated?
 They need to feel that their contributions are
recognized and appreciated

18. Perception
 Managing how you are perceived is a full time job at
your full time job…
 Perception rarely matches intention, especially if you
don’t try to make it.

19. Perception

20. Peer Feedback
 Giving good peer feedback is HARD.
 “Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain…and
most fools do” – Dale Carnegie

21. Receiving Feedback
 Listen to the feedback. No…really.
 Remain open minded
 Don’t interrupt the person, it’s likely already hard for
them
 Ensure that you understand what they are telling you,
it’s ok to ask clarifying questions to make sure
 Remind yourself the feedback is addressing a
behaviour

22. Giving Feedback
 Feedback should address behavior, not the person
 It should be specific
 It should be timely
 Own your feedback, don’t wish-wash
 Understand that it is only feedback, the other person is
not obligated to do anything other than listen.

23. Bad feedback examples
 You talk too much in meetings
 People don’t seem to like you
 Your PRDC session was ok but could use some work
 People complain about your attendance

24. Good feedback examples
 I thought your PRDC session would have been better if
you made smoother transitions between sub-topics. It
seemed to jump around which made it harder for me to
follow.
 In that meeting we just had there were several
instances where I tried to voice my opinion but couldn’t
because you raised your voice a bit every time I tried to
talk. When that happens it makes me feel like you
don’t care about what I have to say.

25. Wrap up
 Your team/company culture is your collective identity
 The power of culture is wildly underestimated
 You’re not going to attract top talent if your culture is
stodgy and boring, sorry suit and tie shops!