Building a Positive Team Culture

A couple of months ago, I wrote about human-first Customer Success, sharing insights on how to focus on your customers as people and listen to their needs with empathy and curiosity. When I think about building a human-first culture, I of course think about the humans on your teams! It has always bothered me when functions work against each other instead of together to help their customers succeed and their company thrive. Sometimes functions even finger-point and blame, and it is such a poor use of time. I firmly believe that leading in a way that builds people up is a more fulfilling and productive approach, not to mention it’s a lot more fun.

Here are some ideas to build a more human-focused culture:

• Hire leaders who genuinely care about the development and satisfaction of their team members. Culture starts at the top, and you can’t fake caring about people.

• Reward when people speak up with dissenting views. It’s hard to stand up and say when you think something isn’t right, especially to people above you in the org chart. When a team member does so because it’s the right thing to do, celebrate it.

• Encourage and listen to all voices. Equal turn-taking in conversations is a sign of psychological safety on teams. Quiet voices often have great ideas. Nurture them.

• From a tactical perspective, consider a cross-functional group to come together and highlight what works and what doesn’t in terms of how your teams operate together. Opening the door for this communication is a great step and begins to break down barriers between functions.

Sometimes it feels like valuing people over profits is seen as an afterthought, but I believe it is the necessary foundation to help teams and companies grow and thrive.