Cultural heritage, organizational culture, cultural expressions, a nation’s culture, family culture, a different culture, Culture Club, cultured yogurt, multiculturalism… I wonder how many times you’ve heard or used the word “culture” in different contexts over the last 24 hours. Many of us use the term on a regular basis – probably more than you realize. But what do we mean by it?
The Oxford English Dictionary offers 15 different definitions of the word culture, mostly based around “the way of life of a people group, including their attitudes, values, beliefs, arts, sciences, modes of perception, and habits of thought and activity.” How you use the term is probably some version of this – unless you work in biological sciences, in which case you might use culture as a verb that might have something to offer all of us who work with teams, regardless of our career.
Culture as a verb means to create conditions which are suitable for growth, and/or to keep something in conditions which promote growth. Think back to the cultured yogurt example in the list above. Cultured yogurt is made from cow’s, goat’s or sheep’s milk, and contains beneficial bacteria for the body known as probiotics. These bacteria grew during the culturing process. But how about in the workplace? How can we create conditions which are suitable for, or promote, our team members’ growth? And what would be the equivalent of the beneficial bacteria that grow?
This Week’s Tip:
Consider how you can use culture as a verb within your team; How can you create conditions suitable for the growth of your team members, individually and as a whole? What conditions do you currently have in place to support growth within your team? Just as probiotics support overall health and immune response, growth within your team might look like soft skills that would be transferable between jobs (and even outside the workplace) – resilience, the ability to have challenging conversations, openness to different perspectives, executive functioning skills. It might also look like having healthy boundaries, leaving work at work, and building overall job satisfaction, which in turn promotes employee retention, and makes your team attractive to others. As you reflect on this, ask what conditions you could create to support your team more, as a group and individually, and then start implementing them. You might be surprised by what’s possible!
Try these tips this week, and let us know how it goes – we’d love to hear from you. As always, you can subscribe to our feed here, or sign up for our weekly newsletter to get these articles directly in your inbox.
Building Bridges Leadership 